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Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

Windows 8 on ThinkPads
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Temetka
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Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#1 Post by Temetka » Sat Sep 28, 2013 4:01 am

So I figured, what the hey and installed Windows 8 Preview 64-Bit on my X61T.

You can find the download here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... review-iso

General impressions:

First off I wanted to rip my hair out for the the first 15 minutes. Then I had a smoke, and thought about reloading Win 7. But that is the chicken way out. So I took some time to get used to the system. Now that I have played around with the Metro/Modern UI it is starting to make much more sense, and I cannot believe that I am saying this, but I like it. Here is a short list of why:

1. Some of the tiles are pretty cool. I'd like to add more if I can figure out how. I was thinking of doing a group of news related tiles for some sites I visit, but I don't know if I can make a tile out of a web page, or if tiles are apps or what. So more learning is in order.

2. Now that I know how to access the charm menu (What a weak name, it still makes me chuckle), I can work better.

3. Switching between the Metro and Desktop is very easy.

4. OMG the boot time is very very very very fast. I do not have an SSD, just a 500GB 7200RPM HD. After booting up, logging is also very easy.

Now on to the parts of the system that I have been unable to get to work:

1. Tablet screen rotation and tablet button. The pen DOES work.

2. Wifi. It works, but if I put the machine to sleep the wifi will be unable to connect to anything unless I reboot. It's very annoying only mitigated by the ridiculously fast boot and login times. I swear I able to get to work in about 30 seconds or less once Windows starts to load.

3. Hard Drive active protective system.

4. Thinkvantage System Update. The installer runs, but on the screen where you have to accept the license agreement, I can click on the 'Next' button like 50 times and nothing will happen. I did go into the Windows Components inside the Programs and Features section in the Control Panel and install .NET 3.5 SP1 as required by Lenovo. No change.

I have installed the following drivers:

Hotkey Integration, Chipset, Power Manager, Tablet Button Driver and an updated driver from Wacom and the Intel GMA driver for Windows 7 64. The reason for the Intel GMA driver is that after I had done some initial googling, I read that some people had luck with getting rotation to work using that driver.

There is one feature I greatly miss from Windows 7. I really miss the dockable keyboard and text entry area that would float off to the side. I could reposition it anywhere on the screen where it was comfortable for me to write on the screen. The newer version sits on the bottom of the screen and I do not like it one bit.

NOTE: I can use the pen for text entry and drawing and whatnot, it's just the buttons on the LCD and screen rotation do not function.


Other thoughts:

Overall I am really liking Windows 8, when I really wanted to hate it. I've been watching video's of it in action, seeing how the new UI works and in general opening my mind a bit. Part of that is because as an IT Professional I am going to have to support this and I might as well have a clue as how to navigate the OS. So, I can either moan about it, or suck it up - roll up the proverbial sleeves and get to work. I love the speed of the OS. I was hoping it would be slightly fast than Windows 7 which was already running very, very fast on my laptop. I was not prepared for the greased lightning speed especially given the age of this machine. Yes, I do have a fast hard drive and 4GB of RAM (Planning to upgrade to 8GB and an SSD), but this system has Intel graphics and a low power CPU. That being said it is very, very fast.

I am still getting used to the Microsoft Store. I was hoping it would be organized somewhat akin to the Google Play store. I.e., by category. But it seems like it is more search based, than category based. Now I have only spent about 5 minutes dinking around inside it, but I expect it to improve based on customer feedback and as Microsoft increases it's variety of applications available.

Anyway I have to reboot for some updates. I will play around some more and post back later. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get the tablet specific features to work that would be great.
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Temetka
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#2 Post by Temetka » Sat Sep 28, 2013 4:05 am

Ok I just found something else I really like. I really like the new Task manager and the new copy dialog box. I am moving about 6GB of data over to my SD card and the new dialog box gives me a real time graph and more accurate and speed indicators.

Ok, who wants to buy me a copy of Windows 8 Pro OEM? ;)
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Temetka
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#3 Post by Temetka » Sun Sep 29, 2013 1:53 am

Gave up and re-loaded Windows 7. The pen would not activate the start menu when in tablet mode and using the windows desktop. Therefore I couldn't really run in tablet made. It's too bad really as I was really starting to enjoy using Windows 8. The nook and kindle applications (I have books from both vendors), were really slick. I also really liked the Weather app and Maps app that are included with Windows 8.

Maybe in time more drivers will be coming from Lenovo (or other sources) and I can use Windows 8. Until then I have zero issues with Windows 7. I love it, it's a great OS.
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Temetka
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#4 Post by Temetka » Sun Sep 29, 2013 5:18 am

So since I have a 500GB HD in here, I think I will create a 100GB partition for Windows 8 so I can can continue to play around with it. I really did fall in love with the OS. It was very fast and to be honest it didn't take me more than a few minutes to figure out the new UI.

Heck, I'm just sitting here typing this post and I have no idea what my HD is doing, but it's doing something. It never did that in Windows 8. I have been looking around the web for possible solutions or workarounds to regain tablet button functionality and getting the start button in desktop mode to recognize pen input. If I can solve those 2 problems, then I can wipe this HD and run Windows 8 by itself.

Don't get me wrong, I love Windows 7 and feel that it is a great OS. But that being said, Windows 8 is better. My little X61T is sporting a dual core 1.6GHz CPU and it just felt like butter when running Windows 8. Everything opened so quickly. And it had better hand writing recognition than Windows 7. Windows 7 does have the floating keyboard / hand writing input screen which I prefer to the bottom of the screen docked input area in Windows 8, but I can live with it.

So if anyone has had any success limited or full, in solving these problems please post them here. These X61T Tablet's are great computers and there is no reason that they should not be able to run Windows 8.

On a side note, since it seems like I am the only one posting in this thread, I will continue to do so as any information I find can be posted here and be of possible benefit to the community.
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Temetka
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#5 Post by Temetka » Sun Sep 29, 2013 9:35 pm

Well,

I am now dual booting Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit and Windows 8 Enterprise Preview 64-Bit. I have found a few tips online from other people who have managed to get the tablet buttons working. Some people recommend using a program called keytweak while other have been able to finagle the Windows 7 drivers into working properly.

So on this fresh install I have installed the tablet button driver, the power manager driver, and the hotkey drivers. No rotation yet. The search continues. If I can't find a solution soon, i'll give that keytweak program a shot.

On a side note, I am really enjoying this OS.
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Old:
ThinkPad Tablet 16GB 1838-22U
IBM Thinkpad X61T, T61, T43, X41T, T60, T41P, T42, T410, X301, T430s, T450, T460

Temetka
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#6 Post by Temetka » Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:51 pm

Well it would seem that I now have a working solution.

Where did I find this panacea, this solution to my troubling woes?

Glad you asked.

I found it here. Yes, right here friends, here on the Thinkpads.com site.

So without further ado, let me present to you the solution found in the following thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=109829

And of course the solution itself:
Nofe92 wrote: I just found the solution xD It's so *****Expletives removed by Moderator***** stupid that it makes me feel stupid! All you need to do is to open the driver folder (default directory "C:\DRIVERS\WIN\UNAVUTIL") then right click on "wstbtnib.inf" and press Install and restart. That's it! It looks like the setup can't do it by it self under windows 8.
I can't believe nobody never tried it! I saw guides on guides about remapping and stuff. They just work now! (I restarted multiple times and played with it a little, all works).

Btw now that every single thing works on my x61t, what's the best program for fingerprint? I just need it for windows log in and with that driver version you can't use windows native program (*****Expletives removed by Moderator*****!!). Is the lenovo password thing light? And can I delete it after fingers scanning?
Thx again!
So all that remains are for me to do 3 things:

1. Purchase Windows 8 (I am using the enterprise preview right now)
2. Get the screen to auto-rotate (not high on my list since the buttons work)
3. Enjoy Windows 8.

So fo those of you who had issues, or are thinking about running Windows 8 on your Thinkpad X61T, go for it. It runs faster than Windows 7 and almost all of the functions work with the correct OEM driver voodoo.

If it helps you may light some sage sticks and circle your house 3 times under a full moon whilst invoking the spirits.
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Old:
ThinkPad Tablet 16GB 1838-22U
IBM Thinkpad X61T, T61, T43, X41T, T60, T41P, T42, T410, X301, T430s, T450, T460

Temetka
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#7 Post by Temetka » Mon Sep 30, 2013 5:00 am

I also had an issue with the wifi not resuming after waking from sleep. This was resolved by installing the intel driver for Windows 7 X64.

Also I made this post using the hand writing recognition and much to my surprise I can re-position the window wherever I want it just like I could in Windows 7. The more I play around, the more I am impressed.
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Old:
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IBM Thinkpad X61T, T61, T43, X41T, T60, T41P, T42, T410, X301, T430s, T450, T460

QWERTY Andreas
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#8 Post by QWERTY Andreas » Tue Oct 08, 2013 5:46 am

If you ask me, Windows 8 is a great OS.

The "Moder UI"/"Metro"/"Not-a-classical-start-menu" Works better, for me, than the classical start menu. I almost never used the startmenu for other than searching when i needed to open something. Windows 8 does the search functions better.
And when i need to actually click something, its way faster just to click those large tiles than a small icon. I like it :)

I do have Windows 8 on the following devices: My W500, my T61F, my HTC shift and my Fuhitsu F-07C. And it really Works great!

One thing that is very impressive is the low ressource requirements for the system. It runs like a charm, even on a old Intel Stealy A110 processor with 800 MHz or and Intel Atom Processor with 1.2 GHz. Of course, i don't use it for any major tasks. But for the basic stuff, those very slow processors do just fine 8)

My major complain about Windows 8, would be that some included apps (like webcam) can't run on low resolutions.
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Temetka
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#9 Post by Temetka » Wed Oct 09, 2013 3:18 am

I agree, it is a great OS and it's very fast as well.

That being said I wiped it and loaded up UbuntuGnome 13.0. I was having a lot of blue screen related to the wifi driver and as fun as the OS was, I just couldn't hang with that on my daily driver. So now it's back to Windows 7 Pro x64 and Linux.

TBH, I was hoping to use the pen to navigate the whole OS and I can't do that. On my Note 10.1 android tablet I can, I was kind of hoping for the same experience-ish with Windows 8. However since this isn't a touch based laptop I can't have that.
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Old:
ThinkPad Tablet 16GB 1838-22U
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#10 Post by kajencik » Fri Nov 01, 2013 3:17 am

I'm using Windows 8.1 on X61t for a two days now and I must say I'm enjoying it a lot, so far the only not working things are auto rotating screen and using pen flicks in metro (which would help to navigate it more quickly). Other than that I'm happy with it.

I solved the tablet button issues by using the directions above (installing driver right from the directory).

Also I had problems with the wifi not working after sleep, that was solved by going into the wifi device properties and on the power management tab unchecking "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" (as suggested by a post on intel support forum). After that it works without issues so far.

I think the active rotate could work too - active protection system is needed for that and I have it installed and working, as is tablet shortcut menu, but it seems unable to calibrate, I will look into that further.

Also, in tablet PC settings I changed tablet shortcut button to open mobility center, which offers similar funcionality, but you can set the brigtnes etc. from it, and I still have the tablet shortcut menu on a long press, also I configured the esc button as a windows button (and as esc button on a long press) which tremendously increased the usability in metro, and as the mobility center closes on second tap on its button (formely the tablet shortcut menu button), the esc button was no longer needed anyway.

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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#11 Post by jedisurfer1 » Sun Nov 03, 2013 5:51 am

Hi guys great work, these posts have some great info. I am going to try it out later this week.
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#12 Post by kajencik » Mon Nov 04, 2013 4:38 pm

update on the active rotate feature: I was able to sort of make it work but not in usable way so far. There is an utility called lenovo screen reading optimizer, which helps making active rotate work on X220t/X230t and does sort of work on my X61t, but only in laptop mode! when it is running I can tilt the laptop left and right and the screen rotates, but when converted to tablet mode the switching no longer works, so it is of no use.

I actually think these external utilities around active rotate are problem for themselves, as Windows 8(.1) has pretty good support for screen rotation, on most modern tablets there si checkbox on the "screen resolution" settings dialog, to enable active rotate, and it is my understanding a separate driver could be installed to enable this, but lenovo seems to go different route, using active protection system and utilites built around it, at least in case of X61, X220 and X230 tablets...

EDIT: Success!!! Thanks to this smart utility auto rotating works: http://sourceforge.net/projects/autoscreenrotat/. I still did not get the calibration right, but it works fine for me so far. Also it does not stop rotating screen when the tablet is in laptop mode, but I will try to sort that out too.

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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#13 Post by kajencik » Wed Dec 11, 2013 3:14 pm

Ok, so the autorotate utility does work, but the calibration is quite tricky to get right, in the end I'm just using the rotate button and I'm fine with that. Other than that it all just works fine :)

P52 - i7-8750H, 48GB RAM, P1000, 512GB+1TB SSDs, Full HD IPS, 6 cell battery
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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#14 Post by kajencik » Sat Jan 04, 2014 8:28 pm

TLDR: New challenge - gobi 2000 (hp un2420) + X61 tablet + Win 8.1: Hp drivers, russian firmware loader service from here: http://tinyurl.com/nvqenq5 And Everything works!

So I recently received a gobi 2000 WWAN card (my version is from hp, called un2420), I just went and installed it right away, hardware wise I ended up with a stripped screw holding minipci wifi in place, so when my intel 6200 wifi card arrives it will be another challenge, but for now everything works... I taped the pin 20 and downloaded the hp drivers and a com port appeared in device manager. So far so good, but no other devices was present and I was stuck at that point for some time, in the end I have to dig more into how the card actually works...

First, the card exposes only this one port which serves as kind of "bootloader" and then relies on windows service to load firmware to the card to make it actualy work as a wwan device. Altough this is with no doubt clever design, this service seems to have serisous problems under windows 8, as it is a windows 7 driver and for windows 8 I only found a lenovo beta driver which did not work with my (hp) card.

Fortunately there is a russian site (see link above) which offer all you need for the card to make it work! The Gobi2kFirmwareLoader.rar contains a windows service which is very similar to the one which comes with the WWAN driver, but it works under Win 8.1 without problems. GobiAllPowerSwitcher.rar offers a way to configure the card (which firmware to use, also I used it to enable the GPS functions).

There is also a nice tool - "Fujitsu one click internet" which allows you to see current network, select another firmware, send and receive sms and other things, it works with the hp card fine, altough it was apparently not designed for it.

I'm still having issues with GPS though, I'm at the point where I'm getting NMEA data from the apropriate COM port, but I did not get a lock, not even one satellite, but I was not trying it outdoors, so we'll see about that, I'm using one wifi antenna and one small one from ebay added under palm rest, so it may also be a problem, altough 3G signal is pretty good.

All in all this is a nice upgrade and also the card itself was quite cheap, but definitely not recommended for an average user, in Windows 7 it would be probably much easier, as the driver and some other tools which could be helpful just doesn't work under Windows 8. One the other hand, the network manager built into Windows 8 works really well, it can connect automatically when you lose wifi signal, it can even turn the card off which was reported as problem sometimes, as the wireless switch does not turn it off and I dont have the tools for fn+f5 installed.

P52 - i7-8750H, 48GB RAM, P1000, 512GB+1TB SSDs, Full HD IPS, 6 cell battery
X230 - i5-3380, IPS 12.5 LCD, 128+256 GB SSDs, 6 cell battery (almost dead)

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Re: Windows 8.1 Preview on X61T

#15 Post by crashnburn » Sat Apr 11, 2015 2:07 am

Interesting journey and experiences guys. I am curious how/ where you are now and whether its better to go for one the following (as I'd like to keep my programs/ settings etc. :

W7 > 8 > 8.1
W7 > 8
W7 > 8.1 (Since that can work now :) as per an MS update..) Maybe not..

Anyways.. your experience of both..
8 or 8.1... what works better for you?
T61 8892-02U: 14.1"SXGA+/2.2C2D/4G/XP|Adv Mini Dock|30" Gateway XHD3000 WQXGA via Dual-link DVI
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W510 4319-2PU: 15.6"FHD/i7-720QM/4G/Win7Pro64 (for dad)
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