Windows7 on R40

[firgle]

Please pardon if an answer already exists in the forum. Should I be able to install Windows 7 on an R40?

I am unable to get the R40 to boot my Windows 7 install disk.

My original R40 HD died and so I replaced the HD, but am without recovery disks or a way to access the old partition that had the original factory image (on the old dead HD). Lenovo wanted ~$70 for disks that would supposedly bring the machine to its original factory state, which was Windows XP professional. Rather than spend ANOTHER $70 on this old machine (I spent $70 for the replacement HD) and since I happen to have Windows 7, I'd like to see if 7 will run on the machine, but for some reason I am unable to get the r40 to boot the Windows 7 install disk. Any help or ideas would be much appreciated.

[ZaZ]

You might want to post in the marketplace forum to see if anyone has a set of R40 recovery discs they be willing to part with for a modest fee. I know Windows 7 runs OK on T4x and R5x machines, so there's a pretty good chance it'll run decently on the R40. That's with no firsthand knowledge I don't know what you're doing on your R40. If it's just office and internet type stuff, there's some good low overhead Linux distros that do well on older machines.

[RealBlackStuff]

W7 is only acceptable from T43/R52 onwards.
Earlier models are too limited in their chipsets.

[pianowizard]

I am unable to get the R40 to boot my Windows 7 install disk.

Are you sure your optical drive can read DVDs? Also, did you go to the BIOS to check the boot sequence? You need to make sure that the optical drive is listed before the HDD.

But even if you can boot from the disk, the installation may not be successful because the R40 is very old. (That being said, I did get Windows 7 to run on a Pentium 4 Dell desktop made in 2004.) The Windows XP COA sticker on the bottom of the R40 entitles you to reinstall XP for free. All you need to do is obtain an XP setup disk that can use the COA key. I used to share an ISO image of XP Pro on megaupload.com but of course that site no longer exists.

I spent $70 for the replacement HD

I am sorry to hear that. You could have bought a whole new R40 with that much money: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad ... 1c27c7a601

[emeraldgirl08]

I actually installed W7 pre-RTM on an R40 to satisfy a curiosity ~3 years ago. It worked well enough on 1gb (could have been 768mb) but it did work. Not sure why your installation is not working. Mine went pretty flawless and I tested the installation by web browsing and watching a movie. I was impressed with how well it worked! That was ~3 years ago, pre-SP1 (service pack 1), and all the other windows updates since then. With that in mind you may want to max out your RAM to help in the overall efficiency of W7.

In addition to what others have said how are you initializing the boot in your attempts to install W7? Have you tried pressing F12 during the boot splash screen to enter the booting menu screen? Entering the booting menu screen will allow you to select which device you would like to boot from. It also will allow you to see if your DVD drive is being recognized. You never know perhaps your DVD drive has some type of hardware issue.

If you still cannot boot from the W7 install disk perhaps you might want to try loading an older ThinkPad-era LinuxLive distro from disc. If that works then perhaps you may have a defective W7 disc. One last thing is have you cleaned the laser lens on your DVD drive lately? Just a wild thought but perhaps it is covered with dust or other particulates?

[firgle]

It was a long, strange, trip, but I have finally gotten Windows 7 running on my old R40 (typing this on it now). Seems the problem was the format of the DVD I was trying to boot from was "UDF". I found many posts from people having issues trying to boot a Win7 DVD and one in particular had a solution that a Gujin bootdisk solved. After much trial and error I was able to create a bootdisk (floppy) which recognized the UDF format and the Win7 installation just started up on its own and viola!

Now I am trying t o figure out how to get the various drivers installed that I need, ex. external keyboard, external VGA monitor, the Trackpoint and I am sure I will encounter many more that I need. Thank you everyone who posted replies with help and to all moving forward that can help with drivers.