Toshiba Portege M400 screen rotation not working under Windows 7 x64

Question

I have installed Windows 7 on my Toshiba Portege M400. This in itself was relatively tricky.*

However, the button utilities aren't quite working for me. One of the buttons tries to launch the Toshiba Assist program, which doesn't appear to be available under Windows 7 for the M400, but this I can live without.

More important is that the screen won't rotate as it is supposed to when you hold the "cancel" (X in a circle) button on the bezel. The PC is set to run "C:\Program Files (x860\Toshiba\Toshiba Rotation Utility\phtrot.exe". There is a "trot.exe" file in the same directory (the former appears to be to cause slightly different behaviour when rotation is done by press and hold). Neither of these programs rotates the screen either by using the buttons or from the command line.

The screen is rotating normally when switching from tablet to laptop mode, so there does not appear to be an inherent problem with rotation. I'd just like to be able to use the buttons on the side of the screen to change the screen orientation. Windows XP used to have a "setrot" utility to do this, but that seems to have gone in Windows 7

Thanks for your help.

*Just in case anyone comes looking for how to do this, you need to extract driver files from http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/downloads/util_raid_os2007252a.exe, which does not seem to be listed among the available files for the m400. This executable contains the SATA interface drivers that will need to be loaded by the installer before it can see your hard disk drive. It needs to be unpacked and the files copied to a USB key which they can then be loaded from in the install process. The utilities etc. for installation post windows install are all available from the Toshiba USA support website.

Answer 1

You can download the "Value added package" for the newer M750 (W7 x64) from the Toshiba website and this includes a screen rotation utility that works fine on the M400:

http://eu.computers.toshiba-europe.com/innovation/download_driver_details.jsp?service=EU&selCategory=2&selFamily=4&selSeries=157&selProduct=815&selShortMod=null&language=13&selOS=30&selType=all&yearupload=&monthupload=&dayupload=&useDate=null&mode=allMachines&search=&action=search&macId=&country=all&selectedLanguage=13&type=all&page=2&ID=73571&OSID=30&driverLanguage=42

Answer 2

Use the windows mobility tool. If you have the correct driver installed for your graphics card, then the Windows Mobility Tool will rotate the screen. I have a shortcut to it on my taskbar so I can hit the tool, then click the rotate screen icon with my pen, press enter until my screen is where I want it. That was easier for me than trying to program the buttons (which also don't work under windows 7 for me).