R61 Dual Boot - Win7 Pro 64 Bit & WinXP Pro 32 Bit

[Dale H. Cook]

Some years ago, when I began having problems with my venerable T61, and desirous of having a wide-screen replacement that would be physically much like my T61, I purchased an R61 with Win7 Pro 64 installed. I swapped in my T61 drive (XP Pro 32) and ultrabay drive, installed the R61 drivers for XP, and was off and running. In the past year I have run into a number of programs that I wanted to use for work, whose latest (and most powerful) versions would not run under XP. I backed up the 1 TB XP boot drive to an external drive, wiped the 1 TB drive, and cloned the 160GB Win7 boot drive that came with the R61 to the 1 TB drive. I then reinstalled a boatload of programs and copied several boatloads of data from the external drive to the 1 TB R61 boot drive.

The R61 has been running Win7 fine. One drawback is that I have been an avid amateur genealogist for decades, and have hundreds of genealogical CD-ROMs. Some of those have viewer programs that will not run under Win7 Pro 64. They are old enough that they have been out of production for many years and there are no viewer programs for them that will run under Win7, even in compatibility mode.

I would like to set up the R61 to dual boot Win7 and XP. I set up a new partition on the boot drive (it has plenty of room available) but have not been able to get XP to install on it because my available XP installation discs lack SATA drivers. I have slipstreamed installations in the past (though not in some years) using NLite, but for this installation I need to add the SATA driver .inf files to the XP disc and have not been able to find them in the end-of-life archive on the Lenovo site. Does anyone know where I can find them?

An alternative that recently came to mind is to use the system restore discs that I created when I bought the T61. Is that feasible considering that 1) It will be installed to H:, not to C:, and 2) I don't want to wreck the Win7 installation?

My ultrabay D: is largely genealogical reference works and documents in PDF format. Can a Thinkpad boot from the ultrabay? Would it be feasible to use that as the XP drive, installing XP on it from the T61 system restore discs? Everything on that D: is backed up to the external drive, so if need be I could wipe the D: before using the system retsore discs on it.

[RealBlackStuff]

R61 can boot from Ultrabay.
If you install the OS with the drive installed in the Ultrabay, remove the regular HD/SSD before you start.
Set the BIOS to boot from the 2nd HD first, then install.
When finished put the original drive back in, and set BIOS to boot first from your main drive.
Then when you power on and want XP, press F12 to select HD2.
Otherwise it will boot by default from HD1.
Get an external USB-case for the CD/DVD drive.

For older drivers, click on the Drivers link at the top of this page, and pick your laptop-model, also select your OS.

[Dale H. Cook]

Get an external USB-case for the CD/DVD drive.

I don't need the CD-DVD drive to run those old CD-ROMs - they are all stored as ISO files on the C: and run from a virtual drive.

That sounds like a good solution. I will still want to slipstream the SATA drivers into the XP installation CD if I go that route.

For older drivers, click on the Drivers link at the top of this page, and pick your laptop-model, also select your OS.

Is it the "Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver" package that I need for the SATA drivers? If so I just need to find what controller's .inf file is right for my R61.

[RealBlackStuff]

Been out of XP too long to remember...
I think these drivers should also work on your R61: https://support.lenovo.com/lk/en/downloads/migr-73434


Off-topic: have they found any Roanoke remnants in Croatoan / Hatteras yet?

[Dale H. Cook]

Off-topic: have they found any Roanoke remnants in Croatoan / Hatteras yet?

Many small items have been found that date from the time of the Roanoke Colony. Keep an eye on the schedule for "Expedition Unknown" on the Travel Channel. For the most recent research that I have seen try to catch the episode "The Lost Colony of Roanoke" (season 3, episode 4, first aired 23-Nov-2016). In it Josh joined archaeologists working on finding out where the colonists went.

I have been to the site of the Lost Colony - for three years I lived in northeastern North Carolina.