Some quick tips: HP iPAQ hx4700, bright, front LEDs and the Stowaway BT keyboard

I’ve run into a small problem today while working on my new, big article on the hx4700 WM5 tips and tricks. I’ve installed the new, 4.5 version of the ThinkOutside Stowaway BT keyboard (original link here; I’ve also made the CAB only accessible here (245k, as opposed to 1.6Mbytes) to save bandwidth) on my WM5 hx4700. During the setup, it presented me this screen.

Here, at first, I’ve chosen the MS stack (to see what happens). It didn’t work and I couldn’t redo it (the way the driver told me didn't work). To remedy the situation and to avoid the reinstalling of the driver, I’ve scrutinized the Registry to see where the serial number of the BT stack is stored in the Registry. It’s at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Services\ Stowaway\ Stack. All you’ll need to do is changing its value of 3 to 1.

After choosing the right (that is, the Widcomm) BT stack, you’ll need to disable the built-in HID support – this won’t be complicated as the driver GUI even offers a button to do so.

Finally, don’t forget to delete the contents of \Windows\StowawayXT.htp (so that it becomes a 0-byte file) to reduce the load on the built-in storage memory. Also, if you only need US English keyboard layout, you can safely delete \Windows\StwyIntl.kbd too. This is of extreme importance for WM5 users, who must keep the internal storage as clean as possible to reduce the length of filesys sessions.

Finally, an older, but still topical tweak: to disable the, especially in bedtime, very annoying front power/BT/Wi-Fi LEDs of the hx4700, just download this free ZIP file and unzip the six EXE files into any directory on your PDA. With them, you can quickly, with just a tap, en/disable both front LEDs of the PDA.