A friend of mine has given me a neglected Hipstreet W8 Pro tablet that runs on Windows 8.1 with Bing. I have owned a few of these Windows 8 tablet such as the VivoTab 8 and 10 and upgrading them to an unsupported Windows 10 had proven to be very difficult because they did not like in-place upgrade resulted in BSOD or drivers are not easy to find.
The Hipstreet W8 Pro factory recovery image for Windows 8.1 with Bing is HERE. Scroll to the bottom to find out how to make the USB.
The W8 Pro has some decent specification and I can repurpose this as my Toyota TechStream diagnostic tool with the use of OTG cable. I have to get it to Windows 10 32-bit in order to make it useful. The specification of the W8 Pro is well suited for my purpose:
• 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z3735 Quad Core CPU with 2GB RAM
• 32GB capacity – plus supports up to a 32GB MicroSD Card
• Windows 8.1 Operating System
• Built-in speaker
• HDMI output port (1080p)
• Front (2MP) / Rear (2MP) cameras
• 8″ 1280 x 800 (WXGA) LCD with touchscreen
• 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi module
The tablet runs well on Windows 8.1 and I believe getting it up to Windows 10 would give it some extra life. In-place upgrade from Windows 8.1 to 10 took over 12 hours and ended up with BSOD UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP (error code 0x0000007F). Clean install is the only way to work.
Before I start, I got myself this OTG hub to allow mouse, keyboard, USB stick and power. The following guide is just rough instruction, assuming you know how to create and boot from USB and install Windows etc. Once the tablet is charged up, let’s download some tools:
– Windows 10 1903 32-bit ISO HERE
– Rufus HERE
– Drivers in HERE
- Use Rufus to create a Windows 10 bootable USB (for UEFI)
- Create a new folder, extract all the drivers and copy it to the USB
- Connect the hub, plug in USB, mouse, keyboard and boot the USB
- Erase and Install Windows 10
- Install the drivers based on the order listed in the install_order.txt file.
All the devices and touch screen should be working now, enjoy the new life on this old tablet from 2015. If you must roll back to Windows 8.1, I have a VHD (use Rufus to restore) of the recovery image USB stick HERE. Download and boot it and restore the tablet back to factory state.