Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I had my machine coming with Vista Business so I formatted the HD and installed Vista Ultimate.

I came into so many problems with installing the drivers, it's amazing what crappy support Lenovo site provides for drivers. Here are some problems which I wated too many hours on instead of being producting.

1) I cannot find X61s driver for the Ultranav on Lenovo site. I enter my computer model which is 7666-83G and all I can find is trackpoint driver and the intructions there say explicitly NOT to install that driver if you have Ultranav. Unfortunately in the 53 results of drivers and programs I received when selecting my model and Vista I was unable to find ANY such Ultranav driver. What is this?

2) I also installed System Update latest version and it didn't even find any driver or anything that needs to be updated. So that didn't solve anything.

3) Oh and to add this, although I went over some 32 programs that I installed from Lenovo site, going carefuly one by one I was unable to find a driver that would make the Blue ThinkVantage button work! It doesn't work although I installed everything by the book.

There was one driver called "Keyboard Customizer Utility" Which I didn't install cause it says it needs to have "ThinkPad Hotkey Features" But I cannot find this file in the list of files I get for my model and Vista. What is this? This is some hell of crapy support site they have if they tell you things you need to install but don't give you access to download them.
UPDATE: I found it but you must select All operating systems to find it. Then it says it's also for Vista, but when only choosing to get Vista drivers, it's not there. It's their bug for not classifying it correctly, sloppy maintenance.

4) I tried to download "Messenge Center" for 3 days in a row and it appears the link is broken and impossible to download it.

5) I don't have the on screen display working either.

If anyone could help I will greatly appreciate it. I am a simply amazed that their site is not updated or something. I wasted all day long for these issues. They just don't list these programs there. I am computer proficient and I already wasted a day on it, I wonder what someone who is not knowledgable would so.

If anyone could share his help, I appreciate it.

Lenovo doesn't have all the drivers for stand alone installs yet apparently worked out. It's best to do a "Selective Restore" and only install things you want. The machine will be just like it's from the factory but without anything that you choose not to install. Therefore everything would work as it should and you wouldn't have to go thru all the hassles.

After the selective restore you can put in your Vista Ultimate disc and use the "Anytime Upgrade" feature to upgrade to Vista Ultimate using the key number that came with Vista Ultimate.

there is a folder by default on all TPs; C:\SWTOOLS, (previously C:\IBMTOOLS), if you had copied this folder to dvd beforehand, you would have had all the drivers and utilities for your TP. sorry

Maybe you can use the "selective restore" to restore that folder?

Yeah, I have found occasional missing or improperly documented Drivers and Software on several different model pages. Someone is not doing their job.

See if you can find what you need in the two links below. Note that there is additional software if you click on the link under Notes: for the X60 or X60s on the second webpage. Unfortunately I do not see this for the X61 or X61s.

Drivers and software - ThinkPad X61, X61s

Drivers and software - ThinkPad X60, X60s

ComputerMinder wrote:Hi,

I had my machine coming with Vista Business so I formatted the HD and installed Vista Ultimate.

I came into so many problems with installing the drivers, it's amazing what crappy support Lenovo site provides for drivers. Here are some problems which I wated too many hours on instead of being producting.

1) I cannot find X61s driver for the Ultranav on Lenovo site. I enter my computer model which is 7666-83G and all I can find is trackpoint driver and the intructions there say explicitly NOT to install that driver if you have Ultranav. Unfortunately in the 53 results of drivers and programs I received when selecting my model and Vista I was unable to find ANY such Ultranav driver. What is this?

UltraNav refers to the combo of trackpoint + touchpad. The x-series do not have UltraNav. They have trackpoint only. You should only install the trackpoint driver.

2) I also installed System Update latest version and it didn't even find any driver or anything that needs to be updated. So that didn't solve anything.

3) Oh and to add this, although I went over some 32 programs that I installed from Lenovo site, going carefuly one by one I was unable to find a driver that would make the Blue ThinkVantage button work! It doesn't work although I installed everything by the book.

There was one driver called "Keyboard Customizer Utility" Which I didn't install cause it says it needs to have "ThinkPad Hotkey Features" But I cannot find this file in the list of files I get for my model and Vista. What is this? This is some hell of crapy support site they have if they tell you things you need to install but don't give you access to download them.
UPDATE: I found it but you must select All operating systems to find it. Then it says it's also for Vista, but when only choosing to get Vista drivers, it's not there. It's their bug for not classifying it correctly, sloppy maintenance.

4) I tried to download "Messenge Center" for 3 days in a row and it appears the link is broken and impossible to download it.

The 'System Update' utility has always found the 'hotkey' driver, message centre, as well as 'keyboard customiser' on both my X60s and X61s.

Regardless, all of the files you listed above are easily found on Lenovo's website. It took me all of 15 seconds to confirm this. Link here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-67971

5) I don't have the on screen display working either.

If anyone could help I will greatly appreciate it. I am a simply amazed that their site is not updated or something. I wasted all day long for these issues. They just don't list these programs there. I am computer proficient and I already wasted a day on it, I wonder what someone who is not knowledgable would so.

If anyone could share his help, I appreciate it.

I would say that those who are both literate and illiterate with computers should use the built-in rescue and recovery software to a custom factory restore and deselect all the optional programs if you are looking to get rid of extra programs that you don't want. I don't understand why you would want to cause yourself the pain of doing a fresh install and re-installing all of the drivers manually.

You are complaining about being unproductive because of all the work you've put into doing a fresh install of vista. It seems to me that this may be your own doing because you are not using the resources Lenovo has made available: rescue & recovery custom restore and system update. Even my 75-year old grandfather recently restored his system by himself using these resources.

If the issue is that you in fact wanted Ultimate instead of Business on your machine you should have just used the upgrade feature - that's what it is for!

carbon_unit wrote:After the selective restore you can put in your Vista Ultimate disc and use the "Anytime Upgrade" feature to upgrade to Vista Ultimate using the key number that came with Vista Ultimate.

Thanks, but upgrade is never as good as clear install. I prefer clean install.

Try calling technical support at 800-426-7378 and ask for them to send you recovery discs, one of which includes drivers. Technical support operates 24/7 from Atlanta, and I got my recovery DVDs in 2 days when I called them. Hope this helps.

Install "Access Connections". Interestingly it installs on-screen display, as well.

ComputerMinder wrote:

carbon_unit wrote:After the selective restore you can put in your Vista Ultimate disc and use the "Anytime Upgrade" feature to upgrade to Vista Ultimate using the key number that came with Vista Ultimate.

Thanks, but upgrade is never as good as clear install. I prefer clean install.

All the upgrade is in Vista is that it installs the missing packages. It is modular. It is not like the upgrade of older windows.

You are an idiot!

Get a notebook and format the drive .....
IDIOT!

You deleted the drivers for the machine from the drive.
Nice!

pdudas wrote:You are an idiot!

Get a notebook and format the drive .....
IDIOT!

Name-calling is neither appreciated nor allowed here. Read the forum Rules, and adhere to them.

Nice attitude pdudas.

I did backup all the drivers before blowing up my hard drive, but didn't have to use any of them. Everything was on Lenovo's website. Specially if you want to install everything, it'll be fairly simple. But if you try to only pick the ones that you think you need, you'll realize that they haven't packaged things very nicely. To get some of the features you'll end up having to install an unrelated package.

The only thing I didn't find on Lenovo's website was Diskeeper.

rooz wrote:Nice attitude pdudas.

The only thing I didn't find on Lenovo's website was Diskeeper.

Diskeeper is 3rd party software. If it was available for download then anyone could download it.

You don't want message center. It's just a way for them to deliver advertising to your desktop.

Lenovo has really muddled up what was very good manufacturing and support when it was IBM. I will say System update is easier to use, but RnR is a lot more complicated (although it has a lot of features), and a bit unintuitive.

The Thinkvantage button only works at the time of boot and takes the place of F11 on the older systems. I think it can be enabled/ disabled in the BIOS or maybe when RnR is installed. It has no function once the computer is booted at least in my case (X60T, Vista Business). I have done a custom recovery eliminating all the extra features except Easyeject. I have uninstalled message center, access connections, and some of the other trash.

Just to reiterate again in this post for those that may argue, Access Connections doesn't work well at all and causes lots of dropped internet connections, but I love the features and wish it did work. Windows own connection manager always works for me, and doesn't "lose" the internet. Access Connections just isn't reliable and causes numerous, random, "Page Cannot Be Found" messages. Get rid of AC and all those problems go away too.

Can you turn bluetooth on and off without installing access connections? I tried to avoid installing access connections, but I couldn't turn the bluetooth device on!

rooz wrote:Can you turn bluetooth on and off without installing access connections? I tried to avoid installing access connections, but I couldn't turn the bluetooth device on!

I don't use AC and can turn on/off both my WiFi and BT with Fn-F5.