ARGH! Can't install Touch Screen Drivers!!!! Help me and my sanity...!

[slapaham]

Okay, so my touchscreen panel arrived today from China - that was quick... however, the CD (or should I say CD-R) provided with it is utterly useless... it's a shocking mess!!!!

I found some documentation that pointed me todays the XP setup.exe (seems logical but you haven't seen the file structure of this piece of crap CD!)... however, whenever I try and install it I get 'Error installing iKernel.exe: (0x10000)'... great, I thought! Well, I'm not going to give up that easily... so since this morning I have been reading, reading, reading, updating system files, service packs, etc, etc... following almost anything and everything on the topic and guess what! It still says 'Error installing iKernel.exe: (0x10000)' - not only on the PC I want it on but also on another, older XP machine and a Vista machine... it's doing my nut in!!

Has anyone got anymore solutions I can try? Please...

[Paladin]

What brand touch screen is it?  Does the company have a website that you could download drivers from?

[Hoopz]

Format the hard drive and start over.

Or, boot into safe mode, delete the old drivers, and reboot.  

Have you checked online for more recent drivers than what's on the CD?  You can install them from the desktop or flash drive etc.  

If you don't know the version of the drivers that it has or aren't sure what to use, run Belarc Advisor on it and get the specs.

[slapaham]

Thanks guys...

It's a cheap-o unbranded Touchscreen from China... SXTouch was mentioned in some of the documentation but it's not clear whether or not this is the brand - seems like a scrambled mess of lots of different 'Chinese' software/utilities/drivers/etc to me (could be wrong though). Did check SXTouch's website and it looked okay until I got to download the drivers and just to sum up my day - the files were no longer available! Typical!

[slapaham]

By the way - what is the easiest way to format your hard drive? I've never done it before but have always meant to figure out how to...

[Hoopz]

If it has a USB port, download Belarc Advisor and install it to the computer.  Run the program and it will show you the specs including brand of motherboard, hard drive, ram, video card etc.  It'll show all the drivers, service packs etc.

To format the hard drive, put a Windows disc (XP or whatever version you want) in the CD drive and reboot.  You may have to hit DEL, F8, F1 or another key to change the boot order of the machine.  You want it to boot from the CD and not the hard drive.

[slapaham]

Cheers bud... I'll give what you said a go and see what I find... I'll post up if I can't find a solution but find some useful info (which I'm sure I will with that prog!)
 

[Hoopz]

From a very quick google search, here is a link that may help with reinstalling windows.  This is always a good idea for any new pc. I'd be leery of buying it from anyone as you don't know what's been installed.

http://lifehacker.com/157578/geek-to-live--how-to-format-your-hard-drive-and-install-windows-xp-from-scratch

You'll still need to make sure you grab the right drivers for the touch screen.  That's where Belarc comes in.  Check to see what it has now, Google the company and see if there are more current drivers for after you wipe the drive.

[Kevin Mullins]

Physically look at the controller for the touchscreen and see if there is any sort of manufacturer/model information on it.
Belarc Advisor should give you this info too of course.

Have you tried something like this site describes?
http://consumerdocs.installshield.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=Q108247&sliceId=1
Including the update at the bottom?

Is there a similar guide to this one that came on that CD?
http://download.amazepc.com/zip/82x/TouchKit%20Guide%20for%20Windows2000_XP%20v3.2.1.pdf

[slapaham]

Hi Kevin

Well, from what I saw, no manufacturer is stated on the item itself - it is a touch screen panel after all!

Yes, I tried the things of that guide but to no avail.

That is the manual provided on the CD - and I'm pretty sure that is that manufacturer - the advisor program came back with only a generic USB-HID device - and little else -  it said x2 as the mouse is USB too. I would have guessed at it at least being compatible with SX drivers but the fact that the CD is so poorly laid out makes you question it...

I'm formatting the computer, unplugging the panel from the USB and re-installing XP and trying again to see what happens.

[orion]

I googled, "SXTouch drivers" and I see that yes indeed the link to download the drivers on their website is not available. I searched some more, and someone on some forum somewhere said that these drivers should work. Rather or not they will work for you, I have no idea... but it wouldn't hurt to try especially considering you are going to reformat your hard drive anyway.

http://www.touchkit.com/Drivers.asp

[Kevin Mullins]

Well, from what I saw, no manufacturer is stated on the item itself - it is a touch screen panel after all!

Well, I was talking about on the controller...... the little circuit board, the pcb, the little thingy in between the USB cord and the touch panel.  
Looking at the driver info orion posted it's most likely made by this company:
http://home.eeti.com.tw/
(this site popped up a warning on my pc, probably because it's based in Taiwan)
 
But that's ok, most likely the stuff we've been looking at that you already stated is should be right. (SXTouch)

When you re-install your Windows and try the drivers orion posted and let us know how that goes.

[slapaham]

All sorted on the driver front guys! The drivers are available from http://www.sxtouch.cn/ - however, you have to download them from the Chinese download section and not the English (where they are unavailable!)

Confusingly, the software/drivers seem to originate from a manufacturer called GunzeTouch when you actually start installing them. 

The touchscreen now works flawlessly. I have to say, for the money, this is a good product - it's very accurate and responsive and the dispatch time was good. Software/installation was obviously a nightmare though!

I have a new problem now though which I'm helping someone can help me with...

I needn't have reinstalled Windows XP in hindsight - but I did -  - it meant I had to reconfigure the whole system and now I have a problem I want to get rid of - when you boot the computer it goes to a duel boot screen - giving you the following options -

Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP Home Edition
 

First option seems to be the fresh install, the second seems to be remnants of the old one and doesn't work - how can I get rid of this darned screen and clean it up. It's important I do this as I was to get the touchscreen running a seamless jukebox system using Instantsheller - if everytime I boot the PC it goes to this screen it's going to kill the project before I even really started!

Please say someone can help me with this...

Appreciate all the help so far guys...

[bkenobi]

Sounds like you didn't pick the right option when you ran the installer initially.  I personally delete the partition and then format it.  If you skip that step, it's possible that it kept your previous install and added a new one (or at least it thinks it did).  If it were me, I'd format again since you haven't spent that much time configuring the system.  You might be able to get it working by playing with the boot loader file, but you can F up your system that way (at which point you would have to reinstall again anyway).

[slapaham]

It's odd because I did format the partition... but this still occurred! 

[Hoopz]

It's been a while since I've seen this but go to Start - Control Panel - System - Advanced Tab - Settings - Default Operating System.  It should show two XPs there.  Delete the one that isn't the default and it should work.

Or wipe the hole hard drive and repartition it.

Give us details on what you bought.  Make/model/price etc.  Please.   

[orion]

Glad you found the drivers for it! 

[slapaham]

Cheers everyone!

Some more info about the panel can be found here - well worth the money in my opinion - very responsive and pretty cheap. TERRIBLE software disc that doesn't work but if you follow what I said before you shouldn't have any problems and should be away in a matter of minutes (which is what I should have been but instead I have been messing around with it for about 10 hours now!) -

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=97337.0

I re-installed Windows AGAIN - I deleted the one partition that I hadn't before and that seems to have done the trick... looks like I'm pretty much sorted now - just got to mess about installing all the OS updates, drivers, software, etc from scratch. I can't complain - I love having a completely blank canvas to work on and now that I've reformatted and reinstalled I've got just that! It also sorted out a few problems such as networking that I was suffering on the original install. Also get rid of some tat that couldn't be fully uninstalled.

Next step is to modify the existing monitor case as it doesn't fit (boo!) over the panel. Had a feeling that would happen but it's not anyone or anything's fault.

Then after that, configuring the software (shouldn't take too long!) and adding the music/album covers to the jukebox (dammit! that will take an age as I encoded all my mp3s on an external Mac HDD -  any suggestions of transferring these over to PC? )

[Hoopz]

Can you share some details about how the installation went?  I did see your other thread but wanted some real comments if you can please.  Easy to do?  Any issues that you found?  Looking back, would you do anything differently?

[slapaham]

Kind of summed it up really. The touchscreen panel is very good from what I've experienced so far. The software provided with it on CD-R was terrible - a real, confusing mess that didn't work anyway! The files that I mentioned above were easy to download through translating the website through Google - small file, zipped. Unzipped it, clicked it, connected touchscreen via USB and it recognised it following installation. Simple program to calibrate it - just need to touch some X's on the screen. Simple options, like speed, sounds, etc. Not much to it but the essentials and that's all you need!

Whole process takes about 3 minutes. No need to do it again - seems to save it to the touch screen PCB.

All in all, very good but you need to follow the above instructions otherwise you'll have a differing opinion!

Also - take note - this isn't 1mm in depth - more like 2-2.5mm - it's not thick but neither is it as thin as you might think... I'm going to have to either modify or build a frame for the monitor now.

I would definitely recommend this - I didn't think I would be saying that but so far I've had no problems (other than the ---smurfy--- CDR) and it has performed well above my expectations - simple, accurate and hard wearing (I accidentally dropped a USB mouse on it earlier from quite a height and it didn't cause any kind of damage whatsoever!)