Thinkpads Forum

I plan on doing a clean install of Vista using the method described here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=144783

Long story short, this procedure allows you to install Vista without using your recovery media. The only real hassle is activation which you need to perform a couple extra steps for (but completely legitimate ones), and also you need to install all necessary drivers manually.

So my question is what are the bare minimum drivers that one needs to download from Lenovo's site? The instructions at that link list like a million drivers:

"• Chipset Driver (This driver from Intel is the latest: Chipset Driver/INF Update Utility) CHIPSET DRIVER SHOULD ALWAYS BE INSTALLED FIRST
• Turbo Memory Driver (NOTE: If you have turbo memory, this driver includes both Turbo Memory and Matrix Storage manager drivers)
• Matrix Storage Manager Driver (NOTE: This driver is for those that do not have Turbo Memory.)
• Power Management Driver NOTE: There is a Power Management Driver and a Power Manger utility. The driver is all that is necessary. The Power "Manager" is a ThinkVantage utility and is not necessary. (NOTE: If ThinkVantage Power Manager is installed it can only be removed properly in "safe mode". As for the driver, uninstallation should never be attempted.)
• Video Driver- Make sure to select the correct driver for integrated graphics (Intel 965/ Intel GMA X3100) or nVidia graphics (nVidia 140M or 570M) depending on what your laptop has for graphics.
• Audio driver
• UltrNav DRIVER
• UltraNav UTILITY
• Wifi driver
• Hotkey driver
• System interface
• Integrated card reader (for 15.4” models with integrated)
• Bluetooth driver: Bluetooth Driver Install Tips: Before installing the Driver, press Fn and F5 at the same time. You should see an on-screen display that allows you to turn "on" Bluetooth. Now install the driver. If Fn + F5 does not work to turn on bluetooth then install ThinkVantage Access Connections. After Access Connections has been installed you should be able to turn "on" Bluetooth and install the Bluetooth driver. After the bluetooth driver is installed, you can uninstall ThinkVantage Access Connections from the control panel.
• Finger Print Reader Software (optional) Click Here: Finger Print Reader Software"

Now some of these I can easily cross off my list, like the fingerprint driver (because I don't have a fingerprint scanner), and some of them seem fairly obviously required like chipset and video driver. But what about some of the iffier ones like ultranav and power management? Will the Windows Vista default drivers work or do I need to download all the ones listed above?

This list seems pretty complete. I would not eliminate anything except, as you indicated, the fingerprint reader and maybe the bluetooth driver(you can use the bluetooth stack that comes with Windows). You may also want to disable the security chip in the bios to prevent a possible unknown device in the Device Manager. I would also strongly recommend you include the power manager utility.

Cool, thanks. I'm really interested to see if this super-clean install makes a difference in performance. As it is now, my T60 with Vista takes like five minutes to go from off to fully-booted-and-ready. It's truly ridiculous how slow it is. And then there are times when my hd randomly starts running for like ten minutes for no apparent reason. And I take pretty good care of the computer too as far as cleanup, background programs and whatnot.

Sheridan Thinkpad wrote:Cool, thanks. I'm really interested to see if this super-clean install makes a difference in performance.

It will make some difference but probably not as much as you are expecting.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Sheridan, before you reinstall Vista try uninstalling the css (client security solution) application and disabling the security chip in the bios. This application alone often adds 2 to 3 minutes to the startup time.
Also take a look at this link on optimizing Vista. Note in particular the recommendation to disable indexing: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-68156

After fighting with, and learning to hate, most of the Lenovo bloatware on XP, I finally did a clean install of Vista on a formatted hard drive on my T60.

It worked pretty well 'as is', without a single driver from Lenovo or Intel. The only things I noticed were, CPU utilization was inexplicably high, and it seemed to be running hotter than usual. So I installed the following items, from the lenovo site:

ACPI-Power Management
Power Manager
ATI Video Drivers
Active Protection
Intel Chipset Driver

And that's it so far.

Everything seems to be working fine - touchpad, usb devices, WiFi (802.11g), etc. - without any special drivers.

I'm considering installing the following as they seem to be related to 'subtle improvements/issues':
Registry Patch enabling USB S3 Power Management
Registry patch to improve USB device detection on resume from sleep
Registry Patch enabling Device Initiated Power Management on SATA
Hotkey utility - IF this will enable the speaker, etc, keys

I'd like to hear 'why' I should go beyond this list, since everything is working fine.

I do have one question ... how will I burn CD/DVDs, and, can I watch DVDs without any special software (haven't gotten that far yet!).

I feel so much better having a clean install, without the incredible bloat of "ThinkVantage" (yuk!) etc!

I'm always wondering why in the world every guy is trying to make his life harder than it should be. And from my experience there's no difference in performance with or without Thinkvantage software.

Just use Baseline Software Administrator from Lenovo to customize your Installation. You also get a clean system but with every driver needed for your machine without any incompatibilities and worries.

Regarding CD/DVD burning. You will need the Lenovo Roxio Software which comes preloaded on your system or you will need to purchase Nero or some other burning software.

I could write a lot of reasons why I want to stay away from the Lenovo / IBM / Thinkpad / ThinkVantage utilities/drivers, but in the end, it's like discussing religion - you either believe or you don't.

For me, I'm not a died-in-the-wool IBM thinkpadder, and I don't want to invest the time learning the quirks and issues of all that proprietary stuff since I get my desktops and servers from Dell, and may get future laptops from dell also; I'd rather stay mainstream as much as possible. I'm annoyed at them for making it harder than needed to swap out the hard drive - possibly trying to force me to pay top-dollar for branded lenovo hard drives, who knows. And it makes it harder to troubleshoot issues when there is so much bloatware floating around in the task list. Every manufacturer throws in a bit of baggage, but Lenovo go overboard. My biggest unresolved issue so far, though, is their fingerprint enrollment software. I build laptops for remote users and ship them out. We don't give local admin rights to end users, so they can't go through the enrollment process themselves, and there is no provided way to disable that enrollment prompt on startup; they get hit with it every single login. I've had to uninstall the software to stop this.

"Baseline Software Administrator" - oh my, sounds like just what I need! Is this one of the myriad things pre-installed, or is that something I have to download? We're a small startup at the moment, I'm building new laptops maybe once a month; if this tool is aimed at mega-rollouts of images, it's not going to do it for me but if it's simple, I could try it.

Anyway, I discovered that Vista has built-in DVD/CD burning capabilities, you don't need any 3rd party software for basic data-disk burning (every windows explorer folder has a 'burn' option).

But even better, I discovered a fantastic freeware burning program called ImgBurn; I like it better than Roxio or Nero and it's totally free.

My 'ultra clean' vista install has been running rock-solid all weekend, and I have to say, I'm very happy with it!

Steerpike wrote:you either believe or you don't.

(snip)

I'm annoyed at them for making it harder than needed to swap out the hard drive - possibly trying to force me to pay top-dollar for branded lenovo hard drives, who knows.

Huh?

Steerpike wrote:And it makes it harder to troubleshoot issues when there is so much bloatware floating around in the task list.

Huh?

Steerpike wrote:Every manufacturer throws in a bit of baggage, but Lenovo go overboard.

Huh?

You certainly seem to "believe" some strange things!

Cheers,

Bill B.

I ended up installing everything on my list above (and no more), and the machine is rock solid and very fast. I did not install the UltraNav drivers, since the built-in Vista drivers seem perfectly adequate - I use the touchpad exclusively, including the 'scroll' gesture, and it's working great. I did install the power manager app, because I read somewhere that Lenovo add the battery reconditioning feature that is not part of the basic Windows power manager app; otherwise, I would have relied on the built-in vista app. Startup is a breeze, and 'sleep' is super fast. Going to Hibernate now seems to take a whole lot longer, but I hardly ever use hibernate now that sleep has become so reliable.

Comparing my 'clean install' Vista to the 6 Vista laptops (preconfigured) from Lenovo so far, I have to say, this is the most hassle free. Having used the very same laptop daily for a year under XP, I can also say I notice no real performance difference even with the default 'aero' theme, and leaving desktop composition on. The video is a touch more sluggish, but that's due to the 'desktop composition' feature of Vista, which I'm leaving on for now 'cos it's sexy but I will probably turn it off once the novelty wears off. I have not done any serious Photoshop work yet, though - maybe that will change my mind.

One reason the preconfigured Vista's are a pain for me is not so much the ThinkVantage bloatware but also the fact they pre-install Symantec AV (our company standard is McAfee), and Office 2007 (trial version) (our open-license is for 2003) - so I have to go through a fair amount of uninstall just to get to the point where I can start installing our standard software. Also, with a clean install, you don't get those annoying Lenovo gadgets in the sidebar which, despite my best efforts to tailor the 'default user', re-appear for every new user that logs on.

This experience has given me a whole new perspective on Vista; I'm now 'on board' with it, and am fairly eager to roll it out to more users. In my workplace environment, where we can't grant local admin rights to end users, the whole 'elevated credentials' aspect of Vista is proving to be very useful. And the new advanced firewall, now that I'm finally getting familiar with it, and how to administer it through Group Policy, is proving to be quite useful.

Wanted to give an update here. For the first time in over a year, my T60 is now rock solid. I have not rebooted in almost three weeks, with two transitions to standby per day, and heavy, heavy use - my page file usage is up to 3.2 Gig, physical memory usage at 1.4 Gig, 76 processes running at the moment.

Whether this is because I did a clean install (and kept out all but the essential utilities) I can't say, but troubleshooting is a whole lot easier with fewer tasks running.

My biggest issue now (simple by comparison to previous issues!) is that several applications are misbehaving in terms of not releasing 'handles' when they should, and this becomes something of an issue when you don't reboot for three weeks. The two biggest offenders are MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, so I just exit and restart them every few days.

I'm finally starting to love my T60 and Vista!

bill bolton wrote:

Steerpike wrote:Every manufacturer throws in a bit of baggage, but Lenovo go overboard.

Huh?

...

[begin rant]
Today I received a new thinkpad T61 with Vista, which I needed to get turned around and out the door quickly. I dutifully ran through the required steps to get the machine configured, then began the update process, recursively going through the windows and lenovo update tools.

Part way through the Lenovo process, I got this wonderful message:
http://www.sequoiahills.com/Linked/Tech ... pidity.jpg
So I go to task manager, but the message doesn't give the .exe names (I should have looked at the 'description' column, but I didn't - my bad). I realize they gave the process ID, so I go back to task manager, turn on process ID display (off by default in vista), and finally determine that this is cssauth.exe and scheduler_proxy.exe. So I killed them, and hit retry ... but scheduler_proxy kept getting restarted by some other process, so I could not get past this. Finally, I hit 'end process' and 'continue' quickly enough to get past it, after about 10 tries.

So here's a piece of software (Rescue and Recovery) that I have no interest in using, and who's update methodology is so poor that they can't update it properly.

This is just one example of the 'baggage' that I'm talking about.
[end rant !]

I did, finally, see the 'baseline software administrator' that 'arni' referred to, buried deep within the R&R recovery options, and gave it a whirl - looks great. I will, from now on, make my first step to regenerate the image using this option, so I have less of this baggage, and none of the software I don't want and can't use (Symantec security, etc etc). Re-generating the image using this tool adds about 2 hours to the process up front, but it seems to be a worthy investment.

Here's how to get to the 'baseline software administrator' for others who may want this cool but obscure feature:

1) Boot and press the blue thinkvantage button;
after a few minutes, this gives you R&R
(dismiss intro screen)
(if you get a screen with four major option buttons, ignore them all - different versions present he options differently)
2) on left, choose 'Restore your system'
3) choose 'restore my hard drive to the original factory state'
4) choose 'I do not want to save any files' (or do as you see fit)
5) (OK)
6) (Next)
7) Accept terms and conditions
choose 'Custom factory recovery'
9) turn off anything you don't want
10) Enjoy a lighter system!

This is how I like my ThinkPads set up. The benefits are faster boots, more reliable computing, fewer unexplained crashes because there are not a lot of unnecessary apps running in background.

(I also partition my hard drive into 2 drives. Windows/programs on partiton 1 and personal data (my documents relocated) on partition 2. i also keep a good ghost image on partition 2 so i can restore partition 1 anytime and not worry about losing my pictures, music etc.

Using the installer app:
1. Intel Chipset Driver
2. Audio
3. Video (just the ATI driver, skip control panel app) / Monitor
4. Power Management
5. UltraNav
6. Wi-fi
7. TPM
8. Intel Matrix Storage Manager – then go into bios and change SATA mode
9. Hotkey

Using device manager:
1. Modem (extract the driver files/use device manager to update the driver manually) no need for extra software

2. Fingerprint reader (extract the driver files/use device manager to update the driver manually) I dont use this at all, just want it recognized in device manager so just need the drivers. Unfortunately, need to go through installer routine to get the driver files....ghost an image of the hard drive before you run the installer, run the installer, copy the drivers from the Program Files folder and then restore your ghost image

3. Ethernet (extract the driver files/use device manager to update the driver manually)