Tablet PC ordeal
If you think that your old tablet pc could stand a fresh install of Windows XP Tablet PC edition, let me tell you what happened to me. I got a copy of the CD’s from MIS and did the install. I got a key from our Campus Agreement guy and it looked like everything was going to install fine. However, when I rebooted the machine there was no tablet goodness to be had. I was never asked to insert the 2nd CD, which I noticed contains a TABLET folder. In that folder, no executable to install tablet features.
So after some time googling I discovered that Tablet PC is a free part of Service Pack 2; the unfortunate thing is that I already have SP2 and still no tablet joy.
I finally found a post on the Microsoft news server that you have to use the key on the bottom of the machine to get prompted for the 2nd CD–the key must tell the installer to include the tablet stuff. So, I tried entering that key and of course it was “invalid.” My guess is that since I’m installing our Campus Agreement CD on this machine which came with Tablet PC edition pre-installed the gremlin is saying “No!” In the meantime, I’ll basically be without the tablet for a couple of days, but more frustrating is the amount of time I wasted.
I think I’ll go ahead and install XP anyway, then install Ubuntu, then attempt to upgrade XP to the Tablet PC edition with the tablet key.
