In a previous posting we looked at Promethean’s solution to computers with Windows 10 when connected to a Promethean AB100, AB300 or AB500 series interactive whiteboard crashing following a recent update which has installed Build 1903. We currently have 10 of these AB378 (AB300 series with 78″ ActivBoard) interactive whiteboards in use everyday mostly in mainstream classrooms. To date I have installed Promethean’s recommended solution on six of these interactive whiteboards as the teacher’s laptop connected to these boards has updated to Windows 10 (Build 1903). Once teachers have adjusted to the changes in behaviour related to using the Microsoft HID drivers by following the three steps below, things are running much smoother for everyone.
- Turn off mains power to the board at the switch on side of the board, switch turns red each afternoon when disconnecting and storing the laptop
- Reconnect USB cable to the computer next morning and waiting for board to power up and for the flame in the corner to cycle colours until white
- Power on mains to board using switch at side, switch turns green.
We still have a small number of the older second generation boards in
use in the school mainly in SET teacher settings. Only one of the laptops connected to these interactive whiteboards has updated to Windows 10 (Build 1903) but I expect others will update in the coming days and weeks. I had earlier tried a firmware update on this particular board in the hope of resolving this problem a number of weeks ago but just like the newer board it wasn’t sufficient. Due to the age of the technology used on these older boards Promethean found that they couldn’t apply the HID firmware update to these boards. For Promethean’s explanation on this click here. The best solution that Promethean can offer users of these older boards is what they term an unsupported driver which can be downloaded from here. Promethean say that a firmware update is not necessary before installing the non supported driver.
I downloaded this file and installed it on one of these older boards last week. Promethean say that in order to overcome difficulties with code signing and hardware device driver certification that Microsoft introduced with Windows 10 (Build 1903) users will either have to disable SecureBoot in the computer bios or disable Driver Signature enforcement within Windows 10. Steps involved in disabling Driver Signature Enforcement can be found half way down in this Promethean Community posting here. I found that on the HP 250 laptop connected to the second generation interactive whiteboard SecureBoot was not enabled so was able to install the unsupported driver just by running the Setup installation application. Disabling SecureBoot is probably the easier and better option, to find out how, a Google search for “disable SecureBoot” for your particular Manufacturer and Model should offer some guidance as it is very relevant for owners who wish to dual boot or install other operating systems such as Linux. So far so good, there haven’t been any issues encountered by the class and teacher using the laptop and the interactive whiteboard following the installation of the new driver.