Trying to put Windows 8.1 on a GPD Win. Need drivers for WiFi and battery...

Nazo

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 2, 2002
Messages
3,672
So asking this on here is a bit of a shot in the dark. Probably not many here are terribly familiar with the GPD Win itself. It's worth noting that it is actually very much like your typical 2-in-1 as far as the actual setup goes though. They used exactly the same methods for most of the hardware including using an Intel Atom SoC as the core of the design -- even also having the same sound setup with I2C from the SoC going to a RealTek chip for the rest of the process (don't know why so many do it this way.) So what works for them works for this for the most part.

Now, no doubt the Windows 10 cultists will fuss at me for this, but I don't like Windows 10 and I wanted to get 8.1 running on this. It took a bit of doing, but for the most part it actually wasn't that bad. (Not like my old T100HA 2-in-1. I had no help with it at all and had to find everything myself. The GPD Win can use the same drivers many have already tracked down for a clean 10 install in 8.1 however -- most of those driver packs actually include drivers for 8/8.1 and a few even had drivers for 7, though I won't be trying to go that far back here obviously.) So I have almost everything working. I've only run into two problems here. One is the WiFi/BT chipset. As far as I can tell it uses the BCM4356A2 chipset. (And it seems there may be a problem here with the chip either misidentifying or the official OEM drivers just plain having screwed up or something. In a Linux project to get drivers for the chipset I've found this project in which they mention that the kernel may request drivers for a 4354. In the GPD Win's official "wifi fix" release the patch specifically states this in the text: "4356 chip = 4354 A2 chip" So I'm wondering if a huge part of my problem might be that it's just plain not identifying correctly. Now, many 2-in-1s use virtually the same chipset for their WiFi and Bluetooth, so there are actually plenty of drivers around. However most chose to integrate the chip via SDIO whereas the GPD Win -- as far as I can tell -- chose to use PCIe. Unfortunately the SDIO drivers I was able to find seem to not be working. I think I need drivers specific to the PCIe version of the chipset. (Perhaps it doesn't matter that this is an embedded device? Is there a PCIe card for desktops with this chipset? Might be worth a look anyway. I have no idea how to search that specifically though.)

The other problem I'm having is the battery detection. The system is completely unable to read the battery's level at all. There are two devices showing up in the device manager without drivers associated. One is "BCM2E7E\4&29E26D5C&0" so I'm guessing this is actually the Bluetooth. (According to the Linux setup stuff it seems you have to get the WiFi working first to get the Bluetooth working, so my guess is this is the same here.) The other is "USBC000\0". I don't know what this is. According to the person who first got Linux working on here the GPD Win can act in "gadget mode" via its USB type-C connector, but I don't think Windows would be showing a device for that without any specific setup. Perhaps it could be possible it reads the battery via an internal USB hub like a UPS?

The WiFi isn't so bad. I have a cheap USB adapter for WiFi. I don't even really use Bluetooth with this thing, but I do have a spare adapter if I ever find that I absolutely have to. (Too bad I never really saw a combined adapter, but like I said, I don't really use it. I doubt I'd ever actually need both at the same time anyway.) It does tie up the only USB port though, so I'd still really really like to get that working. (Plus it's just plain silly to have a built-in WiFi that should work just fine and be using an external anyway.) The battery is a much more serious problem however. Without any indication of its current level the system won't know when to shut down as it gets critically low and it would just shut off when the voltage eventually drops too low (potentially causing filesystem damage or loss of data along the way even.) If all else fails maybe someday I might even give up and wire in a voltage detector. If I could at least free up the USB slot I could even do one that uses software instead of a "bulky" (relative to fitting on a pocket-sized thing) display. I can't do that with a WiFi adapter always taking up that slot though. Obviously I don't want to actually wire something in like that unless nothing else at all ever works.

Anyway, I'm hoping maybe someone around here might be more familiar with the chipsets involved and finding the necessary drivers for these components. Perhaps from experience installing on some 2-in-1 or similar embedded system?


PS. Just to save people some trouble, there's really no point in fighting with me about not wanting 10 on here. I don't. That is all. I'd be terribly grateful if we could not fight about that point.

PPS. I was definitely not sure if this was the right forum. But given that we're dealing with drivers for different things and all I felt like maybe this was best. If a moderator disagrees feel free to move it if you want.
 
I understand most of the words that you used, but I have no idea as to how to help you.
 
Well, have you tried Snappy Driver Installer Origin?

(It has to be ORIGIN)

Download it, run, update driver packs. Check the box "worst match", that way it will show the non signed options. It is very likely that everything you need is there.
 
First, man, wall of text. I hope I got everything but wow.

Have you tried forcing the driver that won't automatically detect? Use "let me choose" and have disk option and point to the driver.

Also, you may have to install 10 at first, then use something like PNPUTIL to extract the drivers then switch back to 8.1 and try them.
 
I understand most of the words that you used, but I have no idea as to how to help you.
I don't mean to be rude, but I can't think of a nicer way to say this: posting to say that you have nothing to say is spectacularly useless.

I like Jello.
Now you're actively spamming. Are you just looking to get a high post count? To what end?

Well, have you tried Snappy Driver Installer Origin?

(It has to be ORIGIN)

Download it, run, update driver packs. Check the box "worst match", that way it will show the non signed options. It is very likely that everything you need is there.
These things are generally Very Bad News. I'd rather avoid that if at all possible. Given the rather obscure (or more accurately not really obscure so much as just very very OEM oriented with no consideration for the end user at all) nature of this particular piece of hardware I suspect it's not going to be in any generic packs anyway though.

First, man, wall of text. I hope I got everything but wow.
Well, you did miss my signature. I'm not trying to be combative, just that I've heard this for years and years and, as I said in my signature, A. if it were so simple it could be summed up in a single paragraph I wouldn't need help as I've been working on computers for a very very long time and know what I'm doing and B. I can't really help it anyway as I just don't like leaving out details. Actually, there's a secret C. Over the years I learned the hard way that if I don't provide the details then I spend days going back and forth with people doing the equivalent of the age old "did you turn it off and back on again?" (I don't know if you've seen The IT Crowd, but I sort of want something like their machine that said "did you turn it off and back on again" except instead that says "yes, I already turned it off and back on again," "yes I checked that it was plugged in properly," etc etc.) It's actually ultimately the same amount of text, just spread across numerous posts over numerous days delaying any sort of movement towards an actual solution. It was, in fact, this very forum that taught me this lesson.

Have you tried forcing the driver that won't automatically detect? Use "let me choose" and have disk option and point to the driver.
Yes. It, in fact, acts like it's working, but then ultimately says the driver can't start (and no more details than that) so the WiFi simply never works. As a matter of fact, I can point it to the directory in automatic mode and it will find the driver, but the driver still just won't start.

Also, you may have to install 10 at first, then use something like PNPUTIL to extract the drivers then switch back to 8.1 and try them.
Well, I can get 10 back on there easily enough. Somehow the stock setup screwed itself up (which was the final straw that broke the camel's back in making me finally decide to do what I already wanted to do and get rid of 10) but I got it booting again before I imaged the drive and then erased it. However I think this won't work because I do, after all, have access to the actual driver files that were installed within 10 and these are the ones that I can get to "install" and fully show up correctly but just won't work. (The manufacturer of the GPD Win itself does provide a driver pack which presumably is the exact thing they installed when setting 10 up for these devices.) Eg I think it will simply produce the exact same files that are currently not getting along so well with 8.1. Given that I'll have to reimage the drive, write the old one back, then go back to this and suspect it will produce the exact same results I honestly would rather not do this unless there's a very compelling reason to believe it's worth all that effort.

I kind of have a sneaking suspicion here that this may be related to the "4356 chip = 4354 A2 chip" thing which is why I brought it up. It almost makes me wonder if the driver installs and seems as if it's compatible, but then the OS thinks it's the driver for the wrong device because of the chip misidentifying itself or something. But if this is the case how might one possibly fix this? Would that mean editing the INF in some way or something of that sort? I've never messed with an INF before though, so have no clue about its syntax and how it would even affect this (if at all?) The exact error is:
Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

{Unable to Load Device Driver}
%hs device could not be loaded.
Error Status was 0x%x
(Yeah, it shows those unresolved variables in there.) This almost seems consistent with my hypothesis, but isn't much to go on.


BTW, I've looked at the battery in more detail and I don't think the battery thing is quite as simple as I thought at first: it seems it already has a driver and it's basically just the standard built-in Windows driver, "Intel(R) Battery Management Device," not anything special. It doesn't report any errors or anything, so I have no clue why it seems it can't read the actual battery status. I tried removing it (including using the option to delete driver files) as well as trying to detect if there was anything within the drivers provided to replace it (if it had to be done manually I have no clue what I'm looking for there) but searching for new hardware or rebooting or whatever just readds it with once again the standard stock Windows driver. (One curiosity though is that I actually have two devices in the battery section. One says "Microsoft AC Adapter" which is kind of strange. Disabling it does nothing obvious.) To be specific, Windows shows an icon of a grayed out battery (sort of like it's empty even, but no red or anything) saying "Unknown Remaining." I tried forcing the equivalent one from the driver pack they provided, but it won't work (code 37, driver mismatch.) EDIT: From the Linux thread it seems the battery needs a "DSDT table." Perhaps I can replace the one in my 8.1 system with the one from the 10 system.

PS. I've disabled driver signing checking (out of necessity unfortunately.) I can install and use unsigned drivers (or at least where they don't check out for the specific OS, but I think with the OEM-only nature they just didn't bother.)
 
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These things are generally Very Bad News. I'd rather avoid that if at all possible. Given the rather obscure (or more accurately not really obscure so much as just very very OEM oriented with no consideration for the end user at all) nature of this particular piece of hardware I suspect it's not going to be in any generic packs anyway though.

I know what you're talking about, but this particular one has been working consistently for a few years. It used to be Snappy Driver Installer, but open-source politics and stuff, the good fork is now SDI Origin. SDI was plagued with Very Bad News, as you say.

If anything, just run it and see if it shows up the drivers for your particular hardware. Worst case scenario, you just wasted 15GB of download allowance for the driver packs, but you can always use them on other machines.

Just give it a go. It saved me in a situation like yours, that's why I am recommending it.
 
I harbor very serious doubts about it having this, but eh, screw it. I guess I'm desperate enough to try it anyway.

EDIT: It pains me to say this, but it got my WiFi and Bluetooth working. Still no go on the battery detection though. That's still a pretty serious problem. Looks like I still had to use the "WiFi fix" from GPD with this to get 5.8GHz frequencies working (interesting that it's exactly the same as 10 in this.) As a bonus it got the Bluetooth working too and I wasn't even trying for that.

I guess all that's left is to figure out the battery. It shows a bunch of different drivers for it, so I may have to try them all, but there are a lot so that won't exactly be fun...

EDIT2: Now it resets my display settings on every bootup -- big problem when it require rotation -- and I have no mouse. It shouldn't have replaced anything that would affect that...

EDIT3: Turns out that was one of the "power management devices" at fault. Seems one has to be ultra-careful here...
 
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So asking this on here is a bit of a shot in the dark. Probably not many here are terribly familiar with the GPD Win itself. It's worth noting that it is actually very much like your typical 2-in-1 as far as the actual setup goes though. They used exactly the same methods for most of the hardware including using an Intel Atom SoC as the core of the design -- even also having the same sound setup with I2C from the SoC going to a RealTek chip for the rest of the process (don't know why so many do it this way.) So what works for them works for this for the most part.

Now, no doubt the Windows 10 cultists will fuss at me for this, but I don't like Windows 10 and I wanted to get 8.1 running on this. It took a bit of doing, but for the most part it actually wasn't that bad. (Not like my old T100HA 2-in-1. I had no help with it at all and had to find everything myself. The GPD Win can use the same drivers many have already tracked down for a clean 10 install in 8.1 however -- most of those driver packs actually include drivers for 8/8.1 and a few even had drivers for 7, though I won't be trying to go that far back here obviously.) So I have almost everything working. I've only run into two problems here. One is the WiFi/BT chipset. As far as I can tell it uses the BCM4356A2 chipset. (And it seems there may be a problem here with the chip either misidentifying or the official OEM drivers just plain having screwed up or something. In a Linux project to get drivers for the chipset I've found this project in which they mention that the kernel may request drivers for a 4354. In the GPD Win's official "wifi fix" release the patch specifically states this in the text: "4356 chip = 4354 A2 chip" So I'm wondering if a huge part of my problem might be that it's just plain not identifying correctly. Now, many 2-in-1s use virtually the same chipset for their WiFi and Bluetooth, so there are actually plenty of drivers around. However most chose to integrate the chip via SDIO whereas the GPD Win -- as far as I can tell -- chose to use PCIe. Unfortunately the SDIO drivers I was able to find seem to not be working. I think I need drivers specific to the PCIe version of the chipset. (Perhaps it doesn't matter that this is an embedded device? Is there a PCIe card for desktops with this chipset? Might be worth a look anyway. I have no idea how to search that specifically though.)

The other problem I'm having is the battery detection. The system is completely unable to read the battery's level at all. There are two devices showing up in the device manager without drivers associated. One is "BCM2E7E\4&29E26D5C&0" so I'm guessing this is actually the Bluetooth. (According to the Linux setup stuff it seems you have to get the WiFi working first to get the Bluetooth working, so my guess is this is the same here.) The other is "USBC000\0". I don't know what this is. According to the person who first got Linux working on here the GPD Win can act in "gadget mode" via its USB type-C connector, but I don't think Windows would be showing a device for that without any specific setup. Perhaps it could be possible it reads the battery via an internal USB hub like a UPS?

The WiFi isn't so bad. I have a cheap USB adapter for WiFi. I don't even really use Bluetooth with this thing, but I do have a spare adapter if I ever find that I absolutely have to. (Too bad I never really saw a combined adapter, but like I said, I don't really use it. I doubt I'd ever actually need both at the same time anyway.) It does tie up the only USB port though, so I'd still really really like to get that working. (Plus it's just plain silly to have a built-in WiFi that should work just fine and be using an external anyway.) The battery is a much more serious problem however. Without any indication of its current level the system won't know when to shut down as it gets critically low and it would just shut off when the voltage eventually drops too low (potentially causing filesystem damage or loss of data along the way even.) If all else fails maybe someday I might even give up and wire in a voltage detector. If I could at least free up the USB slot I could even do one that uses software instead of a "bulky" (relative to fitting on a pocket-sized thing) display. I can't do that with a WiFi adapter always taking up that slot though. Obviously I don't want to actually wire something in like that unless nothing else at all ever works.

Anyway, I'm hoping maybe someone around here might be more familiar with the chipsets involved and finding the necessary drivers for these components. Perhaps from experience installing on some 2-in-1 or similar embedded system?


PS. Just to save people some trouble, there's really no point in fighting with me about not wanting 10 on here. I don't. That is all. I'd be terribly grateful if we could not fight about that point.

PPS. I was definitely not sure if this was the right forum. But given that we're dealing with drivers for different things and all I felt like maybe this was best. If a moderator disagrees feel free to move it if you want.

i use DRIVERDr software for missing drivers i cant find for my older systems works great it does have a small fee tho witch is well worth it heres the link to it it saves time going threw every driver in device mangament trying to find the right driver !

https://www.driverdr.com/

https://www.driverdr.com/

GOOD LUCK I HOPE THIS PROGRAMS HELPS OUT U GUYS LIKE IT HAS ME its a great tool for the money !! Cheers

and for your usb port u might wnat to get a hub or somthing like what i use its small and nice

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-4-Po...11-spons&keywords=4+port+swivel+usb+hub&psc=1

and for the battery try putting in a new battery and see if it will reconize it then remmebr to get the same number on the battery as well u can get em at your loacl drug store
 
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I have a USB hub. I've already covered all missing drivers, but if I had not I absolutely would not under any circumstances use what you just linked to. Period. I don't mean to be rude, it's just that I've already covered this ground thoroughly and you kind of ignored that. Anyway, now the issue is how to fix the battery detection.
 
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Bump. I don't really want to install a ton of bloatware things that claim to find drivers for everything. I made an exception for that one program because it's basically a portable setup that doesn't really do anything and stays minimal without trying to force you to give them money and etc (I tested in a VM btw) and because in a pinch I even could just get to the drivers within it, but it's worth noting that it's very unlikely these other programs are going to make any difference in this anyway. If they do anything at all, it would almost definitely just be the same thing over and over while building up more and more bloat in the system and pestering for more and more money along the way.

It seems more like I need to more specifically identify exactly which piece of hardware it is in the device manager and try a very specific driver for it. I even have the official W10 drivers on hand and some of them work since they're basically just 8+ (or even 7+ in a few cases) drivers, but Windows itself just doesn't setup the battery correctly automatically so it must be done manually essentially even if the right thing is in there. I can pick from a bunch of different ones with that other thing, but which one is the right thing even to change in the first place? My suspicion here is that it's not the actual "battery" driver that needs to be changed, but something else.
 
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