Thinkpads Forum

After wiping your hard drive clean and doing a fresh reinstall, minus the trial ware and other things you don't want, what Lenovo Thinkvantage products (that you burned to DVD before wiping) would you recommend (re)installing?

I (re)install:

- Active Protection System
- Power Manager

I'm not sure about the others - or even what they all do.

- Client Security Solution

What does it do?

- Create Recovery Media

Is that for recovering BIOS passwords if you forget them? There's something about that in the BIOS - I'm wondering if this is the tool in question???

- Maintenance Manager - What is it?

Looks like it manages some other tools: Defrag, Disk cleanup...

- Rescue and Recovery

If you have an imaging system (Ghost) in place, I imagine you could just as well reimage - ?

How does RnR compare to other options: Windows Vista Full Computer Backup for example.

- System Migration Assistant - might be useful?

How does it compare with the MS user migration tool or something like Symantec user migration?

- System Update

Useful? What does this do beyond Windows Updates?

There are some threads that outline some of the Thinkvantage tools in more detail. I would suggest doing some searching if you want more detailed information on a particular tool.
To quickly answer your question, though:

Client Security Solution: Security suite for Thinkpads. It has things like a password manager, file encryption, and the ability to set certain security policies. Do some research on this one as it depends on how much security you want. Also, I've seen posts from people who've had problems with CSS so you may want to look into that as well.

Create Recovery Media: This is not related to BIOS passwords (do some searching on this forum about BIOS passwords as some are not recoverable). This is to create a set of CDs so that in the event of a catastrophe you can restore your system to the exact same state it was when it was shipped to you.

DM1 wrote: After wiping your hard drive clean and doing a fresh reinstall, minus the trial ware and other things you don't want

Frankly, I'm a little concerned that is statement is coming before your question about Recovery Media. Creating the rescue disks should be the absolute first thing you do with your Thinkpad. I know people want to remove certain software, but you should still have a way to get back to your original factory state. You can always order CDs from Lenovo but it may cost you.

Maintenance Manager: Yes, it's for scheduling and running housekeeping tasks (such as defragmentation, virus scan, and backups) in the background. I'm not sure if works with all programs (e.g. NOD32 instead of Norton for antivirus....I'm guessing not). I tend to schedule things through the program itself so I would delete this one.

Rescue and Recovery: Yes, if you have a preferred imaging/backup system you can probably get rid of this one. You can do some searching on this forum to see how it compares to other programs.

System Migration: Used to help move files and settings from your old computer to your new laptop. Never used it so I can't comment on it.

System Update: Important! This is used for things like BIOS updates, driver updates, and Thinkvantage software updates. It doesn't handle Windows updates. Keep this one.

There are some threads that outline some of the Thinkvantage tools in more detail. I would suggest doing some searching if you want more detailed information on a particular tool.

In fact, I did a search with "Thinkvantage tools" but that didn't produce any pertinent results. I might do better with the name of a particular tools though, as you suggest.

Otherwise, many thanks for your input!

On a clean XP install, I usually only put:

- Active Protection System

- Power Manager

- ThinkVantage FingerPrint Reader software (I'm not using it and disable everything related to it, but the software installs the drivers too and I don't like to have undetected devices in device manager)

That's about all I need from ThinkVantage.

It might be useful to install System Update too in order to just stay informed about new drivers coming out. I didn't install it, but if I did, I'd make sure that updates are not applied automatically so that I can decide what to update and what not, if at all.

Things I usually put on a new system -

(I do a custom recovery from the factory state, and deselect many of the optional tools, there is no real need to do a clean install, IMHO, but everyone has his/her preferences. For example at work we use Sysprep and a near Hardware Independent Image using the volume license version of Windows XP).

• Thinkvantage Fingerprint software (and driver)
• Thinkvantage Access Connections (wireless client manager).
• Thinkvantage Presentation Manager
• Thinkvantage Power Manager
• HotKey Utility
• UltraNav Utility (and Driver)

I actually like Access Connections (rather than use the Intel PROSet/Wireless client or the rather limited and spartan Microsoft one built into Windows XP), so I make sure to install Access Connections. YMMV.

Aroc wrote:Things I usually put on a new system -

(I do a custom recovery from the factory state, and deselect many of the optional tools, there is no real need to do a clean install, IMHO, but everyone has his/her preferences. For example at work we use Sysprep and a near Hardware Independent Image using the volume license version of Windows XP).

• Thinkvantage Fingerprint software (and driver)
• Thinkvantage Access Connections (wireless client manager).
• Thinkvantage Presentation Manager
• Thinkvantage Power Manager
• HotKey Utility
• UltraNav Utility (and Driver)

I actually like Access Connections (rather than use the Intel PROSet/Wireless client or the rather limited and spartan Microsoft one built into Windows XP), so I make sure to install Access Connections. YMMV.

Hmm .. HotKey Util and UtraNav driver/util aren't exactly ThinkVantage products, or am I wrong?

Anyway, in case they are, add them to the list of what I install as well.

DM1 wrote:...what Lenovo Thinkvantage products (that you burned to DVD before wiping) would you recommend (re)installing?

I always download the latest versions from Lenovo when doing a reinstall.

Quagmyre wrote:Hmm .. HotKey Util and UtraNav driver/util aren't exactly ThinkVantage products, or am I wrong?

You're right. Please disregard then (I got carried away with what I add to a bare install). If everyone disregards my last two lines, my original post would better fit within the spirit of the original post. That was my mistake.