R40: Do I really need the IBM drivers?

[chenimen]

I just got my hands on a used R40 2681-CEU and did a clean XP Pro install on it to remove the bloat that came with it (like Norton AV). I also removed the hidden partition so I could have access to my ginormous 20GB HDD (not so smart in retrospect as I wish I had at least made a backup of it but that's another story).

The install went smooth and to my surprise all of the drivers were loaded in Device Manager upon initial startup. The processor reads a P4-M 1.90Ghz as it should be and everything works fine (also no errors or unexpected warnings in Event Viewer).

Since everything is working fine (as it seems) do I really need to go install the drivers from IBM (like chipset etc)? As I've said before I really hate bloat. What are the advantages of the IBM drivers anyways? I don't really care if I don't have access to the stupid Access IBM blue button. TIA

Cheers

[Terrahawk]

I'd probably at least install the UltraNav drivers so you can adjust the sensitivity and autoscroll settings of the trackpoint and touch pad. Apart from that, there are no advantages to the IBM drivers. The advantages come from the additional utilities but I figure they would be considered "bloat".

[chenimen]

Thanks Terrahawk. You're right... I needed to install UltraNAV to get the scroll button working. I also decided to install the chipset driver and hotkey drivers too so I can use the volume controls.

What about the Power Management driver? Will it give me more battery life instead of using Windows Power Meter?

[Terrahawk]

As far as I can tell, the power management driver is the low level software that controls the automatic speed switching of the CPU, and other associated functions. I don't think you need it as such.

The video driver may be of use as it allows dual monitor function and may be required to enable the power saving features of the video chipset. However, they do add a few extra processes upon bootup. If you want to still have the power saving (ATI PowerPlay) but would like to minimize the number of processes on startup, I'd install the video driver but not the HydraVision dual display support.

The Battery Maximiser (and Wizard) is useful in that it allows you to monitor battery use very closely and fine tune your power settings. It can also let you see the condition of your battery easily, e.g. the amount of charge left it can still hold, etc. However, if you're mainly interested in the monitoring side and are very keen not to have a big green battery gauge sitting on your task bar (although you can opt to have no icon displayed) you can download MobileMeter instead, which needs no installation. I can't remember where to download this, but search for MobileMeter in the forums if you want it.

I like the Thinkpad Configuration Utility as it allows you to view useful information about your machine and easily enable or disable devices for further power saving. A bonus is that it doesn't auto-load on startup. However, it is about 40 MB or so on your hard drive.

I just fine-tuned my default install a little, and I still have most of the IBM features installed on my R40. I have 38 processes on startup, of which 2 are not standard IBM ones, and I have about 330 MB of free RAM (out of 512) on startup, as reported by the Task Manager.

As for hard drive space usage... well, I just deleted a whole lot of stuff then bought myself a 60 GB Hitachi 5K100

One more thing I should note, that I really love about the default IBM install is that while you see Norton Antivirus, it isn't installed by default. When you run it, it actually launches the installer. Once I realised that, I stopped it, found the installer files and trashed them immediately. Same as with Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0.

[tfflivemb2]

If you want a copy of the Recovery Disks for the R40, as a back up, let me know.

[Danny Manabat]

If you want a copy of the Recovery Disks for the R40, as a back up, let me know.

finally i found what i was looking for.

i have an R40 2723-EA1 and the recovery partition has been blown off. can i request a copy from you?

i inquired from ibm here in kuala lumpur but it takes 3 weeks to get them. also, ibm says since this is an "old model" you need to pay importation cost of the cd since its not made here.

so ibm wants to charge usd98.00!!!

ebay does not have any R40 recovery cd's for sale too. am desperate to get one.

[chenimen]

If you want a copy of the Recovery Disks for the R40, as a back up, let me know.

Hey tfflivemb2 thanks for the offer how would I be able to get those off you?

UPDATE:

I just wanted to post an update on my experiences so here goes...

I took your suggestions Terrahawk (btw thanks for the detailed post it really helped me) but had run into a whole schwak of problems (prolly dependency issues I'm guessing). Lets just say that my lappy's stability is really questionable right now as it takes forever to login (sometimes upto 2 minutes). Also, there have been occasions where the desktop doesn't even load after login (just the desktop background pic)... not to mention the countless times it's just locked up in the middle of my software installations.

I decided to trash the install and start from scratch. This time I loaded all the drivers through IBM's Software Installer tool. I decided to install each driver one at a time and reboot in between. It took a while but now everything seems stable again.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Oh yeah... I don't know what I must have been smoking but Windows DOES NOT load all of the hardware drivers upon initial startup as I had stated earlier.

The install went smooth and to my surprise all of the drivers were loaded in Device Manager upon initial startup.

I actually had a CD of all the IBM drivers downloaded and extracted. I installed the drivers manually through the Device Manager by searching the CD. I did this a few weeks ago and got sidetracked on work/other projects that I must have forgotten when I returned to it earlier this week.

LESSONS LEARNED

So please anyone who is reading this don't just go installing a fresh XP expecting that Windows will load all of the drivers for you. And don't try to be a hot-shot like me and try to get away with the minimalist approach. It's more trouble than it's worth and I just ended up resorting back to installing all of IBMs drivers through Software Installer. I still think some of the included IBM apps (Like Intel ProSET and Presentation Director) are totally useless but at least now my lappy is nice and stable.

Cheers