Windows 10 on Penryn X61

[Dekks]

I'm planning on building a X61 T8100 Penryn for Win 10. Anyone tried yet and found any gotchas?

[Billaboard]

I've fired up an X60T and put the W10 preview on it. Not had much time yet, but I've got the fingerprint reader working and the pen is fine. Not got to my interests in firewire audio yet.

I think it's worth a go, and potentially much better for me than 8.1.

[Dekks]

Good it seems to cover the basic hardware then from what your saying. How much ram is on your X60T?

[Billaboard]

I've just got 2GB in the X60T, as it's only a 32-bit processor. It doesn't seem slow (I'm currently trying to track down the problem on a slow X201 that I just acquired).

I seem to have one problem in that it doesn't remember tabs in either IE or PaleMoon (like Firefox) browsers or remember the multiple Desktops through a sleep period.

I've reported this, and another thing,which appears to have been dealt with by an update.

[FryPpy]

I have tested W10 last weekends on T61 with intel video and merom. Bad things - it haven't found my Video and when i click find in internet - W10 have reported: ....this is 965 video.... and it is not compatible with this version of Windows:(
Moreover brightness is at maximum after starting windows and not adjustable. When i press Fn+PgUp or Fn+PgDn graphical Windows slider appears and value have changed but LCD brightness stay at max:(
WHAT DRIVERS DID YOU USE?

PS
I had hoped that after the windows 8 windows 9 (тщц сфддув фы 10) will receive not only the Start menu but also the classic theme. But alas. And that makes me very disappointed. Six months ago it was rumored that the new windows will be available in 3 variants of the interface - a classic, business and new - in the end I did not notice any change except that stupid start menu made ​​from the Metro start screen. I think that the "Windows 8.2" is the right name for this version of windows.

[Billaboard]

My X60T with Intel 645 seems to work fine as a basic display. The resolution is 1024 x 768. I gather that lower resolutions will not work.

The drivers are all as installed natively with W10 except for the fingerprint driver, so I didn't expect the osd to work, but Fn + Delete and Fn + Home show the osd and the brightness does follow the display.

I have now encountered some weirdness in the fingerprint operation. It appears as if there is some Microsoft fingerprint code interfering with the Lenovo driver. It usually works, but sometimes fails.
I have also been chasing odd effects with Sleep. Yesterday, it failed to restore multiple desktops when awakened. Today it doesn't. But today it does not sleep at the time set in Power Options.

I suspect that Microsoft is producing updates on the hoof. This is pre-beta software, so this is not unexpected.

The new start menu seems to me quite usable and a huge improvement over the awful W8.1. One can revert to the separate Metro start screen if you prefer, but I certainly would not want to even when working in tablet mode.

W10 does continue the pressure to log on with a Microsoft account. Many have complained about this on the preview forum.

[mallanbell]

x61t:(specs from memory, been awhile)5gm ram, n intel wifi, middleton bios, OCZ vertex II SSD.

Kinda of impressed with win10 performance. I had just taken the machine to win8 a few weeks ago, so hadn't really loaded any apps. The machine is just a hobby.
Everything seems to work, although I haven't loaded/tried fingerprint. Fingerprint has always been wonky for me anyway, so I don't use it. Screen rotation buttons took a bit, there is a thread outlining the steps to 'right click/install' on the inf in the driver dir.

I haven't tried to get auto-rotate working yet.

And I agree with Billaboard; the new start button is very usable compared to 8.

Overall first few hours: win10 better/faster than 8 on the x61t.

[Dekks]

late last night i loaded the 32bit preview on the T8100 X61 2GB 250GB SATA 1 machine [7674VXV] in SATA compatibility mode and it booted fine although the video controller wasn't identified along with a mysterious PCI memory controller which popped up in device manager. WiFi came up fine as did the Ethernet and Sound system and it installed the Lenovo trackpoint driver.

Next I downloaded the Middleton BIOS and installed that and rebooted after setting the BIOS SATA setting to AHCI. With this W10 failed to boot twice and I had to refresh the installation with the DVD. I guess it figured out the SATA 2 change as eventually it booted after re detecting the hardware. This time it detected the Intel SATA controller and the x3100 video. Still missing was the PCI memory device. After a bit of probing around with HW utilities it turned out the missing item was a Intel Turbo Memory card, must admit I've never seen one of those before on a X61. Never expected it on a late Penryn model that's for sure. So off to the Intel site for the driver which installed the Intel chipset driver and the Robson driver in Win 7 mode which now showed up as Disk 0. Added a USB Bluetooth dongle and rebooted and everything came back up without a hitch. Shut the lid and left it in sleep mode overnight.

It didn't make it out of sleep as the wifi wouldn't wake up so had to reboot. Bluetooth picked up my FSL360 headphones paired OK but Win10 said it hadn't - another reboot. My standby utilities all went on fine 7zip,VLC,compact CPU meter and TPFC all installed without problem.

First Impressions - W10 runs just as well as 8.1 on older hardware with smaller amounts of RAM, it picked up my WiFi router and the MyCloud NAS + the Canon MG4200 series multifunction that are connected to the router without any prompting. As far as the Start window goes I don't mind the tiles but I'll probably get rid of them in time, and its feedback app has already worked out I prefer device manager to the Metro PC settings app.

[Cigarguy]

late last night i loaded the 32bit preview on the T8100 X61 2GB 250GB SATA 1 machine [7674VXV] in SATA compatibility mode and it booted fine although the video controller wasn't identified along with a mysterious PCI memory controller which popped up in device manager. WiFi came up fine as did the Ethernet and Sound system and it installed the Lenovo trackpoint driver.

Next I downloaded the Middleton BIOS and installed that and rebooted after setting the BIOS SATA setting to AHCI. With this W10 failed to boot twice and I had to refresh the installation with the DVD.

Installing the OS in compatibility mode then switching to AHCI will typically cause boot failure.

[Dekks]

Installing the OS in compatibility mode then switching to AHCI will typically cause boot failure.

Yes not a surprise, but refreshing the hardware fixed it.

A CSR USB bluetooth V4 dongle works fine with AD2P although it seems to be missing aptX.

Only hit 2 issues in last 48hrs, the Intel 4965AG chipset was never coming out of sleep, it was having to be reset by windows to bring it up. Installing the latest Lenovo win7 driver in compatibility mode sorted that issue. That leaves the failing web feedback app, which fails miserably printing 2 messages on top of each other creating an unholy mess. Think the reason the app fails is the servers are busy, but the web app looks to have been programmed by a 5 yr old, sorry to 5yr olds.

[Pete B]

I've fired up an X60T and put the W10 preview on it. Not had much time yet, but I've got the fingerprint reader working and the pen is fine. Not got to my interests in firewire audio yet.

I think it's worth a go, and potentially much better for me than 8.1.

I'm wondering if you ever got around to trying Firewire Audio on your Win 10 system?

I skipped the whole Win 8/8.1 thing and tried Win 10 on a Penryn Santa Rosa based system - not a thinkpad, and I really like it, seems _much_ more efficient than Win7 when playing HD videos.
Note that it does not find video drivers on installation, or if you have it look for Driver updates in device manager, but then after a few MS updates it _did_ find the MS video driver updates for Nvidia.

I want to try Win10 on my X61s and I want to use it for some firewire Audio work also, wondering how you made out.