Thinkpads Forum

Windows sent me a "reservation" for a "free" upgrade (WIN 7 to WIN 10). Although I doubt this is really "free" I wonder has anyone done this? When I check compatibility, Windows says I'll have to re-install "Lenovo" and "Lenovo Rescue and Recovery" (which doesn't work anyway.) Have no idea what "Lenovo" means in this context; thinkvantage tools? Would hate to lock up the machine with no recovery option.

I got the same offer on my W510 but not on any of my other thinkpads yet. I just made a disk image of the system and will put it on a spare hard drive and do the upgrade as an experiment. If it doesn't work, I will just put the original disk back in. If it does, I will use it with an ultrabay caddy and multiboot it with Windows 7 and Ubuntu which are on the main disk.

I've been running W10 on both my T510 and W510 since last October and both run great.

I installed de win 10 in my W510 but it did not inicialize. I had to put the TPM chip off, so it works fine.

I had received a downgraded (using the downgrade rights) Windows 7 Professional installation on my W550s. I simply ran the Windows 10 upgrade installer and without any muss or fuss the PC was updated. I did not get a coupon for a free upgrade.

A few of the Lenovo tools don't work as you expect them, but everything else works flawlessly. No undetected hardware either.

LMAO LOLOLOL you said Win 10 and Update in the same sentence HEHEHEHEHE. Win 10 is a downgrade plus you sign over your PC to MS and ask them to use it only if you have an internet connection and an MS account. then its turned into an iphone too.

For those who did successfully go to Win10, what was the advantage please?

The advantage is that it makes it much easier for Microsoft to collect information about you and your computer unless safeguards are taken, and then the functionality of the included features is nil.

So, if you value your privacy, all of the great features of Windows 10 will be turned off or severely degraded.

MikalE wrote:So, if you value your privacy, all of the great features of Windows 10 will be turned off or severely degraded.

I currently have Windows 10 on five of my eleven computers and might put it on one more. I have turned off all unnecessary telemetry, and never use Cortana, Edge, Microsoft Store, or mobile apps. Nonetheless, there are still several advantages over Windows 7 or 8.1:

The best Start Menu ever
More keyboard shortcuts than ever
Best (and prettiest) user interface ever
Microsoft support through Oct 14th 2025, versus Jan 14th 2020 for Windows 7 or Jan 10th 2023 for Windows 8/8.1.
Takes up less hard drive space, partly because there aren't any service packs yet
Can be reinstalled and reactivated as many times as I like

Some find 10 faster than 7, though I haven't noticed any difference.

And now we know why Microsoft was 'giving' it away. They assumed you would be willing to give away your privacy in exchange for a free OS.

Not here. Not anytime.

I see Microsoft has been taking lessons from the Federal Government.

pianowizard wrote:

MikalE wrote:So, if you value your privacy, all of the great features of Windows 10 will be turned off or severely degraded.

I currently have Windows 10 on five of my eleven computers and might put it on one more. I have turned off all unnecessary telemetry, and never use Cortana, Edge, Microsoft Store, or mobile apps. Nonetheless, there are still several advantages over Windows 7 or 8.1:

The best Start Menu ever
More keyboard shortcuts than ever
Best (and prettiest) user interface ever
Microsoft support through Oct 14th 2025, versus Jan 14th 2020 for Windows 7 or Jan 10th 2023 for Windows 8/8.1.
Takes up less hard drive space, partly because there aren't any service packs yet
Can be reinstalled and reactivated as many times as I like

Some find 10 faster than 7, though I haven't noticed any difference.

Thanks for this observation, although I'm not sure my beloved W520 will still be my personal state-of-the-art laptop in 2025 (or even 2020!)

I cloned the Windows 7 system partition to another disk and did the Windows 10 upgrade on it with a bootable DVD made from Windows 10 ISO. I did allow it to update during the install. I then copied the Windows 10 system partition onto the original disk alongside Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. All is working smoothly. I have all 3 systems booting from the same menu. Both Windows 7 and 10 are fully activated. The only thing not working right in Windows 10 is hibernation. Privacy is not a big concern because I have no private data on this machine. I am mainly testing software on it and setting up Virtualbox VMs. Unlike some people, I think Windows 7 looks a lot better than Windows 10. Windows 10 looks ok until you open a window and then everything is way too white and the icons look like they came out of a 60s Hanna Barbara cartoon. Windows 7 looks a lot slicker to me. I can't see myself using Windows 10 in any serious way but the multiboot setup lets me become familiar enough with it that I will be able to deal with it if I have to and help others with it.

In performance, Windows 7 wins but not by a huge amount. In order to get to this point, the automatic updates had to be stopped from downloading and installing in the background in Windows 10. I found a group policy setting that so far has done this. Ubuntu beats both of them by a long shot. That is especially noticeable when running VMs.

hatman wrote:Thanks for this observation, although I'm not sure my beloved W520 will still be my personal state-of-the-art laptop in 2025 (or even 2020!)

I also rarely hold on to a computer for that long, but having Windows 10 installed would increase your W520's resale value.

MisterB wrote:Unlike some people, I think Windows 7 looks a lot better than Windows 10.

Windows' appearance didn't change much between Windows 95 and Windows 7, and I was just tired of it. That being said, Vista somehow looked nicer than 95 thru XP, and much nicer than 7.

MisterB wrote:In performance, Windows 7 wins but not by a huge amount.

A massive update from last week significantly improved Windows 10's performance and stability. After getting that update, my main computer (the HP 8300 Elite minitower) now feels somewhat faster than when it had Windows 7. Impressively, although this massive update is equivalent to a service pack, it actually reduced the amount of HDD space the OS takes up. This update has one downside though: it introduced many new privacy settings, thereby forcing me to go through the settings menu to turn everything off. Doing that on all my seven Windows 10 machines took a while and was extremely boring.

I "upgraded" from Win7 to Win10 on my W500. I thought it would be the wise move for me as Win10 will be supported officially far into the future. My usage of my W500 is now minimal and I intend to pass it along to the person who replaces me next year on our local lake association board of directors. Sort of an "official" tool for the Recording Secretary.

I suppose it was more curiosity than anything else that convinced me to upgrade. Getting Cortana on a laptop was interesting. Also, reports by users that Win10 ran smoothly on older hardware intrigued me. I'm satisfied with Win10 on my W500. I lost nothing in terms of program compatibility as my needs for this laptop are basic. Immediately after upgrading the operating system I installed a new SSD hard drive. This W500 will be a serviceable machine for the foreseeable future.

For those who like it -- are there any specific operating advantages over Win 70 Pro that has been smooth and reliable?

hatman wrote:For those who like it -- are there any specific operating advantages over Win 70 Pro that has been smooth and reliable?

From my experience, none. The more I use Windows 10 in a multiboot configuration and compare it to Windows 7, the more I notice things that don't work right that didn't get noticed before. I am finding more driver and compatibility issues with time. One is Virtualbox which has broken audio in the original July 29th release and is completely broken by the November 1511 upgrade. Another program lost is Powermanager which I didn't appreciate nearly enough until the 1511 upgrade took it away without even informing me. I've posted on other threads about this but it functioned at around 80% compatible on my W510 and W520 and at 100% compatible on my X201 Tablet.

The 1511 upgrade was a complete disaster for me. I tried it on the W520 and it was more pushy and intrusive than the original release and completely broke Virtualbox and Powermanager. I put it on a spare disk in an ultrabay HDD caddy to test a bit more but I couldn't fix the broken software and dumped it. I've disabled MS updates on the original Windows 10 release--yes, it can be done, O&O Shutup can do it. So that install is frozen in time and I play with it a bit now and then, mostly to learn disable other less desirable features of Windows 10 like telemetry. Speedwise, I've found no advantage at all. Windows 7 and Windows 10 are about equal and any differences are minimal.

I also tried Windows Xp 64 bit on my W520. There was pretty decent driver support but some things, like Powermanager, didn't work very well and I dumped it as well for pretty much the same reasons: Too many things didn't work or didn't work right or as well as with Windows 7. Once again my general opinion about the best Windows version for a given computer is confirmed: The best version is the one the manufacturer supplied it with.

hatman wrote:For those who like it -- are there any specific operating advantages over Win 70 Pro that has been smooth and reliable?

I like 10 much more than 7. Let me first answer your question regarding operation smoothness and reliability. Startup is noticeably faster than 7, although after the computer has booted into Windows, I don't think it runs faster under 10 versus 7. That being said, 10 has a number of new features that do increase my efficiency and hence productivity. There are many new Windows Key shortcuts that save time. The right-click Start Menu is amazing, dramatically cutting down the number of clicks required to get to what I need, and it can be accessed using Windows Key shortcuts too! The tiles on the regular, non-right-click Start Menu also make it faster to find programs that I want to load. Windows Update is much faster than for 7 or Vista, probably because 10 searches for updates differently. Due to these improvements, I get things done faster with 10 than with 7, even though the computer itself isn't necessarily faster. Cortana is supposed to help users look up information as well, but I haven't tried it.

As far as reliability, you may have heard horror stories about driver issues, but if there aren't proper Windows 10 drivers for those machines, 10 shouldn't have been installed to begin with. If we just consider computers that have full driver compatibility with 10, I find 10 to be about as reliable as 7 and XP, though somewhat less reliable than 8 or Vista.

If we look beyond performance and reliability, 10 is better than 7 in additional ways. Touchscreen support is better. (Actually, this also indirectly enhances efficiency because for many tasks the touchscreen is the fastest interface, as it allows "quantum jumps" from one point to another.) Display scaling is also superior to 7. 10 uses much less hard drive space than 7, although this is mainly just because the latter is now so bloated with seven years' worth of updates. I like 10's overall looks more than 7's, but this is obviously subjective. Windows 10's activation process is far easier than 7's. Last but not least, 10 will be supported by Microsoft through Oct 2025, versus Jan 2020 for 7.

On the whole, I find that 10 allows me to interact with the computer much more closely and efficiently than before. However, a lot of this is due to the fact that I am good at jumping among different input devices, picking the best interface depending on the task at hand. For folks who use the mouse/trackpoint/touchpad exclusively, the advantages of 10 over 7 would be much less obvious. (But if they do everything through the mouse/trackpoint/touchpad, they probably don't care much about efficiency in the first place!) Microsoft understands the importance of taking full advantage of all input devices: mouse, keyboard, screen, voice (if Cortana didn't collect so much private data, I probably would be using it). Apple is years behind Microsoft in this respect.

MisterB wrote:From my experience, none.

hatman was asking "those who like it".

MisterB wrote:The more I use Windows 10 in a multiboot configuration and compare it to Windows 7, the more I notice things that don't work right that didn't get noticed before.

Multiboot could be part of your problem. I am not very experienced with multiboot, but the several times that I tried it, I had issues that I normally didn't have.

MisterB wrote:Once again my general opinion about the best Windows version for a given computer is confirmed: The best version is the one the manufacturer supplied it with.

My experience doesn't support this conclusion. For example, several of my current machines were originally designed for and came with Windows 7. They had various annoying issues while they were running 7, even after a clean install of 7, but these issues went away after I upgraded to 10.

pianowizard wrote:
Multiboot could be part of your problem. I am not very experienced with multiboot, but the several times that I tried it, I had issues that I normally didn't have.

Rubbish, multibooting has nothing to do with it. Each system has full control of the system when active and all other systems are hidden from the active system and have no influence on it.

What multibooting does do is give me a system where I can do a close comparison of different OSes on the same Thinkpad. Without taking subjective opinions like "like" into account, I am just commenting on performance and compatibility. In these, I find no performance advantage to Windows 10 whatsoever. In compatibility, definite disadvantages that are far worse with the latest upgrade. In regards to the W520 specifically and also to the W510 which I used before getting a W520, Windows 7 is the Goldilocks version that has the best driver and app compatibility and equal or better performance than Windows 10. If you want better performance than Windows 7, the only option is Linux which uses around a 3rd of the CPU, Disk and Memory resources.

MisterB wrote:Rubbish, multibooting has nothing to do with it. Each system has full control of the system when active and all other systems are hidden from the active system and have no influence on it.

I knew that's what multiboot is supposed to do, but when I tried it years ago, I remember being surprised by crosstalk that rendered one of the operating systems virtually useless. However, more modern OS's are probably better suited for multiboot -- I think I was multibooting either 98 and 2000, or 98 and XP.

MisterB wrote:What multibooting does do is give me a system where I can do a close comparison of different OSes on the same Thinkpad. Without taking subjective opinions like "like" into account, I am just commenting on performance and compatibility. In these, I find no performance advantage to Windows 10 whatsoever.

Like I said, I agree with you on the lack of performance difference, but I went beyond performance to point out that productivity depends not only on the computer's speed. I can get things done faster on Pentium 4 than some people using the latest Core i7. Yes, I did mention "like" a couple times, but for the most part I was talking about efficiency, an objective measure.

MisterB wrote:In compatibility, definite disadvantages that are far worse with the latest upgrade.

And that's strange, which is why I brought up the (unlikely) explanation of multiboot contributing to your problem -- strange phenomena sometimes call for unlikely explanations. When you said that problems got worse over time, I was reminded of my bad multiboot experience. Windows 10 runs flawlessly on my Panasonic CF-Y9 which, with Core2 Duo and 667MHz DDR2, is much older than your W520. And Panasonic's driver support is much worse than Lenovo's! So, I am very surprised by your struggles with 10, especially after the latest update. For my computers, this update improved stability.

BTW, my main desktop (HP 8300 Elite) did crash once a couple weeks ago, and my initial reaction was "looks like Win 10 is still not so stable, even after the latest big update". But now I suspect that a more plausible explanation is that one of the video cards is dying.

MisterB wrote:If you want better performance than Windows 7, the only option is Linux which uses around a 3rd of the CPU, Disk and Memory resources.

Not everyone can migrate to Linux, because we use lots of programs that require Windows. But again, even if system performance cannot be boosted, we can still dramatically improve productivity by changing the ways we interact with our computers.

pianowizard wrote: I knew that's what multiboot is supposed to do, but when I tried it years ago, I remember being surprised by crosstalk that rendered one of the operating systems virtually useless. However, more modern OS's are probably better suited for multiboot -- I think I was multibooting either 98 and 2000, or 98 and XP.


Not everyone can migrate to Linux, because we use lots of programs that require Windows. But again, even if system performance cannot be boosted, we can still dramatically improve productivity by changing the ways we interact with our computers.

I get that you like the Windows 10 GUI and it works for you. The GUI is not the OS even if it is the part of it most users deal with and many confuse the two. Beneath the GUI, there is a lot of things that can make or break an OS. For example, Windows Xp x64 doesn't handle distributing tasks in a multicore processor nearly as well as Windows 7 so processes tend to use up one or two threads while the rest remain idle and that makes Windows Xp x64 slower on a 4 core 8 thread i7 than Windows 7 in spite of being pretty light on system resources.

I really don't care that much on how the GUI gets to launch a program as long it works and is reliable. I've gone though all of them from early Mac OS and Windows 3.1 to present. Linux has a huge variety of GUIs even in the same distro. I'm not migrating to Linux and abandoning Windows, just using both side by side.

Multibooting can only cause problems like that when configured badly--like installing two versions of Windows on the same partition. If all OSes are on different partitions and the volume map is set so only the active system partition is mounted, there should be no problems.

I am trying to upgrade my T510 Win 7 to Win 10. But I get a message "The display is not compatible with Win 10". Is there a work around or how did others make the upgrade work?
Thanks,
Tony