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T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

T60/T61 Series
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WPWoodJr
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T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#1 Post by WPWoodJr » Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:30 am

I have a T60p that needs to be rebuilt. Will W10 build on it? Or must I use W7? Any other advice, like where to get drivers?
T60p 2613-CTO, 2.33GHz, 3GB ram, Intel 80gb G2 SSD, H7K 200GB/7200rpm, LG Flexview IPS SXGA+ screen, ATI FireGL V5250
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Re: T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#2 Post by dr_st » Mon Dec 17, 2018 10:37 am

Any Windows between XP and 10 can be made to work on a T60/p. Some are more difficult than others to get going. You can use various Linux flavours as well. All depends on what you want to do with the system. In any case, it will be old and slow.
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Re: T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#3 Post by TPFanatic » Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:02 am

HDD: Windows 7

SSD: either.

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Re: T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#4 Post by WPWoodJr » Mon Dec 17, 2018 2:46 pm

Thanks, I have an SSD in it. Will the W10 install find drivers for the ATI graphics card and other hardware?
T60p 2613-CTO, 2.33GHz, 3GB ram, Intel 80gb G2 SSD, H7K 200GB/7200rpm, LG Flexview IPS SXGA+ screen, ATI FireGL V5250
Essential TP Hotfixes and Tweaks

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Re: T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#5 Post by ac12 » Tue Dec 18, 2018 3:50 pm

As I recall, you are limited to 4GB of RAM on the T60.
To me, that will limit you to an OS that won't take a lot of memory.
4GB is usable for Win10, but I would not plan to multi-task with it.

To me the major problem is to find drivers that work with Win10 for that old machine.
I an running Win7 on my T61 for that reason, lack of Win10 drivers.

I think the Win10 install will install generic drivers.
Then the update might look for more specific drivers.

I have had problems on my wife's old computer where it installed a generic video driver with a lower resolution screen driver than the hardware will support. Luckily an update installed a driver with more resolution.
Last edited by ac12 on Tue Dec 18, 2018 3:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#6 Post by TPFanatic » Tue Dec 18, 2018 3:54 pm

Even worse, you are limited to 3GB usable RAM, even with 4GB installed.

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Re: T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#7 Post by WPWoodJr » Tue Dec 18, 2018 4:55 pm

Thanks all, up and running now with Windows 7. Drivers were found, and it isn't as slow as you would think; Chrome browser running Speedometer 2.0 scores 34.
T60p 2613-CTO, 2.33GHz, 3GB ram, Intel 80gb G2 SSD, H7K 200GB/7200rpm, LG Flexview IPS SXGA+ screen, ATI FireGL V5250
Essential TP Hotfixes and Tweaks

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Re: T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#8 Post by MiddleGreek » Tue Feb 05, 2019 1:17 am

I just wanted to add my experience to this thread, maybe it'll help someone down the road.

A decade or so ago my company had a couple of T60p-8743s in use, with docking stations. They were used for AutoCAD work and office type tasks. After 3-4 years of use, I replaced both of their HSF assemblies to stop the fan noise. A year or two after that, they were retired. They sat under my desk.

This weekend I had occasion to dust one off to give to a kid whose requirements are pretty simple: Chrome browser (school requirement), light word processing and the like, maybe play a CD or DVD.

FWIW, the T60p fit these requirements when configured thus:
1. Pulled the spinning rust drive and installed an OCZ 240gb SSD that was pulled from another system that got upgraded.
2. Scrounged up 2 2gb DDR2 RAM modules pulled from an HP laptop. The system will only see 3gb due to the 945GM chipset being dumb.
3. Installed Windows 10 LTSC.
4. Installed the Lenovo T60p Vista ATI driver.
5. Installed Chrome, LibreOffice and VLC.

This all worked great. Boots in 25 seconds or so. Screen looks nice. Chrome runs pretty well. YouTube even full-screen is watchable. CPU pegs on occasion, and RAM sits reliably at 50-60% so long as you're not overly enthusiastic. Neat.

Let it sit until it puts the screen to sleep. Try to wake it up. Nope, all I get is a cursor and a black screen. Poke all of the Fn-keys that look suspicious. Nothing happens. So I press the power button, and I get a brief flash of the lock screen before it goes into sleep mode. Okay, that's interesting, so I do some Internet research. There are lots of ideas about how to craft the perfect incantation to install the ancient ATI Vista drivers and associated software, but none of those worked. I get plenty of error messages, but when the display goes to sleep, or if I put the machine to sleep by closing the lid, once awakened, it will present a black screen with a movable cursor and refuse to do anything else that I can see.

So, my solution is this: go into Power Management and set it so that whether on battery or AC, the screen stays on. If you press the power button, it powers off. If you close the lid, it powers off. Powering off a Windows 10 computer seems like a waste of time, but the goddam thing boots in 25 seconds.

I did agonize about the kid losing work if he forgets to save and then closes the lid, but then I recalled my first real computer: a 286 with CGA graphics and a 20mb hard drive. It had a big red switch on the side to shut the whole thing off, so the 1980s version of a power management system (i.e. the adult who paid the electric bill) would happily shut everything down as they walked by and you would learn a valuable lesson about saving early and often. My solution to the technical problem of why a 2006 laptop running a 2015 OS doesn't handle climate change cyberpolitics is to reframe it as a learning experience, and I'm going to affix a Post-It note that says "Save early, save often" to the LCD and hope for the best.

tl;dr: A T60p with an SSD runs Windows 10 pretty well. There are challenges, but if you're looking to run Windows 10 on a T60p, they're manageable if you're flexible.

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Re: T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#9 Post by WPWoodJr » Tue Feb 05, 2019 2:27 pm

Thanks for the update!
T60p 2613-CTO, 2.33GHz, 3GB ram, Intel 80gb G2 SSD, H7K 200GB/7200rpm, LG Flexview IPS SXGA+ screen, ATI FireGL V5250
Essential TP Hotfixes and Tweaks

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Re: T60p - Windows 10 or Windows 7?

#10 Post by sebileis » Tue Feb 05, 2019 4:11 pm

I have a T60 (non P) with the ATI Mobility Radeon graphics and was able to get the graphics drivers working in Windows 10 by running the Vista drivers in compatibility mode. Windows detects many of the other drivers on its own, and there are a few tricks to get the TrackPoint working properly.
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