Injecting chipset drivers into an Windows ISO apparently works on Atom Baytrail tablets

tech

We’re less than a year away from Windows 10’s end of service, so I decided to try other things I can do with the RCA Cambio W101 V2 Windows tablet that’s become the bane of my existence, especially because no Linux distribution works properly on this thing, and the worst part is losing the touchscreen completely because of the way the Linux kernel works. Basically, it either works or it doesn’t.

Anyway, I’ve been experimenting with another way to get this tablet’s drivers working without having to install all the chipset drivers, and then pointing the missing ones in Device Manager one a time.

The good news is that it worked for me in this specific Windows tablet. I find it even easier than the way I did it in my previous tutorial about the very same thing.

The trick to this is injecting the drivers into the installation ISO. I’ve heard of people injecting drivers into an installation ISO using Windows Powershell and DISM for some time, but I feel that’s too complicated. This is where a program called NTLite comes in.

NTLite mount, edit, and update Windows installation ISO files with an easy-to-use graphical interface. I honestly spent more time looking for tutorials and actually following the one I used here.

However, because most of the Atom tablets in the Z3700 series require a set of SOC drivers before Windows understands what to do with the rest of the device drivers, I wasn’t sure how to inject the executable file I’ve used before, and was afraid it wouldn’t load at all during the Windows 10 installation. However, the solution was quite simple.

The key to this is unpacking the chipset installer and add them together with the rest of the drivers. Not only was it pretty simple to do, pretty much everything worked, and even the last piece (audio) was fixed by Device Manager through Windows Update.

If any of you has one of these Intel Atom Z3735F tablets (32 bit EFI, 64 bit processor) and want to give this a try, all you need for this experiment a few things:

NTLite (select “free limited license)
7zip (or a program to unpack a .exe file)
Windows 10 32bit 1607 ISO
HP Stream 8 Tablet 5900nc chipset drivers
The Baytrail tablet drivers. In this case, my copy of the RCA Cambio W101 V2 drivers (or try here and see if they work)
Rufus to burn the ISO into a bootable flashdrive.

You might need to search the Internet Archive for a copy of Windows 10 1607 32 bit. Not only is that the best version you can run on this tablet, it’s pretty much the best version for old computers that can barely run Windows 10. You’ll notice how bloated Windows 10 becomes once it tries to update to the current most current version, but at least you’ll be able to see how decent this tablet was in its prime before it updates to the current version.

Anyway, once you have all the necessary files, do the following:

Use 7zip to extract the HP Stream executable to its own folder, and then rename this folder something like “All drivers.”
Extract all the Cambio drivers one at a time into their own folders. Skip to the next step if your drivers are already unzipped. (I forgot to add the Bluetooth driver, no biggie).
Copy all the Cambio’s drivers’ folders into the folder named “drivers” inside the “All drivers” folder you extracted in the step 1.
Open NTLite (select the free license if it asks you) and click on the icon that says Add and Select Image (ISO, WIM, ESD, SWM).
Select your ISO file. The center pane will populate the the ISO info.
Under your ISO’s address, you’ll see the all the Windows 10 versions contained inside the ISO. Select the one you’re trying to install, which in my case is Windows 10 Home.
Select “Load” from the upper menu icons and select OK to create a writable image. You’ll see 2 loading bars, so let it finish.
After loading, a new menu has populated on the left. Ignore the Hardware checklist on the far right.
Click on “Drivers” on the left menu, then move your mouse pointer over “Add” in the middle pane under “Driver queue.” Click on “Directory” and select the folder with all the drivers.
Ignore the Warnings and errors message about existing items and wrong architectures and just hit OK.
Click on “Apply” at the bottom of the left menu.
Under “Select image tasks” select “Save the image and trim editions” to remove the extra Windows 10 installation versions you don’t need, otherwise you’ll end up with a huge ISO. Also, check the box at the bottom that reads “Create ISO” and name it something like “WIN10x32_1607_rca” so you know what it is. “Label” can be anything you like or leave it like it is.
Click on the big green button at the upper left side that reads “Process” to apply the changes, then hit OK.

NTLite will take a while processing the changes in the list and creating the ISO, so don’t bother it even if you see that it possibly stopped responding; it will eventually finish.

However, if it’s really having trouble finishing up, disable everything inside Windows’ “Virus and threat protection” settings and try again, especially if Windows keeps blocking Rufus from doing its thing.

Anyhow, once the new ISO is complete, burn it using Rufus. If I were you, I’d select all the extra customization Rufus presents about creating a local account, disabling data collection, etc… Then, fire up the tablet, and start pressing the ESC key to get into bios to boot from the USB flashdrive.

Finally, I’d advice against enabling Wi-Fi during the installation process, otherwise the installer will start looking for updates and might even force you to sign into a Microsoft account, so just wait until the desktop has loaded, check that most of the stuff works, especially the touchscreen, and then enable Wi-Fi.

The very last thing you might want to do, especially because audio most likely won’t work, is to go into Device Manager and check for missing drivers, and do the automatic updates from there, but don’t try to force any other updates on working drivers.

Let me know if anybody had the same luck. It really pisses me off how Intel completely set the Atom Z3700 series up to fail. The worst part is seeing it become nothing more than electronic waste because nothing else can be installed on it that will work better than Windows 10 1607.