Thinkpads Forum

I've been toying with putting Windows 8.1 on one of my many T61's, just out of curiosity. Am I letting myself in for driver hassles or is it pretty well supported in this version of Windows? I don't have the time or patience for elaborate workarounds.

2 years ago I ran 8.1 on my T61 with intel graphics, and everything seemed to work out of the box. However, performance was quite a bit slower than W7.

Thanks Were you running 32 or 64 bit Windows, BTW?

both x86 and x64 should work on T61 considering that the CPU is fully x64 capable (Unlike Pentium M which is fully incapable and Pentium 4 6xx/5x1 which is partially capable but most of the two work with Windows 10 x86). You also should consider Windows 10 unless you care about privacy even when you turn Cortana off. Windows 7 is much easier to crack and you can still upgrade to 10 and turn it into fully legit version (even KMS will change to permanent). The free upgrade stops within a few weeks though
Considering a non-GMA T43 has no issues of drivers at all as long as you find the correct one (except for poor support of infrared by Windows 8 and above), Windows 8.1 and 10 should work just fine. They may not run like a Skylake but I'm sure they will run better than what you think (Just make sure you have 2gb for x86, 4gb for x64 to eliminate the RAM bottleneck)

Mindfulness Quebec wrote:I've been toying with putting Windows 8.1 on one of my many T61's, just out of curiosity.

Which OS are these units running now?

Am I letting myself in for driver hassles or is it pretty well supported in this version of Windows? I don't have the time or patience for elaborate workarounds.

Do bear in mind that Power Manager is not officially supported on any MS OS after W7. Some folks have managed to get it working while the others have reported issues...

Personally, I'd go/stay with W7.

Your ThinkPads, your call.

kfzhu1229, ajkula66:I've got a bunch of T61's because I have a bad habit of bargain hunting on eBay and can't resist a nice machine for 40 or 50 bucks Windows 7 is indeed the best OS for the model (or XP), I find. Windows 10 has no support for the Power Manager, and it's also trouble prone with streaming video, at least on the Nvidia machines. Haven't tried it yet on an Intel-board machine. I just want to run 8.1 on a spare machine for the experience, and to compare to Win-10's Tablet mode. BTW, you can get OEM Windows 10 licenses on eBay almost as cheap as the Win-7 ones, as I just discovered. So no sense going to a lot of trouble to upgrade just to save 10 bucks before the deadline.

ajkula66: Yes, I find Win-7 is best, though there are a few thoughtful features in Win-10. I do like the Power Manager in Win-7 and miss it in 10.

Maybe I should grab an X61 to fool around with on Win 8 and 10, come to think of it. They're going cheap too ...

Mindfulness Quebec wrote:it's also trouble prone with streaming video, at least on the Nvidia machines. Haven't tried it yet on an Intel-board machine.

I'm running w10 on my t61 / intel GM950 integrated graphic adapter onboard , without any kind or form of issue...apart looking into privacy issues and disabling from options internet data usage and exchange , use of bandwith issues , and disabling all not-important updates .. but that's a w10 thing .
was running w8.1 before ,without issues too

they both install straight and run just fine
my experience at least

Boodi: I'm not surprised if you're not having problems with an Intel graphics T61 because the Nvidia drivers are apparently involved in the problems. Installing the most recent Nvidia driver from Nvidia's site produced some relief, and the Edge browser was best, Chrome was worst, and Firefox was bad but better than Chrome. Synchronization problems, jerky video, pixellation.

Mindfulness Quebec wrote:kfzhu1229, ajkula66:I've got a bunch of T61's because I have a bad habit of bargain hunting on eBay and can't resist a nice machine for 40 or 50 bucks Windows 7 is indeed the best OS for the model (or XP), I find. Windows 10 has no support for the Power Manager, and it's also trouble prone with streaming video, at least on the Nvidia machines. Haven't tried it yet on an Intel-board machine. I just want to run 8.1 on a spare machine for the experience, and to compare to Win-10's Tablet mode. BTW, you can get OEM Windows 10 licenses on eBay almost as cheap as the Win-7 ones, as I just discovered. So no sense going to a lot of trouble to upgrade just to save 10 bucks before the deadline.

ajkula66: Yes, I find Win-7 is best, though there are a few thoughtful features in Win-10. I do like the Power Manager in Win-7 and miss it in 10.

Maybe I should grab an X61 to fool around with on Win 8 and 10, come to think of it. They're going cheap too ...

XP is definitely not suited for this machine. It starts slower than a Pentium II in XP which only takes 45 seconds to start (excluding the 40 second post). A Pentium III Coppermine or Pentium 4 suits XP the best in my opinion.
Also the power manager works in Windows 10 x86 if you change the setup.exe file to some other *.exe name

kfzhu1229 wrote: "Also the power manager works in Windows 10 x86 if you change the setup.exe file to some other *.exe name"

That's great to know, thanks!
BTW, I have one really sweet Penryn T61 (15.4", Nvidia 140, 08/08 date on the bottom) running XP (SP3, POSready 2009 updates) that I use for my clinical practice, and it runs like blazes with its stock T9300 processor. I suppose my T500 (Win-7) is faster, but not so that I'd notice in everyday use. I've put Windows 10 wallpaper on this system to cut down on the snotty comments from clients when they see XP on my computer.

Mindfulness Quebec wrote:Thanks Were you running 32 or 64 bit Windows, BTW?

x64. Even a T7700 and 4GB ram at the time was too slow for my taste. I wouldn't put W10 on anything older than the first core-i machines.

x64. Even a T7700 and 4GB ram at the time was too slow for my taste. I wouldn't put W10 on anything older than the first core-i machines.[/quote]

Yeah. 32-bit Win 10 runs nice and fast, though with 3 or 4GB installed. On the other hand, 64-bit Win-7 is slow on a T61 with that amount of RAM---I had a T61 arrive that way with 2GB of RAM and it scarcely ran at all.

Mindfulness Quebec wrote:x64. Even a T7700 and 4GB ram at the time was too slow for my taste. I wouldn't put W10 on anything older than the first core-i machines.

Yeah. 32-bit Win 10 runs nice and fast, though with 3 or 4GB installed. On the other hand, 64-bit Win-7 is slow on a T61 with that amount of RAM---I had a T61 arrive that way with 2GB of RAM and it scarcely ran at all.

What if you try to hack 8gb on T61? I heard it is possible on T61 but not on T60 and definitely not T43

Mindfulness Quebec wrote:
Yeah. 32-bit Win 10 runs nice and fast, though with 3 or 4GB installed. On the other hand, 64-bit Win-7 is slow on a T61 with that amount of RAM---I had a T61 arrive that way with 2GB of RAM and it scarcely ran at all.

I would imagine that it would have a lot to do with the hard drive that one utilizes. Many *61 series systems that I've owned were fine with 4GB RAM and W7 64 as long as they were running on SSD.

8GB on a *61 system is a thing of beauty, but somewhat of an expensive upgrade nowadays.

ajkula66 wrote:

Mindfulness Quebec wrote: I would imagine that it would have a lot to do with the hard drive that one utilizes. Many *61 series systems that I've owned were fine with 4GB RAM and W7 64 as long as they were running on SSD.

8GB on a *61 system is a thing of beauty, but somewhat of an expensive upgrade nowadays.

Using an SSD would help a lot in that situation---though you'd be working your SSD pretty hard with all that swapping

And, yes, the low cost of 8 GB for my T500 makes the idea of putting 8 GB in one of my T61's look pretty wasteful

Mindfulness Quebec wrote:
Using an SSD would help a lot in that situation---though you'd be working your SSD pretty hard with all that swapping

What swapping?

And, yes, the low cost of 8 GB for my T500 makes the idea of putting 8 GB in one of my T61's look pretty wasteful

Fair enough.

ajkula66 wrote:

Mindfulness Quebec wrote:
"Using an SSD would help a lot in that situation---though you'd be working your SSD pretty hard with all that swapping

What swapping?"

I thought we were talking about running a T61 with 64-bit windows and 3 or 4 GB of RAM ...

I ran Win 8.0 and 8.1 for nearly 4 years on my T61 Frankenpad and 4GB, now it is updated to Win 10 and 8GB.
It is used for surfing and office work at least 15 hours a week.

Too slow for gaming, video editing and RAW-files, but still not tempted to replace my favorite laptop with one of my new Thinkpads yet. (T430s and T440s are only used while traveling or outside my living room).

Mindfulness Quebec wrote:

ajkula66 wrote:

What swapping?"

I thought we were talking about running a T61 with 64-bit windows and 3 or 4 GB of RAM ...

I always disable page file - as well as many other things - if the machine is running an SSD. And the system behaves very well. Every single time.

Disabling page file is a bad idea. I tried on W10 and it tells me im out of memory even when i have 1gb left unused

kfzhu1229 wrote:Disabling page file is a bad idea.

In your opinion. Many would beg to differ.

I tried on W10 and it tells me im out of memory even when i have 1gb left unused

I don't run W10 on any of my systems, and have no interest in re-visiting the OS in question ever again. I've had absolutely *zero* issues with disabling page files with machines running W7 64 with 4GB RAM installed.

The only time that I leave the page file untouched on an SSD-based system is when I'm dealing with a SATA-modded T43/p, AND have a SLC SSD running in it.

For Core 2 duo with x64 is slower than x86 but if you have 5, 6 or 8gb you are stuck with it

kfzhu1229 wrote:For Core 2 duo with x64 is slower than x86 but if you have 5, 6 or 8gb you are stuck with it

Your point being?