Repurposing an old windows tablet

[RenderingDunes2500]

I have an old lenovo mixx 2 tablet computer that I want to tart using again.It was originally used for drawing and making notes which it worked well with using off the windows store apps. However since it has now expired and these tools are no longer available.

I've looked around and have bee nunable to find any sort of applications that run on windows 8 as good as the original apps (autodesk sketchbook and papyrus). These apps are available on android however, would it be possible to run android 7 on the tablet? Ican't find much help anywhere else besides bluestacks but it does not use the touchscreen properly. 

[Emanbaird]

3 minutes ago, RenderingDunes2500 said:

I have an old lenovo mixx 2 tablet computer that I want to tart using again.It was originally used for drawing and making notes which it worked well with using off the windows store apps. However since it has now expired and these tools are no longer available.

I've looked around and have bee nunable to find any sort of applications that run on windows 8 as good as the original apps (autodesk sketchbook and papyrus). These apps are available on android however, would it be possible to run android 7 on the tablet? Ican't find much help anywhere else besides bluestacks but it does not use the touchscreen properly. 

what are the specs? if it's arm they may have a version of android, if not you can always try a linux distro

[Radium_Angel]

16 minutes ago, RenderingDunes2500 said:

autodesk sketchbook

This application is free as far as I know...

[TetraSky]

I have a Windows tablet with similar specs to yours (same CPU, RAM).

If support for your tablet is the same, you won't really be able to do shit with it because it uses a 32bit UEFI bios(bootloader) but 64bit OS, which is only supported by some Linux distro (like Fedora 27).
But even if you manage to install Linux on it somehow, touchscreen support is not that great.

You can try checking this page
https://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com/2017/06/customizing-ubuntu-isos-documentation.html?m=0

or this one

https://www.happyassassin.net/fedlet-a-fedora-remix-for-bay-trail-tablets/

As for Android, unless there's a dedicated community for your particular tablet, you'd be lucky if it boots at all and will likely be missing plenty of features...
This is for my tablet, but since yours is quite similar, it likely fits the bill as well:

http://www.studioteabag.com/science/dell-venue-pro-linux/#supported_distributions


All in all, if you can, just upgrade to Windows 10. It runs a lot better than Windows 8 and actually has proper tablet/touchscreen support. Not to mention it's not a complete hassle to try and install it.

[TetraSky]

Well, just for testing purposes, apparently since a while ago, Android x86 supports 32bit uefi+64bit OS.
So I've installed the latest version found here

https://osdn.net/projects/android-x86/releases/
(android-x86_64-8.1-r1.iso as of feb-09-19)

 

• I then created a bootable USB with Rufus (MBR for "Bios or UEFI", FAT32)
   
• Following that, I've connected my powered MicroUSB hub to the tablet.

(a powered hub is needed to give power to everything that will be connected to the tablet, it ain't going to be powered by the tablet itself. In my case I have this hub that I got at NCIX years ago, the wallplug is for the hub itself, the USB type A is to power the tablet through the microB so you should plug it in a wallwart, mine was plugged in a 2A USB outlet, there are others like this one)
It's a janky setup, but it works.

 

• From there, I hooked a usb keyboard and the flash drive with Android x86 on it to the hub and connected the hub to the tablet

 

(a few pictures to guide you along for the next few steps https://imgur.com/a/Y4dCHka)
 

• After that, I booted in the BIOS, disabled SecureBoot (In my case, Pressing Power button + Volume Down on boot will let me enter the bios)
   
• Set the first boot in bios to the USB flash drive. (you should see more stuff there, I had already deleted everything long ago so there's nothing)
   
• Booted to the flash drive. Then with the keyboard, I selected Installation(third option).
   
• From there, delete all the partitions. (In that black partition editor screen)
   
• Now I created two partition, the first one should be your tiny partition and honestly I'm not sure how this work, but I entered 56071326 on the first thing it asked me and that gave me a 2.1GB Partition.
• The second partition I didn't input anything and just pressed enter for everything.

(when you select New, it tell you something like 2048-xxxxxxxxxx on the first option, I took that huge number and removed 4500000 from it, which gave me 56071326.
This will create partition 1, like 2.1GB, you could technically have less, but it will ask for at least 2GB during install.

Partition 2 : press new again on free space, press enter, don't enter anything specific and it will take all the space left.)

 

• Now make sure to select the Write option on both partition.
   
• Then go back to the drive selection menu. You should have both your new partitions there, but just in case, reboot to avoid issues with it refusing to format.
   
• When you're back at the drive selection menu after rebooting, select your biggest partition, choose Ext4 (some guide says to take ntfs, but it didn't work for me, android was unresponsive after booting).
   
• It will ask you to format and what not, then it will ask about if you want to install Grub, choose Yes to EVERYTHING, it will automatically install Grub in partition 1 (the smallest)

After all is installed, reboot and you're done.

 

 

Now, what is working : Touchscreen, Google Play Store work, Wifi, Youtube, Sound, Youtube VR, settings, power button(reset and shutdown), auto rotate, web browsing, screen brightness slider, and many other things.

The bad :
Where the hell is the netflix app, it's nowhere to be seen in the Play Store.
Battery saver is unavailable,
Bluetooth is dead.
I'm sure there's other stuff, but I can't be arsed right now.

It's functional and the stuff that doesn't work so far doesn't matter IMO.

There might be a few other things, but I haven't had time to check them out.

So this is how I got android on my venue 8 pro to work.

[Canada EH]

8 hours ago, RenderingDunes2500 said:

lenovo mixx 2 tablet computer

Use it for a temperature, humidity, pressure gauge