Windows
This page is now out of date and no longer maintained. I keep it here purely for reference purposes.
If you want more information about repairing laptops, or Linux on laptops try TuxMobil or Repair4Laptop.
Windows 2000
My B2154 came with Windows 2000 and NT pre-installed. You chose which to use the first time you switched on. Sadly Windows NT could only cope with the first 1024 cylinders of the HDD, hence both operating systems were installed on a Fat 16 partition of only 1GB.
To solve this I tried to use Partition Magic to stretch the partition, but it was unable to work with the partition table. The first success I had was converting the Fat 16 partition to NTFS (I chose Windows 2000) using the standard Windows 2000 conversion tool. This freed up (or made the available space bigger) about 500MB. I then used Linux (SuSE 6.1) to create an extra Fat 32 partition, at the same time as installing SuSE.
In the end the real solution: re-installing Windows 2000 and Linux. With a fresh partition table. The hibernation software that came with the B2154 wouldn't work with Windows 2000, however if you enable it under Linux it will also work with Windows 2000.
Please note: the copies of Windows NT and 2000 that came with your B2154 will not install on any other computer. The only hack I have heard of to get round this involves access to an alternate, standard, installation disk, which sort of defeats the object of getting your B2154 disks to work.
Windows XP Professional - Installation
For a simple installation the first thing you will need: the 6 Windows XP boot floppy disks. These are not on the installation CDROM and must be downloaded from Microsoft. Just boot up from them, they will find your CDROM drive (I used a PCMCIA DVDROM) and away you go. Nice and simple.
However should you find you can't get the installation to run from your CDROM drive, but you can get it to run under dos you should do the DOS based installation of Windows XP. Format your XP partition (the first partition, acive, on the HDD) as Fat 32. Activate Smart Drive (on my old copy of Win 98 I found it as smartdrv.exe) and copy over the contents of I386 (the location you put the files on the partition doesn't matter, as long as the file path is fully compliant with old dos file names, so no ~s, long names or spaces.
Next run winnt.exe from the I386 folder, this will start the installation off (and complain if you don't have Smart Drive running). Please note it will take a bloody long time to install XP this way, so if you can its best to use the 6 boot floppy's.
Windows XP - Specialist Drivers
Drivers for everything (with the exception of the Application Panel - see below) not auto detected by the standard Windows XP installation can be downloaded directly from Fujitsu.
Windows XP - Hibernation
The standard Windows XP hibernation works fine with the B2154, independently of the hardware hibernation.
Windows XP - Application Panel
The application panel software is under licence, and can be ordered direct from Fujitsu (personally I've never missed it).
Windows XP - Flickering Screen
As described on my repairs page as the screen becomes older it will eventually start to wear out. The best way to get it to stop flickering quickly is to get the desktop up and running, by setting up an auto login. There are plenty of instructions on how to do this online. Of course you will have to remember any other passwords you have (such as a bios password) and the process to enter them without a screen.
If you'd rather have a bit more security create a guest account to auto log into (guest accounts have the lowest permissions) and use the tweakUI powertoy to reduce the access anyone would have (for example removing access to the hard disks, and the run command from the start menu, should someone nick your laptop).