T60 need suggestions activating Vista ***CURED***

[jronald]

I used the recovery disc on a 2007-??? T60, and I guess it went to easy. When I attempted activation, it says the Serial is invalid. Suggestions?

Ron

[ajkula66]

You did something wrong since I have never been asked to activate an install from recovery media...

[jronald]

I kind of figured it was fool proof myself, seems not to be the case though. I would rather not reload it, if it can be helped. Any other ideas?

Ron

[RealBlackStuff]

If that was a recovery set from a newer Thinkpad (like T400 or higher), it would most likely be Windows 7.
For that to be automatically activated, you'd need a Slic-BIOS in that T60.

[Tsunade]

What OS? And were they the original recovery discs for the T60? It should automatically activate if it was the original recovery discs, every Think product I've owned never had an issue with punching in a Windows license.

[RealBlackStuff]

Using the correct recovery discs for the matching Thinkpad NEVER requires a key to be entered!
It ALWAYS automatically activates!

[91011]

It's barely possible the machine shipped without Windows and may not have the SLP1.0 marker in the BIOS.
In that case it would not do an offline activation.

At what point are you getting the invalid key message?
With a Recovery disc you should not even be asked for a key.

Does they key you're entering match the version of the Recovery discs?
Home to Home
Pro to Pro

[jronald]

It is Vista Business.
Ill need to go back and double check, but Im remembering the the 2007-??? could come with XP or Vista.

Ron

[RealBlackStuff]

For automatic activation of Recovery-Vista you need at least Slic2.0 in the BIOS.
The newer Slic2.1 includes both Vista and W7.
But for W8 you'll need to BUY the lot. http://www.eightforums.com/windows-upda ... uters.html
If that machine came originally with XP, it most likely wouldn't have either!
Try this:
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... post725052

[jronald]

This is what I used:
42Y9780 T60/p 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 2007, 2008, 2613, 2623, 6369, 6371, 6372, 8741, 8742, 8743, 8744 Vista - B x32 DVD 3+1
Curious that Lenovo would have 2 different BIOS? One for XP and the other for VISTA?

Thoughts?
Ron

[RealBlackStuff]

Vista Slic was probably always part of newer T60 BIOS versions.
Just that nobody knew about it, because nobody used/wanted Vista.
Only when W7 showed up, did people find out they needed Slic2.1 in their (older) BIOS.
And so they finally also stumbled upon Slic2.0.

[jronald]

OK, update the Bios, and it will probably fix the issue?

This appears to be the correct BIOS:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... D=DS013722


Thanks
Ron

[RealBlackStuff]

I would suggest you also load the above MDL BIOS afterwards, if it still doesn't work.

[jronald]

MDL links are down, and while at work..... most of that type link is locked out. Ill need to search for it from home. If I find it, I might as well just flash it once.


EDIT: answered my own question. Factory First, then New

Ron

[RealBlackStuff]

No problems on MDL, but here it is:
Slic: LENOVO 2.1
Bios mod: Thinkpad_T60_79uj34us_79ETE7WW_LEN21
https://www.box.com/s/k7jlvwnjekaxinlfftq3
Flash original at first, then reboot and flash bios mod (from DOS with included flash utility)

[jronald]

Flashed the updated Lenovo, reloaded the Recovery. Same thing:
3 days till automatic activation.Click to activate now.
Then when I click to activate now
The Windoze Vista Business Key is invalid

What now?
Cant get the MDL to work correctly.

Ron

[jronald]

What a PITA!

The MDL link did not contain the correct WinPhalsh.
Downloaded an independent copy, loaded the new MDL BIOS into it, and Im Activated.
All this, to use legally, what was already legal.

Ron

[RealBlackStuff]

Glad you got it going.
For future times, and just in case: always run the phlash program as Administrator.

[jronald]

Couple of additional notes:
As soon as you can delete the following Lenovo Programs:
Access Connections
System Update (you will reinstall)
System Security Configuration

Access and System Security are a pain, just get rid of them.

System Update wont work, just get rid of it.

Download and install:
Vista SP1
Vista SP2
Dot Net 1.0
Dot Net 1.1 SP1
System Update 3.16
Tvsupatch-Vista

Now Sysupdate will work correctly, and find tons of updates.

WARNING:
This process will take 5 to 6 hours, 20 or so restarts, and more than a few filthy words.

Ron

[dr_st]

Hence, the most obvious suggestion - as soon as you are done with installing and configuring everything the way you want it - make a full image of the hard drive (you can use Lenovo's R&R, but I recommend something neutral like Acronis True Image), and save it on some external media. This way if you need to reinstall, you can start from there and not have to go through hours and hours of update installations...

[Brad]

Hence, the most obvious suggestion - as soon as you are done with installing and configuring everything the way you want it - make a full image of the hard drive (you can use Lenovo's R&R, but I recommend something neutral like Acronis True Image), and save it on some external media. This way if you need to reinstall, you can start from there and not have to go through hours and hours of update installations...

Very good idea. I recommend Acronis too. The recovery media is only a starting point. As you found out the starting point is somewhere in the past and to have your ThinkPad current can take a while.

You never know when the saved image can come in handy. A full image can take as little as 10 minutes depending on machine type. Restoring that image can take a few minutes longer.

Another thought is to clone the drive. With this method having instant access in the event of failure can really cover your you know what for mission critical applications. I also recommend Acronis for this method.

I am certainly not offering anything new. This has been discussed before.

Brad

[86turbodsl]

Man, i'm so glad i run linux....

[pianowizard]

WARNING:
This process will take 5 to 6 hours, 20 or so restarts, and more than a few filthy words.

Instead of using the Lenovo Recovery Discs, I would have done a clean install using the Vista SP1 disc downloaded for free from http://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology ... load-links# . I am 99.99% certain that your COA code would work. Immediately after installing Vista, I always do the following:

1) Turn on the firewall, with all incoming connections blocked;
2) On a separate computer, download MSE, the latest virus definitions, Service Pack 2, and Internet Explorer 9
3) Install the above programs
4) Get on the internet to get more recent updates.

Man, i'm so glad i run linux....

It's really not that bad. It takes only about an hour to get to step 3 above. After that, it's already quite safe to get on the internet; it's okay to let the computer do step 4 automatically in the background over the next day or two.

[dr_st]

Man, i'm so glad i run linux....

Last time I used the auto-update feature on Fedora, it also too a couple of hours to download and install the new kernel, new packages, and when it was done I was "pleasantly" surprised to see the desktop change from Gnome2 to Gnome3, with absolutely no way to go back.

[jronald]

Im probably going to start a new thread:

New Install Vista is Flogging the Crap out of the HDD.


Ill give it a couple of days, just to make sure its not new install jitters, but geez. 90% to 100% for more than 15 mins at a time, come on guys!

Ron

[dr_st]

It's the indexer. You can disable Windows Search service and the disk thrashing should stop. But I believe it should eventually slow down itself once it finishes the initial indexing.

Personally, I never found Windows search all that useful (I guess I have a tendency to know where my stuff is, at least generally), and so I just kept it disabled on my main rig, which has been running Vista for about 5.5 years and is still going strong, with no noticeable disk thrashing at any time.

[pianowizard]

New Install Vista is Flogging the Crap out of the HDD.

I never seem to have this problem when I clean-install Vista, or when I use Dell's Vista setup discs. I do recall my X61 tablet doing this when I first bought it, so I suspect this indexing feature was activated by Lenovo, and isn't turned on by default. That experience made me avoid Vista for over 3 years...

[jronald]

OK
Disabled the Flog-O-Matic. Lets see what she does.

Ron

[86turbodsl]

Man, i'm so glad i run linux....

Last time I used the auto-update feature on Fedora, it also too a couple of hours to download and install the new kernel, new packages, and when it was done I was "pleasantly" surprised to see the desktop change from Gnome2 to Gnome3, with absolutely no way to go back.

Well, i use debian based distros, and when i run an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, it does tell me what it plans to upgrade.... just sayin'...

[jronald]

Disabled Indexing
Disabled Search
Disabled Fragging.

What a piece of shavocki!
Ron