W7 Beta 7k+build on Thinkpad X41

[foehammer]

Downloaded and installed W7B from MS and burned it to disk. Hooked up an external DVD Drive and installed. Install took about 30 Minutes. Not all drivers installed immediately. When attached to internet via cable updates included video driver, and audio.

To get Intel PRO wireless running "manually" install the windows XP driver using the NET .inf file.
See the previous thread about biometric devices

So far I have one other item that is missing drivers and I havent figured it out yet, but I am waiting for the button drivers to download, so that may be it.

[foehammer]

Thinkpad Access Connections is nto supported on this machine or OS, but the wireless is.

The Video driver is completely Borked, as Intel never made a WDDM driver for vista, which W7b needs for backward compatability with DX11, and so you can not play back video of any type an even attempting to transcode WMV will cause the system to lock up hard. I guess I can live without video fo a while.

[foehammer]

Fixed the video playing problem. Reducing hardware acceleration on the intel 915/910 series to th midpoint(no D3D accel) will let videos play. Of course this limits your other functionality, but this is a workaround till real drivers get released.

[Menneisyys]

Fixed the video playing problem. Reducing hardware acceleration on the intel 915/910 series to th midpoint(no D3D accel) will let videos play. Of course this limits your other functionality, but this is a workaround till real drivers get released.

Yup, this also needs to be done with the a31p (and the HP TC1100). Not so with the t42p, fortunately - with it, the hardware is fully accelerated. On my 2 GHz t42p, I got 3.6 for graphics and 3.5 for 3D.

[foehammer]

Good call, I've seen some references to drivers provided by third party, and a bios update to other systems.... i wonder if its all related. If anyone has the old x41 bios they should check this out byt seeing if this is due to the new bios update for x41.

[Temetka]

Video playback is fine with .AVI, .WMV., .OGG, .MOV and .MPG.

I have an Intel 945 chipset so that's not too shabby for integrated video and a Beta OS.

I installed the vistacodecs package (google it) for adding (you guessed it) additional codecs. None of the files exhibited any playback problems and the rest of the system was still nice and responsive.

[foehammer]

i think the 945 chipset is in the clear on the hardware accel issue, anything prior is probably not.

[Temetka]

I have not had any problems with video on this machine under any OS including XP, Vista, Linux, BSD or Windows 7.

[foehammer]

you shouldnt have any problems with the 945 driver at all, only 915 and prior.

[Dajad]

Fixed the video playing problem. Reducing hardware acceleration on the intel 915/910 series to th midpoint(no D3D accel) will let videos play. Of course this limits your other functionality, but this is a workaround till real drivers get released.

Thanks for this. I too have gotten W7b working on my x41 and have solved all the major problems except for this video playing problem. Can you be more specific as to what, specifically, I need to do to:

i) reduce the hardware accelleration to the midpoint; and
ii) remove D3D acceleration.

I have gone through the bios settings and I have gone through the Intel Graphics Media settings panel (the one that is grey and blue) and can't find where to tweak these settings.

Otherwise W7b on the x41 is a far, far better experience than XP was. My laptop is now usable again!

Thanks for your help.

...Dale

[BillMorrow]

are you guys saying that W7b is better than vista release..?

[GomJabbar]

It's more responsive on my T42 than Vista Ultimate SP1. Got a few new features. AFAICT, got a few incompatibilities with software, but generally more compatible with current software than Vista was at its release.

I didn't use Vista a lot, but IIRC, Windows Explorer file and folder navigation is better designed in W7b.

Windows Media Player is upgraded. I wish I could afford to dedicate a PC and integrate it into a home entertainment system. I can see the possibilities.

Windows Calculator now does TVM mortgage and lease calculations, and has a gas mileage calculator - among other things.

Windows 7 will be missing a few features included in previous versions of Windows.
E-mail, photo programs stripped from Windows 7

[Dajad]

Windows 7 will be missing a few features included in previous versions of Windows.
E-mail, photo programs stripped from Windows 7

All that is free for download from Microsoft as part of Windows Live Essentials. They are moving those apps, and others, to the cloud (Google Gears like) and are no longer part of the operating system.

The best thing about Windows 7 beta is that it has a much smaller hardware footprint than Vista does. I never tried Vista on the x41 but since XP didn't run well (especially with all the crap IBM/Lenovo add to the OS) I assumed Vista would run worse. Vista's minimum hardware requirements more than XP. W7B runs fantastically on the X41. Sleep and hybernate were never reliable with XP. They are with W7B.

But, if I can't get video/movies playing I'll have to revert back to XP. That's an essential function I can't live without on my tablet. I'm hoping someone can explain the instructions above or a driver comes out to fix it. I never had any problems with movies/videos running under XP on the same tablet.

...Dale

[GomJabbar]

Don't know if this would work, but some XP drivers can be used in Vista and W7b if you just choose to update the driver from Device Manager. You just need the XP drivers on a disk or in a folder so that you can point to them.

[foehammer]

the video panel your loking for can be found here

right click desktop
select "SCREEN RESOLUTION"
Click Advanced Settings
Click the "TROUBLESHOOT" tab
click Change Settings
move the slider
say ok and now your good.


The big thing is to install ffdshow or something because current playback will still stutter, so changing to a more efficient non-ms codec will help



ps there is word that there is some kind of hack to force a driver that supports dx11 better by using an extraction program but I am loathe to try it.

[Dajad]

MUCH, appreciated foehammer ... that worked ...

I noticed the overall graphics of the system seem a big stuttery ... but all the base codec's work. I'll have to check into adding new ones. But I'm just happy for now I have video again (even if inferior to what XP did on the same tablet). I'll be playing around with it to see if I can improve things.

...Dale

[foehammer]

surprisingly the divx video player runs far better. I suspect that the xpdm drivers have some sort of failure to properly integrate and execute code passed by wmp using dx11. anything that runs its own internal codecs seems to run tons better. I've heard good things about VLC so some of you may wish to try that. I don't do much video on my system, but when i do i just boot to linux for now.