The "final" W7 ThinkPad ?

[ajkula66]

I'm certain that there's an answer to this question somewhere on the forum, but it's late and I'm kinda lazy right now...

Which was the last generation of ThinkPads that shipped with Windows 7 as a factory option/pre-load ?

Will elaborate later...

Many a thanks in advance.

[TPFanatic]

Skylake was the last officially supported by Lenovo, so P70, P50, T470, T25…

I was able to make W7 work on P71 (Kaby Lake) but lack of DX12 and TB3 support undermined my interest in casual rendering, so to this day it’s ran 10.

Some folks have made W7 work on T480 and other newer chipsets but ymmv.

[ajkula66]

Skylake was the last officially supported by Lenovo, so P70, P50, T470, T25…

I was able to make W7 work on P71 (Kaby Lake) but lack of DX12 and TB3 support undermined my interest in casual rendering, so to this day it’s ran 10.

Some folks have made W7 work on T480 and other newer chipsets but ymmv.

Thank you! This is exactly the type of guidance I was looking for...

[theterminator93]

Just to add my .02...

T25 is only Kaby Lake and Windows 7 was not a factory option for it. I did an experiment with it not long after I got it and was able to load the drivers during W7 setup to get it to recognize the SSD, but never went so far as to actually shoehorn W7 onto it. While the T470 had some SKUs with Sky Lake architecture, it was predominantly shipped with Kaby Lake CPUs and those would not have supported or shipped with W7 from the factory.

Lastly, FWIW, the newest generations that I have OEM recoveries of W7 for are the X1 G1, T460 and P50 - all 6th gen Sky Lake CPUs.

[TPFanatic]

theterminator93 is correct, i got my numbers confused

back when i put w7 on p71 i had w7 on a t430 then just put the drive in the p71. alternatively there’s modified installers for w7 out there with nvme/usb3 drivers included. last i had access to it, i also had w7 dualbooting with 10 on my t470 (kaby lake). i enjoyed w7 on my yoga 260 (skylake).

[ajkula66]

Thank you gentlemen!

I'll be setting a system for a friend of mine who has limited computer knowledge and is not willing to give up on W7 - heck, neither am I for that fact - while also being on a fairly limited budget. I found a near mint W540 in the local ads that I'll likely stop by to check out within the next week or so...

If everything pans out I'll be looking for W7 restore media for the given system, but we'll cross that bridge if and when we get to it...