Windows 7 on t4x generation - whats's your verdict?

[netzspannung]

So, guys, there does NOT seem to be a lot of enthusiasic comments regarding windows 7 on t4x machines. I need to decide wheter or not to upgrade soon,
I am currently running XP and need decent graphic performance for watching movies, flash video and Lightroom

My machine is a t42 15" sxga, 2gb ram, radeon 9600 64mb.
People are said to run Aero interface with this config just fine on RC beta, BUT:
I understand that since win7 Beta AMD has moved the Radeon drivers to 'legacy' status. Can I expect Aero functions to work on my machine with RTM?

My other machine is a t41 14" xga, 1gb ram, radeon 7500. While this will certainly not support aero, wil Win7 run significantly slower than XP on that?

Your real, current experience would be much appreciated.

[netzspannung]

Cmon, people... not a single reply. Has anyone tried win7 on t42? Is it noticeably slower than XP?

[GomJabbar]

I installed Windows 7 Professional on a second hard drive for my T42. It seems faster than Vista. I have been considering migrating what I can to Windows 7 and making it my primary OS, but I have been too busy to get started on that. I have the same T42 as you. Windows 7 does provide a video driver on Microsoft Update for the ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 after you install Windows 7. Sorry I can't answer your other questions atm.

I really haven't given Windows 7 Professional a good workout yet to have much to say about it. On my T42 I installed Windows 7, Mandriva Linux 2010 KDE, and Fedora Linux 12 Gnome all in the past week or so - spread across 2 hard drives. I still have XP Professional and Vista Ultimate installed on 2 different hard drives for my T42. I also installed Mandriva 2010 XFCE on a ThinkPad 600E a couple of days ago. Too many operating systems to spend much time on any of them.

[GomJabbar]

I just booted Windows 7 on my T42, and Aero does work. Videos seem to play ok afaict. Haven't tried any HD videos.

[netzspannung]

Great, now this is something. The graphics driver (or lack thereof) is what I fear the most..
I understand that you are using the drivers from windows update. Does monitor switching work? I take it that there is no ATI control panel present?

[GomJabbar]

No ATI Control panel. It looks like it would connect to an external display. I can try it in a couple of days.

[GomJabbar]

Just tried it with an external XGA display (ThinkPad has SXGA+ display). Works fine. There are 4 options: Computer only (ThinkPad), Duplicate, Extend, and Projector only. I tried Extend and both monitors were displayed at their native resolution. I could drag a video window to the right and bring it to the external monitor.

[snabjab]

I'm curious to know what I might be doing wrong regarding Win7 drivers with my T42 with Radeon 9600. I have a screen flickering issue covered in the following two threads:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=61937

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=79721

To sum up my problem (in case you don't want to bother with the above threads), sometimes my video works fine, other times it flickers. To solve the problem I need to switch between video modes (using Windows key + P) until it is resolved.

Is this possibly some quirky issue that affects some machines and not others? Or am I somehow not using the ideal driver? Any tips would be hugely appreciated since I would love to continue using Win7 on this machine and at this point the video issues are pushing me back to XP.

[GomJabbar]

I haven't noticed any flickering. I installed a clean copy of Windows 7 Professional and went to Windows Update to get the video driver. I got all the other drivers from Lenovo. My BIOS is updated to the latest version.

If you did the same as I did above, then I would assume that either you have a different display panel and/or inverter (or an older panel), or your eyes are more sensitive than mine. IIRC, I had my display replaced under warranty about a year ago.

[snabjab]

Many thanks. At this point I'm thinking this is a hardware problem unlikely to have a driver solution. The flickering I'm experiencing isn't something that one could overlook - it's very obvious and quite maddening.

I'd just go back to XP at this point except that the Win7 default photo viewer makes some of my work with documents quite a bit more convenient than the old XP version. Might be time for a T400...

Thanks again!

[TTA]

I installed it on a r50p UXGA with the 128MB video card. it seemed pretty snappy and Areo worked.
I don't think I'd try it on a 64MB, 32MB or Intel graphics chipset T4x or R5x series

[snabjab]

I have to say that Win7 runs very nicely on my T42 (1.8, 2gb RAM, Radeon 9600) in every way but this video issue. And since the video issue is a pain only insofar as it happens about 60% of the time when I start up the machine and I can take care of it without too much trouble, I'd call the T42 + Win7 combo a success.

[thinkpad1]

Can someone tell me how their experince is on a T41?

Would it be worth it to change to Windows 7 from XP?

How is W7 with the Mobile Radeon 9000 (RV250)? Does W7 support all the features or maybe not Aero?

I was curious if you install Vista drivers for most of the drivers? I can investigate but maybe someone could confirm?

Which thread(s) should I follow if installing Windows 7 is a good idea?

I was just curious. I'm using XP for now.

[T400plus]

I am going to attempt on my historical T41 2374 with 1.5 Gb memory and a new segate 120 GB (?160 GB ) HD.
I know I cant dream of aero,
but anything better than a XP will do. All I do is browse THE NET,play sudoku,and use VS2008 .NO Databases of any kind.only flat RAW bytes .

[Tasurinchi]

Can someone tell me how their experince is on a T41?

Not on a T41, but I've installed Win7 RC on a R50 and I'm using Win7 Ultimate in my X31 (details below in my signature). I don't think that specs deviate so much from your T41, probably your specs are better than the R50 I used and surely better than my X31.

My experience is that Win7 is working great in both machines, but without Aero (no big deal for me, I can't understand the Aero Hype ) I can do everything I could do before with XP and to me it seems to run faster (but have no benchmarks done to prove that). For sure it boots faster.

I was curious if you install Vista drivers for most of the drivers?

You don't need that. Lenovo's System Update and Windows Update will install all Win7 drivers you need.

[Tasurinchi]

My other machine is a t41 14" xga, 1gb ram, radeon 7500. While this will certainly not support aero, wil Win7 run significantly slower than XP on that?

I don't think so. I don't have a maschine like yours, but in my X31 (with a slower graphic card than yours) Win7 seems to run faster than XP. But I cannot give you a benchmark, it's just my perception. In my current config, Win7 is working great and I don't feel I've given up speed or responsivness.

[svet-am]

I've been running Windows 7 Pro on my T43 (2668-92U) off and on since release. Aero works and the ThinkVantage System Update tool gets everything else installed/set up. For clicking around inside the OS and such, it's just fine. I haven't done any official benchmarks, but performance in loading things like Office and web browsers seems a bit more sluggish than in XP.

I _did_ do some performance measurements regarding 3D performance and 3D applications run more slowly with Windows 7 installed. For the long term, I'm planning to move back to XP permanently.

As always, you're mileage may vary but this is my experience.

[cs98sss4]

I've installed Windows 7 on my T41p and prefer it more than Vista. As it runs faster
You can get all drivers to work only problem I see is the 50Hz on the screen as opposed to the native 60Hz.
Other than that its a perfect upgrade from XP providing all your software will work.

[Tasurinchi]

Im still deciding what to put in my still-to-arrive T43p, probably a double boot with Win7 and Linux just for the sake of comparison. At the end I'll leave one OS only.

I will come back here with my comments regarding Win7, but I expect it to work fine. I'm happy with Win7 in my X31 and the T43p is a huge lap in terms of specs.

Cheers

[T400plus]

better than xp .Avoid special effects of imaging like transparency ..else..what works with xp sp3
will be dirty with widows 7.
some mfc controls like open file dialog have unwanted behavious in string display.
[1600 MHZ T41 ,1.5 GB memory, 160 Gb 5400 rpm HD,..]

[dgyee]

Windows 7 works great on my T40 with 2gb ram. Of course Aero does not work. All works great and I think it runs faster than Vista Business which is on one of my removeable hard drives. My only problem is with my Microsoft Life Cam NX6000 which doesn't work under Vista or Windows 7. I'm hoping that there are updated video drivers some place. I can't find any video drivers after 2003. Any thoughts out there??

[louischow192]

I'm curious to know what I might be doing wrong regarding Win7 drivers with my T42p with ATI FireGL T2. I have a screen flickering issue covered in the following two threads:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=61937

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=79721

To sum up my problem (in case you don't want to bother with the above threads), sometimes my video works fine, other times it flickers. To solve the problem I need to switch between video modes (using Windows key + P) until it is resolved or to reboot window. Both action sometime work sometime does not.
Moreover, I get an unknown device under the other device of device manager and win 7 could not know what is the device and provide a driver for that. II wonder who have the same issue as mine after clean installation upgrade to win 7 home Premium.


Is this possibly some quirky issue that affects some machines and not others? Or am I somehow not using the ideal driver? Any tips would be hugely appreciated since I would love to continue using Win7 on this machine and at this point the video issues and the unknown device are pushing me back to XP.

[snabjab]

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=79721

If you follow the above link you'll see that I eventually solved my problem. I can't tell you exactly which drivers I used. Even if I could, I'm not sure it would help since I somehow got them to work only on my second attempt installing them. Basically I have no idea how I fixed the problem except that I used some older drivers I found by googling my problem and perusing other problem solving boards.

That said, my Win7 experience isn't exactly perfect and I'm not sure if this is due to faulty video drivers or that my system just isn't powerful enough. Everything works OK, it's just a little sluggish. Performance is sufficient for me to stick with Win7 but I'm looking forward to a hardware upgrade more than I ever was back when I still had XP installed. Of course I like the new Win7 functionality so much that I'm reluctant to switch back. All in all a bit of a mixed bag.

[snabjab]

I should also mention that another reason why I can't say which drivers worked is that I tried so many. A very frustrating process.

[louischow192]

Hi Snabjab,

Did you have the problem of the unknown device after upgrade to win7? or snyone have the same issues as mine ( flicker lcd and unknown device).

Any ideas and how to get the drivers ( video and unknown device) to solve the issues?

[snabjab]

Hi Louis,

I didn't have any unknown device issues so I'm not sure what's going on by you. It's a little strange that people have such varying manifestations of the same basic problem. Clearly Mobility Modder has worked for some but it certainly didn't work for me.

Your best bet for finding a working driver is just to spend a few hours doing the grunt work of googling and perusing other forums where people have tips, possibly with an eye toward trying out older drivers or even other ATI drivers that don't seem a perfect fit. It's grasping at straws but it just might work.

I wish I'd made sure to remember which one worked for me, but as I mentioned it was a botched install and I was downloading different drivers pretty frenetically. There's no way I can isolate which driver I'm currently using and somehow make it available to you, is there?

What I can find out by checking the driver properties in Device Manager is the following:
Version: 8.561.0.0
Date: 12/1/2008

[louischow192]

Hi Snabjab,


Thanks for your reply. I did try to find the answer from different win 7 forums to find out the video flicker solution. However, It is hard to troubleshooting the issue. I try most of the suggestion, however, none are work so far.

I do not know what is the problem of it , hardware or driver ? Did you think the issue is caused by the driver problem? If that is the case I should seek for ati support for the updated driver.

You mentioned the Version: 8.561.0.0 you use. Is it come from ati support site ?

Anyway, Any further idea I could try, please let me know.

Thanks

[snabjab]

I don't think you'll get receive help from Lenovo or ATI. Your best bet is to find a driver that works for your system.

The driver I mentioned is the one that I'm currently using. Perhaps you should try searching for that one and see if it works.

[louischow192]

Hi Snabjab,

I find one by google. However, it is for Asus notebook for ati 9700. could you recall whether it is the one? Do yo think I could try it?


http://www.downloadplex.com/Drivers/Dis ... 55889.html


Thanks

[GomJabbar]

Try running Windows Update. That may find the missing driver on your system. In my case, the Intel 2200BG driver came from Windows Update. Also the display driver did, but I have the ATI Mobility Radeon 9600.

Be sure and install the Lenovo System Interface Driver, the ACPI Power Management Driver, and the Ultranav Driver for your T4x. The Thinkvantage Active Protection System (Hard Drive Protection) and Hotkey Features driver are also useful. The driver matrix page shows Vista, but when you click on the links for the driver it shows Windows 7 as well.

When you download and execute the driver from Lenovo, it is extracted to C:/Drivers/. From there you have to run setup.exe from each subfolder to actually install the drivers.