Getting Windows 8.1 running on a T60P laptop

[PatrickJ]

I've owned a T60P for a few years now and have been pretty happy with the laptop. Recently I decided to upgrade the OS from XP to Windows 8.1 (Fwiw I also dual boot this laptop with Linux Mint Cinnamon which works with no problems). You should note that my laptop has a ATI Fire GL 5200 graphics card installed, so ymmv if you use a different card or if you have a different laptop model.

I'm using the Windows OS for some photography apps and recently ran into a problem getting the T60P to support some of the Lightroom/Photoshop NIK plugins due to some driver issues. However Windows 8 uses the default MS driver and this causes the NIK plugins to crash. (The NIK apps either need GPU support or a way to disable that feature - something the basic driver does not allow). After a few to and fro sessions with Google/Nik support, the solution seemed to require the installation of an alternative graphics driver for the T60P that allows the GPU feature to be overridden. The problem is that there is no obvious place to find Windows 8 (or Windows 7) drivers for an older laptop like the T60P. The Lenovo support site suggests installing and running the ATI Catalyst Control Center and using that to install/update display drivers.

Unfortunately there are some (fairly well documented) incompatibility issues between Windows 8.1 and the ATI CCC software. (See this link for more info: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id- ... k-win.html) It occurred to me than an older driver (created for Vista) might work - so I downloaded an earlier/older version of the ATI tool and installed that version. (FYI Here is the link - note that this for the Vista OS: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-66884 )

After successfully installing the Vista CCC app I ran it to replace the generic Windows 8 driver with the ATI driver and rebooted my laptop. I then restarted Lightroom and used that to edit an image in Silver Efex Pro. Guess what - it worked. I was able to successfully open the other Nik collection components Color Efex Pro etc. Prior to this update the Nik apps had been crashing on me.

So this is basically good news for myself and other T60P owners who are having display driver problems with Windows 8 . It appears that installing the Vista drivers works in Windows 8. I've kept an eye on the event logs for a few days (always a good idea after any update) and did notice a few ATI2MTAG 43034 errors that seem to show up after every shutdown/restart . To fix this issue:

Go to Start, Run, type regedit to enter the registry. Then drill down to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atierecord

Make both entries listed under this key a value of 0 by double-clicking on them. Then restart.

See this link for more info:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T61-and-pri ... 190/page/2

I've put this info out there in case others are having similar problems - hopefully this can help you get your T60 working correctly with Windows 8.