Thinkpads Forum

My x61 Type 7668-CTO ThinkPad, running under 64-bit Windows Vista, is out of warranty. I need to run a 32-bit program and propose to implement this by installing Vista-32 on a physically separate hard drive. Tech Support tells me I need to purchase the O/S from Microsoft, and the HDD from Lenovo, which is fine but what about device drivers?

Would you please identify the location on x61 that contains the drivers, and point me to a procedure for installing the x61 devices in the 32-bit Vista environment. Is this actually doable?

Would you also point me to illustrated instructions for swapping out my hard drive.

Alternative is to call my old ThinkPad x31 machine out of retirement for this purpose (maybe simpler in the long run?).

Any thoughts appreciated.

Jack
jwcane@enw-ltd.com

Unless your 32-bit application is resource hungry, I would suggest VMware or something similar (Microsoft Virtual Machine or whatever it's called) and installing XP or even older Windows. You'd probably take the most complicated route by buying new Vista and a new hdd and installing everything from scratch just so you could use it. Not to mention that you would need the ultrabay SATA cradle and X6 ultrabase in order not to physically switch hard drives every time you need the app (which is probably not that good for laptop's sata hdd connectors). I've got 3 more questions for you:
1. What's the app by the way?
2. Why isn't it working on Vista x64?
3. What makes you think that it will run properly on Vista x32? If it's an older app, Vista x32 might not be the best solution...
Btw, Vista is generally not a good solution to anything, at least by my findings - XP and 7 are far more stable, faster and even tend to be more supportive for the old software (I've run stuff off Windows 95 in Windows 7 x64 - working perfectly; looking ugly, but working normally).
Btw, tech support guys are usually not the brightest kids around if you know what I'm saying (well to be honest - it's either that, or they just don't give a crap). Implying that you should use two hard drives and two operating systems just so you'd run one app, pretty much confirms my opinion about them.
Cheers,

Ivan

jwcane wrote: Would you please identify the location on x61 that contains the drivers, and point me to a procedure for installing the x61 devices in the 32-bit Vista environment. Is this actually doable?

All you need are here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 67971.html

jwcane wrote: Would you also point me to illustrated instructions for swapping out my hard drive.

Probably the easiest task: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 62795.html