Thinkpads Forum

My new T500 arrived today (2080-CTO). Very nice. I like the backlit LED screen. I have it side by side with my T60 and the difference is striking (the T500 screen is much brighter).

This T500 also came with the NMB keyboard. It has Vista Business 64 installed on a 320GB 5400rpm drive. It booted fine and is recognizing the extra memory that I have installed (for a total of 6GB). I was also able to connect to the Internet. So far, so good.

I want to use a Seagate Momentus 72000.4 500GB HDD as my primary drive and use the 302GB drive for backups. To "simplify" things I purchased a full version of Vista Ultimate (32 & 64 bit) to install that on the new HDD. It seemed at first to work fine. However, when I tried to connect to the Internet, I discovered that many devices were not installed.

Under Device Manager the Standard VGA Graphics Adapter is flagged as "cannot start". The following are flagged with exclamation points as "drivers not installed":
- Base System Device
- Base System Device
- Base System Device
- Ethernet Controller
- Network Controller
- PCI Memory Controller
- PCI Serial Port
- PCI Simple Comm Controller
- SM BUS Controller
- Unknown device

I was prepared to do some extra work to get drivers configured to work with Vista Ultimate 64 on a T500, and to download/reinstall Thinkpad specific drivers. However, I didn't expect this level of difficulty. I checked out all of my hardware and programs ahead of time, and everything I need is 64 bit compatible. I don't understand why the basic drivers were not installed.

Is there something fundamentally wrong with the setup that I'm trying to create?
Is this a Vista, ThinkPad, or some other sort of problem?
Do I need to reinstall Windows?

I'd really appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.

Thanks,
FRANK

Use the Thinkvantage System Update application. You can download it from the Lenovo website (Support section).

The Base System Devices is the 4-in-1 card reader from Ricoh. You may have to download the drivers manually. ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mo ... ss55ww.exe

Ethernet Controller - Intel Gigabit network
Network Controller - Intel 5100/5300 AGN

Since non of your network cards are recognized, download drivers for them from the Intel website. After installing them and connecting to the Internet, download the System Update software.

Intel 5100/5300 download link - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... =&lang=eng

@OP: The .exes you have downloaded from Lenovo website just unpack the drivers under C:\Drivers. Then you have to go to the corresponding subfolders and install the actual driver. In the case of IMSM (=Intel Matrix Storage Manager) you will have to use driver update feature from within Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers -> your AHCI controller (I assume you have installed Vista with HD set to AHCI mode within BIOS).

Hope this helps

Marin

Marin85 wrote:(I assume you have installed Vista with HD set to AHCI mode within BIOS).

Marin and Toshe;

Thanks for the pointers. I was hoping that there would be a simpler solution, but if that's what it takes I will certainly use those approaches.

I followed everything until Marin's last sentence (quoted above). Was there some sort of preparation, configuration or initialization within BIOS that I should have done with regards to the new Seagate HDD before installing Vista Ultimate 64? I did not manually make any changes within BIOS before doing that installation. If so, what should I be configuring, and should I then re-install Vista after doing that? I've not put anything on the new computer so at this point I'm can redo the installation if necessary.

Thanks again.
FRANK

baertracks wrote:I followed everything until Marin's last sentence (quoted above). Was there some sort of preparation, configuration or initialization within BIOS that I should have done with regards to the new Seagate HDD before installing Vista Ultimate 64? I did not manually make any changes within BIOS before doing that installation. If so, what should I be configuring, and should I then re-install Vista after doing that? I've not put anything on the new computer so at this point I'm can redo the installation if necessary.

No, not really. I believe all recent Lenovo machines configured with Vista come with the HD preset to AHCI mode within BIOS. But even if the HD was in compatibility mode, that wouldn´t have any influence on your installation or Vista performance (except that you wouldn´t have to install IMSM driver), but also that wouldn´t cause any missing devices under Device Manager. If you still worry about AHCI, you could check it out under BIOS -> config/setup (I believe it´s the first option from above) -> HD. In any case you don´t have to go through the whole hassle and reinstall Vista.

Marin