Who's automated phone service, Microsoft's or Lenovo's? I have 4 T61s and the factory W7 recovery disks.Tentpole wrote:All sorted. The new SSD took a while to arrive but installation on my X230 and activation was clean and easy:
1. Downloaded Win7 iso file, plus "Windows7-USB-DVD-Download-Tool-Installer-en-US.exe" from Microsoft
2. Copied ISO to blank USB drive with the MS tool to create a bootable drive (could have made a disk but why bother and the X230 would need an external optical drive) & insert into X230
3. Start up X230 - the boot process allows you to interrupt booting and select a different boot drive, no need to change BIOS settings
4. Install Windows (nice and fast with SSD), type in COA from under battery and be told that I have 3 days to activate
5. Find and install Ethernet driver, go through a few Windows Update cycles, download drivers package from Lenovo - could have manually installed drivers at this point but instead:
6. Download, install and run Lenovo System Update and let it update all drivers etc
7. Activate Windows: Computer-Properties-Windows activation, dialled the automated phone service, told it I have a volume license agreement, gave it my mobile number and received a link by SMS, went through activation codes as instructed and success
No need for recovery disks or original Lenovo Win7 CD - it all worked with a vanilla iso and the OEM COA under the battery. Thanks for the tips RBS and other guys.
I finally got my test machine to weork properly without giving me 2 or 3 BSDs every day.
Code invalid, etc.
Then, I backed up the test / gunea pig machine and restored it to the other three T61s HDDs, but windoze says not activated. This is probably because I backed it up from one T61 and restored it to another T61. They all have the Lenovo volume license.