Thinkpads Forum

I just got my T60 (fast!). Haven't turned it on yet because the plague has descended on the house (stomach flu)...

Before I take time to play and discover, I'm coming from a T22 that originally came with Windows98 which I immediately replaced with 2000. I got XP Pro with this machine - we use XP Pro at work, but I'm tempted to just do a clean install of 2000.

Are there any recommendations either way? I'm not too thrilled with the idea of Vista so I probably won't be installing that at all.

It looks like most keep the Thinkpad partition, so I'll keep that, but are there any general tweaks or recommendations for software that I would need?

This will be replacing my workhorse machine...nothing too fancy - I think the biggest draw on memory is Photoshop and QuickBooks, believe it or not.

Thanks in advance.

My recommendations would be to:

First, make sure you have your restore discs created and DUMP the thinkpad partition and reinstall a fresh copy of XP and drivers. You save a lot of wasted GBs of hard disk.

Then, disable the devices you dont use, ie.. infrared, modem, etc...

You could also remove some of the windows default services that may be useless to you, such as themes, remote registry, etc...

Disable system restore , and hibernation.

Of course, everyone has their own way of doing things, but I disagree with a couple of the suggestions posted above.

I do agree: Burn a set of Product Recovery Discs right away. Use quality media as you can only burn one set until you Restore Factory Contents (then you can do it once again). The preferred method is to use a CD for the first disk and a DVD for the second.

Dumping the service partition (thinkpad partition) is reducing your options for recovery. Really, it is only ~5 Gb.

Likewise turning off Windows System Restore reduces your recovery options. System Restore saved my bacon a couple of months ago with a PC Doctor 5 upgrade snafu.

Finally, many here have done a fresh Windows install only to run into a number of problems. Sure it can be done, but you better know what you are doing. Read some of the threads regarding a fresh install before you go this route. FYI, you can do a fresh install and still have a working service partition.

YMMV

klnam wrote:I got XP Pro with this machine - we use XP Pro at work, but I'm tempted to just do a clean install of 2000......are there any general tweaks or recommendations for software that I would need?

I would stick to WinXP rather than downgrading to Win2K. Some day, you might need to install software that requires at least WinXP, e.g. MS Office 2007 and Windows Medica Player 11.

This website has some nice tips for getting the most out of WinXP.

My first suggestion is to NOT disable services yet. The bundled Thinkpad utilities use some of the services that most people would think are safe to disable.

My next suggestion is to delay tweaking your system. Use it "out of the box" for a while and get to know what you have. There is a LOT there to get familiar with - more than you might imagine.

Once you get to know your factory-configured system, you can start uninstalling and disabling programs and services in a slow, orderly manner so that if you break something unexpected, you'll know exactly what it was that you did.

From my experience RonS is right. I get rid of Symantec (obviously) and quite a few other things, but it's only because I know what I need and what works for me.

I made a list a while back of what I keep/don't keep but it may not be good for your purposes.

RonS wrote:My first suggestion is to NOT disable services yet. The bundled Thinkpad utilities use some of the services that most people would think are safe to disable.

My next suggestion is to delay tweaking your system. Use it "out of the box" for a while and get to know what you have. There is a LOT there to get familiar with - more than you might imagine.

Once you get to know your factory-configured system, you can start uninstalling and disabling programs and services in a slow, orderly manner so that if you break something unexpected, you'll know exactly what it was that you did.

hi there , i'm not an experienced user but i think some of the thinkpad utilities are nice like accces connections which i have no problems but, i found that i have a lot of trouble with the CSS i have to delete the software because it kept my laptop locking and i couldnot install any more software because i don't have permission even after i deleted CSS but i'm the administrator so this is ridiculous so i fix it by creating another administrator account and delete the current one and now i think is working normally but i have a doubt about the security chip or how to return to the built in administrator default or keeping my current admin account ? i think i made the stupid descision of making a windows passwor through the CSS and not through windows panel control.

with my new admin acct can i still take full control of my laptop?

if not, how i can go back to the built in administrator (out of the box)??

Any opinion of what to do let me know please, all comments are very appreciated!!! thank's