Panasonic CF-51 Toughbook: No sound or hotkeys.

If you ever find yourself in front of a Panasonic CF-51 toughbook running Windows XP, you may encounter the following situation.

You installed all the latest updates from the Panasonic website, but neither the sound nor the hot-keys work.

If you check the hardware-manager, you may find an unknown device left over, which upon closer examination, seems to have something to do with the ACPI. I believe it was called “ACPI MAT0019”. It is in fact the Panasonic hot-key device for which the driver wasn’t installed correctly and which you have to install manually.

Before you go and install the driver for the hot-keys, be sure to check that you have installed the other two parts of the hot-key situation. The correct order seems to be to install the hot-key app first, then the hot-key settings application and finally the driver.

You can find the driver and other applications on the Panasonic website or alternatively you may want to look here. To install proceed with the manual installation, you go to the hardware manager (System settings->System (select the hardware tab), then click on the hardware manager button). Select the unknown device, click on “Update Driver”, select the manual installation route and then select the folder to which you downloaded the driver. The installation should complete successfully and upon restart, the hot-keys as well as the sound should work. This presumes that not only did you installed the sound driver correctly beforehand but, if I remember correctly, the hot-key driver installation outlined above is the third step in installing the hot-key device. First you have to install the hotkey-app, then the hot-key settings and finally the driver as outlined above.

10 Comments

  1. I have a Panasonic tough book cf-51 and my speakers just stopped working. If I plug external speakers in they work fine. I guess my speakers may be blown but wouldn’t I hear them cracking? Also, this kind of computer is built to withstand almost anything and built to last. I have a hard time believing the speakers are blown. Is there anything I can do to check this?

    • Hi ismail. I am sorry it did not work out for you. Unfortunately I have long since switched from the heavy toughbook to a cheap tablet-pc running windows. I can’t help with this issue any longer. However, if the external sound is still working, then that would suggest the soundcard is working just fine. As such it should not be related to the driver and may well be a hardware issue.

  2. is it possible running the battery calibration tool messed up my sound? i’ve uninstalled all hotkeys and sound card (sigmatel) drivers. installed sound, hotkey app, kotkey settings, hotkey driver as per article. But still no sound. No conflicts or unknown devices in device mgr.

    • Hi Joe. I am sorry it did not work out for you. Unfortunately I have long since switched from the heavy toughbook to a cheap tablet-pc running windows. I can’t help with this issue any longer.

  3. Thank you for the information. Upon downloading the hot-key link you posted, the sound worked immediately. But hot-keys for fn+F4 and others are not working. Please help.

    Thank you.

    • Hi Chinzo, thanks for the comment. Did you install all 3 parts of the required software (Hotkey Appendix Application, Hotekey Settings Application and Hotkey Driver) in this order?

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