[Shift General] RSargeant:
Hi all,

I bought my (German WM, standard ROM) Shift about 4 months ago, and have spent a lot of time getting it working “just how I want it”. That’s been very successful. I’ve had a huge amount of help, both from here and in German language Shift forums, so now maybe I can give something back.

My Shift has:

Windows 7 Ultimate English

2mb memory

128gb SDD

SHAGCtrl with working buttons

Resolution changer with working buttons

EVERYTHING is working – Wi-Fi, NDIS GSM, Bluetooth. The power management (hibernate etc.) is faultless. My Shift is really fast, super useful, and I carry it at all times. I love my Shift - a machine that was discontinued before its time. HTC?

My wife likes my Shift so much I had to buy her one as well, that’s not (yet) upgraded giving me a great chance to compare side-by-side, modified and un-modified. I didn’t try to differentiate between performance changes due to upgrading to W7, upgrading memory or upgrading to the SSD, as I only wanted to dismantle my Shift once!

Using the built-in Windows 7 “Performance Information and Tools”, the standard and modded Shift were identical EXCEPT:

Memory (RAM) subscore DROPPED from 3.7 on standard to only 3.4 on modded. I don’t know why, maybe the 2gb module is slower?

Primary hard disk subscore went from 3.7 to a massive 6.1!

As far as I can tell, the SDD makes NO DIFFERENCE to battery life – it’s just a whole lot faster!

The 2gb Shift with 128gb SSD takes just 0:42 seconds from power-on to “Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete”.

The 1gb Shift with original disk takes an eternal 1:45! The modded Shift is MUCH snappier and is a pleasure to use.

I believe Windows 7 instead of Vista, 2gb instead of 1 and the SSD ALL made a difference. Of course, this was not a cheap exercise, but the resulting Shift is still a pretty unique device and it’s up to you if you want to spend so much as well.

Problems? Yes. My wife is German-speaking so I tried to install the optional German language pack. That killed SHAGCtrl completely and I haven’t found a solution yet. Also (and this is really obscure), we access a hosted Microsoft Exchange server for our emails. This connection requires you to configure a HTTP proxy in Outlook, to connect to the server. This failed on logon with an odd error message containing “cannot find TILES”! After a lot of work, I found that the Shift’s fingerprint scanner was interfering with sending the password to the Exchange server. Uninstalling the VitalKey software fixed this – I can do without the fingerprint scanner. You are unlikely to encounter this unless you too access an Exchange server from Outlook with HTTP proxy.

OK, the details.

The most useful tool you can BUY when attempting this is a copy of Acronis True Image. Take frequent images so you can go back when it all goes wrong – and this is very likely, however careful you are. Saves a huge amount of time. Note that the original recovery partition remains intact, so you can always go back to Vista, up to the point you change the disk.

Attach the Shift USB network dongle and ensure that all radio devices are enabled (Wi-Fi, GSM and Bluetooth) before starting with installation of W7. I even found a memory card and plugged that in. This is so that W7 finds and installs drivers for everything during the install.

Since my Shift initially had a working copy of (German) Vista running on it, I found a USB memory stick and installed True Image in Vista, writing a bootable copy to the Nano mentioned below, so that I could boot directly into True Image using the F10 key. I also attached a large USB hard disk to store (and restore) images. Guess you could also boot TrueImage from that, however I used a Nano 8gb USB flash drive (http://www.memorydepot.com/details.asp?id=NANOUSB-16G) for True Image as this can remain attached afterwards and the Shift still fits in its slip case. These Nano drives are available from many vendors with different names but seem to be all the same device.

I installed W7 from yet another USB stick, having first copied all the install files from the MS W7 with SP1 DVD. Creating this USB stick is well-documented elsewhere and very worthwhile as it is much faster than attaching a USB DVD drive. Mine was a clean install, not an upgrade from Vista. I could never make the upgrade route work!

Boot (F10) from the W7 installation stick and follow EXACTLY the process at http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=513638. I downloaded and placed all drivers in individual folders preceded by the “a. b. etc.” to be sure of installing them in the correct order.

Once you have a working W7, SWITCH OFF AERO before going any further and certainly before installing any HTC stuff, by selecting a non-Aero screen background. Take an Acronis image at this point.

Be sure to follow the advice given in the post referred to above – install ONLY the downloaded HTC drivers, in the order given, run as administrator, with Vista compatibility mode. DON’T install any other updates or drivers yet.

I will not repeat the instructions in the post referred to above, but will just repeat, IF YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY, it will work!

The parts.

I found both the memory and the SSD on eBay. Please don’t post questions like “Is this SDD XYZ suitable?” – I don’t know and won’t answer! This is what I bought and it works.

My 128gb SSD came from a vendor named “ventures_cn1”. The item description was “1.8" 128GB ZIF SSD*OQO 02/E2*DELL D420/D430 *SAMSUNG Q1”. At this date (October 2010) he’s still selling them at (ouch) $333.00. I believe small and bigger capacities are also available, correspondingly cheaper (and dearer)! The few questions I had were answered very quickly and shipping was both fast and reasonable.

My 2gb memory came from a vendor named “mem-store”. The description was “2GB DDR2 214pin Micro Dimm MicroDIMM Memory HTC SHIFT”. At this date (October 2010) he’s still selling them at (ouch again) $189.00 plus a hefty $25.99 for international UPS.

Both vendors were very responsive and I would not hesitate to buy again.

However…

CAUTION – I don’t know if the following is correct – try at your own risk! The memory module came in the usual sealed anti-static package, but with a large anti-static handling warning stuck over the original Kingston memory type label. I carefully peeled that off and that revealed a damaged Kingston type number label, which (I think) said “KTD-INSP6000B/2G”. A Google search reveals that this part number is a 200-pin SO-DIMM DDR2 667MHz module, apparently used in some Dell laptops, and available at a lot less than $189 plus $26!

Maybe some brave soul can try buying this and post the results here? TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK! I will not accept any responsibility if this does not work!

I used the guide also at XDA Developers to dismantle the Shift. This takes some care and if you are clumsy you might want someone else to tackle it. The case is eggshell thin and very easy to break, especially around the openings, particularly the air vents on the back. You need a tool to help pry apart the case – DON’T use anything metal. I used a soft pointed wooden stick stolen from the kitchen, used for Kebabs I think. Even then there were a few marks on the back of the case. Fortunately you don’t have to entirely dismantle the Shift as described in the guide, just the first few steps. In particular, be careful not to get finger grease on the adhesive tape used to secure the ZIF ribbon cable to the hard drive socket – you need to reuse that to ensure the (very fragile and hard to find) flat disk cable does not pull out of the ZIF socket a little leaving you with a “No disk” BIOS error. From memory the paper label on the SSD needs to be visible when the disk is installed, as it’s not clear which way around it should be. I tried both ways, managing to temporarily reinstall memory and battery so that I could see the new disk was recognised by the BIOS. I suggest you test in the same way, only re-attaching the tape once you are sure the disk is recognised.

Lastly, I use a Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 9000 with the Shift. This comes with a Bluetooth dongle, but that’s not needed as the mouse works fine with the Shift’s own Bluetooth. It is also small and has a nice hard carry case

OK, I think that’s about all.

If you have questions relating to the above, please ask, but please try not to ask non-related questions or dumb questions about installing W7 or Shift in general.

Richard S.

Switzerland, October 2010.