Re-imaging damaged classmate

[Bill McKinney]

This situation seems unusual enough to start a new thread, nothing found.
We're a rookie team that had a hellish experience at regionals with a dead classmate. Amazingly we borrowed one and went on to advance to St. Louis (very fast minibot) So we just got our warranty replaced classmate back and have to reformat.
The question is whether all previous updates need to be installed in sequence, or whether the final update is inclusive of all previous versions. A blow by blow description of the imaging sequence would be greatly appreciated. We sure don't want to show up at the championships with only a morning to solve unforeseen probs.
Thanks very much.

[Mark McLeod]

If your Classmate is a blank slate then image your replacement classmate with the 2011 stick that came in the KOP (takes about 20 minutes). You can reimage it in any case, just be sure the stick image matches your Classmate model.

1. With the Classmate powered OFF, insert the bootable USB Key into an available USB port. Do not use a USB hub, plug the Key directly into the Classmate.
2. Power on the Classmate and when you see the 2Go PC screen, repeatedly press F12 until a small window appears entitled “Please Select Boot Device”.
3. Using the cursor keys, select the USB Key. It will likely be the second item in the list, beginning with USB:xxxx. Do not select the USB:Generic device, this is not your USB Key. If two identical looking USB items show up, don’t worry. Select the first of the two.
4. Press Enter and allow the Classmate to boot from the USB Key. Be patient, it can take a minute or more for wpeinit to finish.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions

After a reimage you need to register your Windows 7 license (needs to be connected to the Internet).

• Windows 7 Activation
• Windows 7 Activation Files

Then apply only the latest updates, not all the ones in-between (takes a few minutes each).

• Utilities Update
• Driver Station Update

If you use your Classmate for programming, or to reimage the cRIO, then some combination of:

• LabVIEW DVD from the KOP via an external DVD drive or copied lock stock and barrel to at least a 4GB thumb drive (takes more than an hour to install, wants to be Internet connected at the end to activate the license)
• LabVIEW Update (takes a few minutes)

• Windriver C++ DVD from the KOP via an external DVD drive or a thumb drive (must be Internet connected to begin, takes 45 minutes)
• C/C++ Update (takes a few minutes)

• NetBeans IDE available online (takes a little while)
• Java Update (takes a few minutes)
• There are some other Java setup instructions too.

[rsisk]

Mark,

I don't know if anyone has told you lately, but your detailed instructions rock!

[Bill McKinney]

Let me be the first (second) to tell you that your instructions rock. Mark, you saved our bacon once before this season too. One question though, no DVD on the classmate. As I recall (actually somebody else was doing it) Labview was also on the flashdrive in the KOP and took a looong time to load. But we'd like to have Labview on there. Does that ring a bell? There is a labviewsetup.exe file on the stick. I'm thinking that ran the FRC/Labview set up.
Thanks much, again.
Bill McKinney 3711

[Mark McLeod]

The full LabVIEW is not on the KOP stick. Only the minimum run-time libraries required to support the Driver Station and Dashboard applications.

To install the LabVIEW DVD just copy it to a big enough thumb drive (4GB is big enough) and install from there. Nothing special about the DVD itself.

P.S.
I have to confess that I've just copied half of this from older posts I'd made...