Thinkpads Forum

After frustrating myself trying to install XP Tablet and all the drivers from Lenovo and ending up with an unstable machine, I've decided I need the recovery CD from Lenovo to do this. Only problem is, they won't send it to me! The machine originally came with Vista. I even tried to ask how much it would cost to get the XP license (which I don't need, already have a site license). No can do, machine came with Vista, that's all you can get, so says tech support. Sigh...

I can't seem to install it and the Lenovo drivers. This is very frustrating. So I want the install that Lenovo loads on the machine.

So, if anyone out there has the X61 Tablet *XP* recovery CDs, or made some from the disk image when you got the machine, I would dearly love to get a copy of that! Help!

I have a set of Vista recovery CDs, for what's worth. No, I couldn't find the machine preloaded with XP in stock anywhere.

Or, alternatively, if someone could explain how to load XP Tablet 2005 and load the Lenovo drivers so you get a *working* *stable* install of XP Tablet, I'm all ears.

Mike C.
mikec@ciholas.com

mciholas wrote:So, if anyone out there has the X61 Tablet *XP* recovery CDs, or made some from the disk image when you got the machine, I would dearly love to get a copy of that! Help!

To use Product Recovery disks for an oem lenovo license one doesn't have is illegal sir.

ryengineer wrote:

mciholas wrote:So, if anyone out there has the X61 Tablet *XP* recovery CDs, or made some from the disk image when you got the machine, I would dearly love to get a copy of that! Help!

To use Product Recovery disks for an oem lenovo license one doesn't have is illegal sir.

I thought you had the right to downgrade from any of the higher priced Vista editions to XP? You provide the media, they provide the license.

mfbernstein wrote:
I thought you had the right to downgrade from any of the higher priced Vista editions to XP? You provide the media, they provide the license.

Yup that path is legal. However, with recovery disk it isn't. Each lenovo comes with TWO vista or XP licence, the one that is underneath which can be used on the 'path' that from microsoft.

The second is the OEM license which is embedded into the recovery disk. So whoever sold you the recovery disk is giving away his/her license.

mciholas wrote:
Or, alternatively, if someone could explain how to load XP Tablet 2005 and load the Lenovo drivers so you get a *working* *stable* install of XP Tablet, I'm all ears.

Mike C.
mikec@ciholas.com

Mike, I was watching your post number 1 on the multitouch thingie, is that the 'problem' you were refering to that is not stable? I had created two posts with potential solution to that problem and both within the same week. Hence I didn't want to post a third duplicate.

Most of the problems have been asked again and again in this forum. sometime a 'search' would find the solution. If my solution doesn't solve that problem, let me know.

To use Product Recovery disks for an oem lenovo license one doesn't have is illegal sir.

I have XP Tablet 2005 license, I have a Lenovo X61, and Lenovo allows download of all their drivers this operating system. Exactly what is it that Lenovo doesn't want me to have? What is on the OEM recovery disk that I can't recreate, at least in theory, from XP Tablet install disks and Lenovo driver downloads?

Every driver I download makes me agree to a license, so I think I do have the license for those Lenovo specific parts.

My problem is that I can't get the Multitouch to work right (the touchscreen is not suppressed when using the digitizer pen), and the video driver is very unstable when changing modes to use an external monitor (machine locks up hard, frozen cursor, no task manager available, etc). I've tried changing the order of driver loads, but still no success. I'm on my 4th clean install attempt with XP Tablet, so it would be nice to see how Lenovo gets XP installed.

Thanks to those who are truly trying to help.

Mike C.
mikec@ciholas.com

Mike, I was watching your post number 1 on the multitouch thingie, is that the 'problem' you were refering to that is not stable?

Not really. That is an annoyance preventing me from enabling the touchscreen but the machine is "stable" when that driver is disabled. The real problem is the video mode switching to an external monitor. This locked up the machine hard. The two errors might be related, but the system can't be hooked to a projector because the switch to an external monitor crashes it.

I just finished installing XP Tablet *again*, this time I installed and removed the Multitouch driver after *every* driver in the Lenovo list. Same issue, the touchscreen is never suppresed when the digtizer pen is in range. Sigh...

I had created two posts with potential solution to that problem and both within the same week. Hence I didn't want to post a third duplicate.

I did a pretty extensive search before posting about the Multitouch. Either I did not find the posts you refer to, or the fixes proposed did not work for me. My problem isn't "the frame issue" that drives the cursor off screen (which was one of your posts). Please don't tease, send me links to your solution.

Most of the problems have been asked again and again in this forum. sometime a 'search' would find the solution. If my solution doesn't solve that problem, let me know.

Search used, solution not found, many things attempted before asking, read the FAQ, I'm not a newbie.

Mike C.
mikec@ciholas.com

mciholas wrote:Thanks to those who are truly trying to help.

mciholas wrote:Search used, solution not found, many things attempted before asking, read the FAQ, I'm not a newbie.

First, welcome to the forum at Thinkpads.com!

I know you're frustrated, but everyone in this thread is trying to help you. We don't bite the hands that feed us here.

Ideasmiths wrote:I had created two posts with potential solution to that problem and both within the same week. Hence I didn't want to post a third duplicate.

Provide a link, please.

mciholas wrote:snip.............What is on the OEM recovery disk that I can't recreate, at least in theory, from XP Tablet install disks and Lenovo driver downloads? Every driver I download makes me agree to a license, so I think I do have the license for those Lenovo specific parts.

If you have Windows XP install disk then you should do a clean install and then download required drivers from lenovo's website. Lenovo does not limit anyone from downloading drivers from it's website, regardless of the type of license one possesses. Nevertheless, lenovo can get into legal trouble if they start providing Product Recovery Disks for an oem license (lenovo's) that customers don't own.

Product Recovery disks contains more than drivers, to be precise what it includes please refer to this post.

Lastly, I hope your other problem of Multitouch gets solved.

I previously checked this with Microsoft and you can legally use a set of recovery CDs to downgrade from Vista (Business or Ultimate), where it gets murky is that Lenovo are not allowed to supply an XP set for a Vista machine, but if you have a 'friend' who has a set, it would be legal to use these (although the murky area again is that you cannot legally make a copy of them for this purpose). I am not sure about the legal implications of making a copy of the set RnR can create from the OS.

The numbers used on the recovery images have no relation at all to the numbers of the COA on the bottom of the system.

I think Mike already found the postings at http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=47277 and
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=46893 which was a few posts below his when he posted his Post #1 (Mike I was not teasing, anyone who can do factory reinstall is no newbie).

Most likely cases is a mechanical issue (the frame, uncalibrated detection wires), followed by drivers. With his 'hardware' froze to external monitor, then it maybe is the graphic drivers or worst case something wrong with the screen. I guess Vista is still crappy with their drivers compatibility.

X61 tablet is using the santa rosa and the new Intel X3100 graphics drivers? perhaps if you get the drivers from Intel itself, it might solve the problem. With X61 coming onto the market, there bound to be someone who has the same problem, maybe Intel has a solution.

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Mike, have you tried to use base software to do a minimal re-installation from original hidden partition ? http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=45309
It would cut down factory re-installation to around 40 to 50 minutes compard to 1.5 to 2 hours of full re-installation.

I wouldn't take out the Gnz.snd and the two other drivers, they somehow are interlinked and most likely will be unstable if either one of them were disabled.

New version of multitouch driver for X60T and X61T. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-67061


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Lenovo recovery disks as mentioned contains the OEM XP/Vista license and that is why they cannot let you have it. OEM licenses need to be purchased together with the hardware. Beside that license, most of the stuff on those CD are standard stuff you can download or get from original window CDROMs.

ryengineer wrote:If you have Windows XP install disk then you should do a clean install and then download required drivers from lenovo's website.

I absolutely agree with this as to what *should* be. What *is*, for me, is that I install XP Tablet 2005 Corporate (which, BTW, I *DO* have a license for, so let's drop the inuendo about piracy here), download and install all of the Lenovo XP drivers on their web site, and then I should have a functional X61 Tablet computer.

At first, it seems to work (well, except for the Multitouch which never works right). But after using for a day or so, it becomes progressively more unstable. My first attempt at this resulted in a system that wouldn't allow anyone, including Admin, to logon. You got an instant logoff. My second, resulted in "explore.exe" not working and loss of the menu bar. My third attempt was just finished today. I have error messages out the wazoo involving "wdf01000.sys", "vrlogin.dll", various messages popping up about registry corruption, and so on. The computer is not even on the Internet, the files are given to it via a USB stick, so there's nothing that touches it besides the XP and the Lenovo drivers.

On the fourth attempt, the problems manifest themselves when I left one user logged in, switched to another, that user had error messages of the effect "ThinkVantage Access COnnections is in use by another user, please close to continue". Put the track point was locked up, but the digitizer pen worked. Then a message popped up saying "The video driver has prevented the computer from going to sleep. The driver may need to be updated." The system then blue screens. Arg! I restart, and the windows logon screens have changed to the ctrl-alt-del style, I log in, and I can't even run task manager with ctrl-alt-del, it says something about an application error 0xC0000007.

Okay, so my choices are:

1. I have bad hardware. Get another one.

2. I have a bad XP Tablet load. Direct from Microsoft.

3. I have a bad XP install process. Don't know what to do

4. Put Vista back on the [censored] thing. Fortunately, I made one DVD backup and one USB drive backup. Unfortunately, the USB drive got trashed, and the hard disk recovery partition somehow got messed up, too, so I am down to the DVDs.

At this point, I don't see how anyone puts Tablet XP on the thing. That is why I want to get an XP recovery/rescue set. How the frak does Lenovo install all those drivers and end up with a working thing? I dunno.

Presently, I am putting Vista back on it. That will, I hope, rule out hardware problems if it works. But I really had my heart set on Tablet XP Corporate, which avoids the stupid activiation thing, and Vista opens up new problems (I have some software that is know to be fincky with it).

Oh, please, pretty please, can someone tell me how to get an XP recovery CD set? Or a "first run" backup when you got the machine? Or, what the heck, your model and serial number of an XP delivered unit so I can order one?

As to license, well, I believe I am operating within the spirit of the regulations. I have an XP tablet license, I bought the machine, I don't care about the bloatware that comes with it, and others report Vista allows an XP downgrade.

Pressure is on me, I leave for England in a week for a 4 month semester, and I need my machine to work! I spent *way* too much time on this thing. If I could have found an XP X61 in stock, I would have bought it. Sigh.

Mike C.
mikec@ciholas.com

mciholas wrote: At first, it seems to work (well, except for the Multitouch which never works right). But after using for a day or so, it becomes progressively more unstable. My first attempt at this resulted in a system that wouldn't allow anyone, including Admin, to logon. You got an instant logoff. My second, resulted in "explore.exe" not working and loss of the menu bar. My third attempt was just finished today. I have error messages out the wazoo involving "wdf01000.sys", "vrlogin.dll", various messages popping up about registry corruption, and so on. The computer is not even on the Internet, the files are given to it via a USB stick, so there's nothing that touches it besides the XP and the Lenovo drivers.

Mike C.
mikec@ciholas.com

Hmm, my first guess from your description would be that your DDR2 rams are acting up. It will generate all the errors you have described so far. I solved one situation like that by opening up the back and swapping the positions of the Rams, ie slot 1 to slot 2. If you have only one ram, then this will not be a solution. In that case you need to borrow a new ram.

Second scenerio that I have encountered with that type of error is a rogue driver (all related to video drivers). One possibility is if there is a firewall/virus software running, one of its settings need to be set to 'respect compatibility mode for programs using self-protection methods' for these drivers.

If you don't have a firewall/virus software running then look under the hood of the 'event viewer' in start->control panel->Administrative Tools and see which is the driver that blasted the system.

People using webcams, especially logitech ones would have encountered your lists of erros, with multiple system shutting down due to the rogue drivers.

To use Product Recovery disks for an oem lenovo license one doesn't have is illegal sir.
I thought you had the right to downgrade from any of the higher priced Vista editions to XP? You provide the media, they provide the license.

No - Lenovo does not supply the license. You do. That is if you are a volume license holder aka medium or larger size business, college, etc.
Downgrade rights were pretty much designed for volume license holders, not individual purchasers. That said, MS has eased up on that, and you can legally use XP recovery sets on a system with a Vista COA... THe trick is getting them. Lenovo's (IBM's) level one call center's policy is to support only what the system shipped with including supporting sending recovery media in only the flavor that the system shipped with.

Okay, made progress.

I reloaded XP. This time, after *every* driver I put in the system, I ran it through some paces to see if it would crash. After I loaded the trackpoint driver, the system crashed in fairly short order. I unloaded the driver, and it was solid.

Basically, the trackpoint driver makes the system unstable.

The one I loaded is this:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-66893

The multitouch driver still refuses to supress the touchscreen when pen in range, so one theory is that the trackpoint driver is not actually failing but it can't coexist with the multitouch driver. I'll try each of those options to see.

Basically, on this load of software, without the trackpoint driver, we've not had a crash once. We don't have use of the touchscreen, and one time only the digitizer stopped reading the pen (solved on user logout). We have one other problem, when in tablet mode, the display panel slightly touches the trackpoint which causes the mouse cursor to move. I think the trackpoint driver probably suppresses the trackpoint input device in tablet mode to prevent this problem, but we are using the default PS/2 mouse driver which doesn't do that. Sigh.

Oh well, maybe someday I'll have a fully usable computer. I've put over 60 hours into trying to load XP on this thing.

Mike C.
mikec@ciholas.com

mciholas, PM me your address and i'll send you a copy of the recovery CDs created by RnR, I think that will be gray enough legally, however, just in case - you didn't get them from me

it will take me a couple of days to recovery a tablet and make the set.

snife wrote:mciholas, PM me your address and i'll send you a copy of the recovery CDs created by RnR, I think that will be gray enough legally, however, just in case - you didn't get them from me

it will take me a couple of days to recovery a tablet and make the set.

I'm telling....

mciholas wrote:Oh well, maybe someday I'll have a fully usable computer. I've put over 60 hours into trying to load XP on this thing.

Be happy lenovo changed things for you.

Call 1-800-426-7378 (24/7)! and mention 44Y0615 (newer part number is 44Y2181 which is likely going to make a rep puzzle) or simply Windows XP Tablet Edition's Product Recovery CD and pay the $.

ryengineer wrote:Be happy lenovo changed things for you.

You mean, to what it should have been in the first place so I wouldn't have wasted so much of my time trying? Well, that is something. The tech support guy said "you always had the right to downgrade to XP, we just didn't have the instructions on how to sell you the XP CDs". I'm thinking that they started to handle too many calls from frustrated XP downgraders, so they changed the policy. I guess the SWAT team can stand down now...

It still disturbs me that loading Tablet XP and then the Lenovo drivers *doesn't* result in a stable machine. There is some unspecified "magic" that goes beyond the OS and drivers that I hope is on the Lenovo recovery disks. They should have a web page that tells you how to do it.

Mike C.
mikec@ciholas.com

I just called and paid $45+3 ship+NYS Tax=$51.87 for the privilege of downgrading. That's a new one. I'll have the goods in 2-3 days.

ryengineer wrote:

mciholas wrote:Oh well, maybe someday I'll have a fully usable computer. I've put over 60 hours into trying to load XP on this thing.

Be happy lenovo changed things for you.

Call 1-800-426-7378 (24/7)! and mention 44Y0615 (newer part number is 44Y2181 which is likely going to make a rep puzzle) or simply Windows XP Tablet Edition's Product Recovery CD and pay the $.

Be happy Lenovo AND Microsoft changed things for him should be more like it. Go for the 44Y2181.....44Y0615 is borked, and not plain right... hence the new part#. 44Y2181 should be available.

DavidNY wrote:I just called and paid $45+3 ship+NYS Tax=$51.87 for the privilege of downgrading. That's a new one. I'll have the goods in 2-3 days.

What continues to surprise me here is that people continue to interpret downgrades rights in a fashion that suits them, and not in the true intent it was written.

Lenovo and Microsoft NEVER had an obligation to give you free license to XP to downgrade. Downgrades rights were primarily designed for volume license holders. If you are familiar with what the COA on the bottom of the machine really imparts you, you'd understand this better. The COA is the base operating system license. Microsoft's downgrade allows busineses who buy Vista Preloaded machines to install an XP volume licensed install onto the system, and still be covered by the base operating system license of the COA. All the downgrade rights do is turn the Vista COA into essentially an XP COA... Under regular MS licensing, the Vista COA would not allow you do do this. In this fashion, that same business would also also be covered by the Vista COA for their base operating system license when they buy the Volume upgrade Vista Licenses for building their own vista image down the road.

Any Questions? Bottom line... Lenovo, under the original terms of downgrade rights never had to give you anything.... You should thank them for somehow working that out with MS.

wackydan: I don't know what Lenovo is obilgated to do... however, when an end user spends the asking price for a system, he should expect it to be operational and in stable condition. If a simple downgrade makes that possible, then the manufacturer should make it happen or allow a full refund, IMHO.

That said, the OP asked for some answers, and all he got was a lot of licensing crap from the responses. That is not what we are here for...

On a clean install of XP, all was stable except for the pen not canceling the touch, causing a jumpy cursor. In another post (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=47385) we discussed the problem and found the fix. Install the VISTA 32 Bit drivers for the touch screen, and it will be fixed. I would not be surprised if it also fixes the external monitor problem, but don't know about that.

I hope this post give the answer the OP was looking for.

KayJay...

The system shipped with Vista, and as such was probably working just fine as ordered.

If this is a corporate customer than they have internal channels with Lenovo to resolve any issues with putting xp on the machine... I assume to some degree this guy is a business account as he stated loading XP tablet... something you only have access to if you volume license that product from MS.

If he is a single purchaser, then I'm sorry if I came off harsh in defending Lenovo. THe unit didn't ship with XP... bottom line.

<<<The system shipped with Vista, and as such was probably working just fine as ordered. >>>

This is the whole issue. Lots of users have unstable Vista Tablets, and have not yet found solid solutions to lockups, blue screens, etc. I am sure that updates to drivers/bios will eventually solve these issues, but they are so random that working with Tech Support is impossible.

This is why I stated that Lenovo should be willing to correct the problem with a downgrade. However, I was told by tech support that downgrade is no longer an option. I am very disappointed with Lenovo over this, and will not likely buy from them again, although I do understand that this system is new, and I am a first adopter of some of the technology.

Lenovo should fix the problems if they want to keep their customers. I am sure that most users do not know how to find the answers they need by searching the groups.

KayJay wrote: However, I was told by tech support that downgrade is no longer an option.

You weren't able to buy the DVDs?

KayJay wrote: However, I was told by tech support that downgrade is no longer an option.

Sir, which version of Vista you bought with your machine?

Machines bought with Vista Business and Ultimate are eligible for Windows XP downgrade till July 31, 2008.

A week after ordering I call IBM back to find out where the disk is and Jim said something about a manual cru and the order didn't go through and he'll get it out today.... yadayada....

The discs are in -- all 8 of them. I guess they don't do DVDs.