Tutorials webOS Activating Touchpad Demo Unit

When the TouchPad went on clearance, many stores were sold out immediately after opening. In many cases, the demo unit was sold as is. The demo unit is a fully functional unit, but it has a modified version of WebOS on it. In order to restore it to a standard model, you must go through this process:

Permanent solution

The best thing to do is change your demo unit PN and ProductSKU tokens to match with a 32 GiB TouchPad's (I believe that most demo units are 32 GiB. If yours is 16 GiB, make the tokens match another 16 GiB TouchPad's).

On a demo unit, the tokens are:

    <Val name="PN" value="180-10928-00"/>
    <Val name="ProductSKU" value="FB359UA#ABA"/>

On a normal unit, they are:

    <Val name="PN" value="180-10871-00"/>
    <Val name="ProductSKU" value="FB464UA#ABA"/>

For now, you can make a WebOS doctor using meta doctor to change the topaz.xml file. There are instructions here on how to do this: [1]. Alternatively, the file will be called topaz.xml, not castle.xml.

This will allow you to create a WebOS doctor that will forcibly overwrite your tokens for you.

Temporary workaround

This section is not an actual fix. It is a temporary workaround that will soon be obsolete.

Restoring HP WebOS

First, restore the default firmware with WebOS doctor: http://palm.cdnetworks.net/rom/touchpad/p302r0d08012011/wifip302rod/webosdoctorp302hstnhwifi.jar.

You must put the TouchPad into recovery mode by powering it off and pressing the power button and the volume up button at the same time. You will see a large USB logo to confirm that this is successful.

Run the Doctor, and connect the TouchPad via USB.

The update process takes several minutes. This will put the full version of webOS on your TouchPad, but you will find that you cannot get past the first run page.

Bypassing activation

Download this zip file and extract the contents to the desktop: http://onebluepoint.net/chekz-devicetool.zip.

Open a command line (Start > Run > cmd) or terminal window, and run these commands in order:

1. cd \Desktop
2. java -jar devicetools.jar

Allow the program to run for several minutes. Your tablet will reboot a few times in the process. The program will tell you when the device is ready. Once it boots, you'll be able to use WebOS freely, although you still will not have an account.

Load Impostah

Now that you're up and running, all you need is a WebOS account. Download Preware from this page: http://en.m.webos-internals.org/wiki?search=preware.

Once this program is loaded, simply type "Impostah" into the bar, and click install.

You will see the app under the downloads tab on your TouchPad when it is ready. Run it.

Creating your WebOS account

Once Impostah is open, we need to delete the dummy account that the activation bypass program created in order to add our own.

1. Click Palm Profile, and reset it. Confirm that you want to do this. This will reboot your tablet.
2. Once rebooted, you will be at the same activation screen that we had to bypass earlier.
3. Go to create your account again. This time, instead of saying you cannot create it, the loading tab should spin forever. After a few minutes, you will want to force your tablet to restart by holding the home button and the power button. Check your email to make sure that you got a welcome message from HP. Once you do, you can either login again or bypass the activation.

Updating HP App Catalog

One more step before you're up and running!

It seems that the version of HP App Catalog included is out of date and only shows a blank page. However, you can use the menu to get into software manager and update it.

Congratulations, you just beat the madness by buying the demo unit that no one wanted. ;) Special thanks to Jack87, djhomeboy, and rwhitby for helping make this happen!