Are you running a W530 with Windows 11?

[mraroid]

Hello friends....

When I started looking for a W530 to buy on ebay, I saw three that were running Windows 11. Because I already own a Lenovo T480 running Windows 11, I just guessed that since the W530 was a newer laptop (?) that it could also run Windows 11.

After I bought a W530, I found out that officially, it was not made to run Windows 11. By the time I found that out, only one W530 running Windows 11 was for sale on ebay. The price was way, way over the top, so the laptop was not for me. But I sent the seller email asking him how was the install to Windows 11 as I had read that the W530 did not support it. He sent me a short answer and said it was a very easy install.

I really wanted to buy this W530 for a friend who is starting collage. I can do computer stuff like pull the heat sync, remove the old thermal paste & re install the heat sync. Officially (from Lenovo) the W530 can only take 32 GBs of RAM, but I found out it can take 64. I like the fact that the CPU is in a socket so I am going to upgrade it. I know that the Nvidia GPU was offered in two versions - the K1000M and the K2000M. The post from the seller of my W530 said the Nvidia GPU was 2 GBs, so I mistakenly thought the GPU was the K2000M. My mistake - My bad as it only has the K1000m GPU in it. Ger! But it is all my fault for not digging deep enough before I bought it.

Anyway, long story shorter, has anyone here installed Windows 11 on your W530? And if so, will it (so far) update itself?

If anyone here is running your W530 with Windows 11, please drop me a line here and give me some advice on how to do this, or direct me to a web site for info.

Many thanks to all on this forum who have helped me. I almost bought a T530 rather then the more capable W530, but advice here saved my butt. Thank you!

In addition to the 64 GB upgrade, I also found Lenovo branded internal blu-ray reader & burners available on ebay for the W530 (Note: the same internal blu-ray burner/reader will fit the T430).

If anyone needs the link to the 64 GB memory, I can post a URL to Amazon where I bough it.

Any help with Windows 11 greatly appreciated.

mraroid

[jonnyc]

w530Hi I installed win 11 yesterday on my W530 and all installed fine, however i have tried to install it a number of times and always failed saying unsupported device, however if you build your usb boot drive with rufus it removes the limitation and installs, also after install it went off and got the updates.

Hope this helps.

[my03]

This post is interesting: https://dongknows.com/steps-for-windows ... -hardware/

it also shows how to use OS tooling to do it.

[TPFanatic]

I have a W530 running Windows 10 22H2.

Can you please elaborate on the "64GB memory"? I can see listings on eBay for alleged 16GB SODIMMs for $100 each or so. $400 is a lot to drop on an old workstation. And according to prior threads, they won't work with the QM77 chipset. https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=131297

According to this lenovo forum response, https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P ... -p/3274613 the 16GB sticks are only supported by Intel 5th gen and newer, eg. the T450. Also confirmed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comme ... gb_of_ram/

If you want big memory you gotta go P-series with DDR4.

[RealBlackStuff]

Bad idea to send someone to college with a 10-year old heavy schlepp-top.

[kfzhu1229]

I put Windows 11 on my T520 on the 256GB mSATA SSD. It performs perfectly fine, nice and snappy.
I do think though that 64GB of RAM on sandy and ivy bridge machine is complete overkill. 32GB of RAM is overkill already and 16GB of RAM is plenty for these. These older laptops hardware don't use as much system resources for the hardware and drivers and so on and its RAM usage tends to be significantly less than say a 12th gen machine, like even 8GB of RAM ages a lot better on a T520 than it does on the latter, and 8GB of RAM is even more plenty for Core 2 duo machines.

[Sandmanpilot83]

Could someone share the link for the 64gb ram for the w530?