T61 running Win10, returning to Win7, please help!

[Muse]

Today, my internet connection seemed problematic. Pages that should have loaded in 5 seconds were taking minutes or never updating. I restarted my router, no help. I rebooted the machine [ Lenovo product ID 6465CTO running Windows 10 64bit ] but when I went to enter my password I could not. The machine didn't see the trackpad. I connected a wireless mouse using its USB device and I had mouse support, but when I went to enter my password using the laptop's keyboard, nothing appeared. I connected a wireless keyboard just like I'd connected the wireless mouse, but that wasn't seen either.

I've been wanting to revert to Windows 7 anyway, just been putting it off. Now is the time.

I shut down the machine and inserted my Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit install disk. It's a special disk I won at a user group raffle. It doesn't include Service Pack 1. I've installed all the required Windows 7 updates, only 50 optional Windows Updates remain.

A window had come up expecting me to upgrade to Windows 10, but of course I don't want to do that. I just want to update as necessary Windows 7. On that screen was a link to install Windows 7 Service Pack 1. Great! But when I clicked that it said I needed a newer version of Internet Explorer. I clicked that message and got an error. It couldn't install, IE became unresponsive and I'm stuck, restarting IE just comes to the same error. I then installed the lone last required Windows 7 update and rebooted.

Now I have 50 optional updates to choose from, no required updates.

Is there a link at Lenovo's website for drivers I should hit?

One problem I'm having is that Windows 7 is not seeing my wifi card. Right now I am connected by ethernet, but I don't use the machine that way. I need the wifi adapter to work. It's an Intel Ultimate-N 6300 633ANHMW WiFi Wireless Card. It doesn't even show up in Device Manager. A search for drivers on the machine comes up with nothing. Windows 7 installation saved my Windows 10 installation as \Windows.old. It didn't find the driver there. I'd downloaded a 13MB install-all type EXE from Intel's website, but running it I'd just gotten a come on to install .NET 4.5 IIRC, but going through the EXE's installation pattern for .NET it just resulted in an error and a big inscrutable LOG file!

Please help! Thank you!

[Muse]

Just tried again. I hit https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downloa ... lorer.aspx and I get an interminable spinning wheel! Sheesh. MS wrote the OS and IE. Why am I having this problem?

[Muse]

Now suddenly Windows has found 10 important updates, and the last of them is Service Pack 1. Now I'm maybe getting somewhere. Why it sees them now I don't know, but I did see something about installing Windows Update. Huh? Obviously Windows Update is part of Windows... It's a newer version? Didn't say so, but I installed it and it searched for updates and found 10 important ones, 289MB, which are now installing. This is nutty!

[axur-delmeria]

Is it the issue of Windows Update taking way too long just checking for updates? See viewtopic.php?f=57&t=120270

[RealBlackStuff]

On old(er) laptops I use the Lenovo T420 Recovery set for W7-Pro/SP1, be that 32- or 64-bit, I have both.
Then remove all the bloatware I don't need and update a few drivers if/when needed from https://download.lenovo.com/eol/index.html
None of my installs has gotten any M$-updates in the last three years, I just set Windoze Updates to never.
Every single one of them works fine after that.

[Shredder11]

When installing Windows 7 Pro from scratch and then applying the updates, I use the Service Pack 1 single file download from the Microsoft site and then use WSUS Offline Update to add everything else. It neatly sidesteps most MS updating issues and filters out known bad updates. I've used this updating software for over 10 years with no problems.

No install required just unzip and copy and paste the folder to the root of your C:\ drive. The two files you launch afterwards are UpdateGenerator.exe to download the updates to your drive, and then UpdateInstaller.exe found in the 'client' folder to apply them when ready to do so. The documentation page gives a basic idea of how it looks and works http://www.wsusoffline.net/docs/

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

http://download.wsusoffline.net/wsusoffline118.zip * Latest download link

* The ESR version is for XP only, and is a legacy version that is occasionally updated (last one was in June 2019)

[Muse]

On old(er) laptops I use the Lenovo T420 Recovery set for W7-Pro/SP1, be that 32- or 64-bit, I have both.
Then remove all the bloatware I don't need and update a few drivers if/when needed from https://download.lenovo.com/eol/index.html
None of my installs has gotten any M$-updates in the last three years, I just set Windoze Updates to never.
Every single one of them works fine after that.

This appears to be the best approach! I suppose I can get that recovery set somewhere. Can you elaborate on the details? What specific bloatware do you remove (and how) and what "few drivers" do you get and include (and how).

Windows started behaving once things got going (see my last post). ATM it's downloading 181 "important updates!" Phew!!! I have Win7 set to inform me when updates are recommended, nothing automatic including no automatic downloading. This particular laptop lives with me on my bedroom bed and I don't want it waking up in the middle of the night and downloading.

My wifi card was seen and is working, by virtue of the updates last night. I think circumventing the "Windoze Update" scenario as you've done is a great idea if tenable/workable/doable.

Thanks for the INFO!!!!!

[Muse]

When installing Windows 7 Pro from scratch and then applying the updates, I use the Service Pack 1 single file download from the Microsoft site and then use WSUS Offline Update to add everything else. It neatly sidesteps most MS updating issues and filters out known bad updates. I've used this updating software for over 10 years with no problems.

No install required just unzip and copy and paste the folder to the root of your C:\ drive. The two files you launch afterwards are UpdateGenerator.exe to download the updates to your drive, and then UpdateInstaller.exe found in the 'client' folder to apply them when ready to do so. The documentation page gives a basic idea of how it looks and works http://www.wsusoffline.net/docs/

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

http://download.wsusoffline.net/wsusoffline118.zip * Latest download link

* The ESR version is for XP only, and is a legacy version that is occasionally updated (last one was in June 2019)

Thanks... I'll look into that!