Z61P won't play XP ball...

[solidpro]

Hi All

I bagged a Z61p as possibly one of the last chronological machines in my collection. I had some parts stashed so I thought it would be a cakewalk however after replacing the LCD, the keyboard and the Lid, the XP install it had on it was dog slow despite about 10 rounds of defrag so I decided to do a clean install and it just seems to HATE XP installation.

Windows 7 went on a dream but it wasn't period correct, so I tried again with XP - I have about 6 different versions, all with the correct SATA versions that I use over and over again but this machine just wants to freeze up, shut itself down when I'm not looking, blue screen and god knows what else. I know that it runs OSs fine because it was running XP and 7 fine but it won't take a clean XP install!!! And I've tried with different memory - it doesn't seem to make a blind bit of difference. I wondered if maybe it's overheating and could do with some fresh paste or something...? Anyone had much experience of the Z6x series and it's foibles?

[TPFanatic]

Z61p combines hot Merom CPU with ATI OnFireGL graphics.
Maybe try installing it in "compatability" mode then do the procedure to switch to AHCI. I did this for T60. Installing XP is a PITA.
I have Z61m and settled for 7 Ultimate. I have some interest in trying Vista Ultimate on a crappy TRIM-less Lenovo SSD. But 7 with mods can look like Vista while already being better in every way.

[solidpro]

Thanks, that totally was it. I have had to do that in the past but I haven't installed to SATA in so long, I forgot!!

[Shredder11]

I have Win XP SP3 on one of my Z61p and it runs very quick and snappy, and just beautifully overall. This machine does have T7600 CPU, 3GB RAM and large SSD. The XP I installed on this back in 2012 from some OEM disc I had around, and manually put all the drivers and other software on myself. I have things optimised to favour performance over looks. Out of all the Thinkpads I own this is one of my absolute favourites to use.

[Tom81]

Sometimes when I install the system on old, unstable laptops, I use a cooling pad and set the fans to the maximum.