Z61t running Windows 10 *photos*

[micrex22]

Finally finished installing Windows 10 on my Z61t at work. This installation was even easier as Windows 10 update found all of the drivers I didn't have to install a single thing (this is an intel mobo):
http://i.imgur.com/PAITpbI.png

Unlike the 2007 ATI FireGL driver on the T60p (which had to be manually installed), the intel driver is much newer on the Z61 from 2012.

This actually brings up a few questions, such as reverse desirability. If some of the intel boards have better driver support than the ATI boards (sacrificing performance in favour of driver compatibility), the intel ones may be more desirable as time goes on. Just a thought.

Windows 10 so far is very good, but one irritating thing is the fact that you can't choose a 'custom colour' when specifying a solid colour for your background:
http://i.imgur.com/Gw5HTe0.png

[oskidbear]

Hello micrex22,

Great to see that you've got Windows 10 running on your Z61t. Did you install 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 10?

I'm wavering between the two & would like to get a second opinion. Thank you.

Cyrus

[ZaZ]

I might do it on my notebook next month to see how it goes.

[micrex22]

Hello micrex22,

Great to see that you've got Windows 10 running on your Z61t. Did you install 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 10?

I'm wavering between the two & would like to get a second opinion. Thank you.

Cyrus

I installed x86 Windows 10 because I use the older Core Duo CPU in these laptops instead of the Core 2 Duo (for three reasons, #1 the Core Duos run a fair bit cooler, #2 x86 OSes generally use less RAM which is important when you only have 3 GB, #3 there's not much advantage of running x64 on a ThinkPad of this vintage unless you REALLY need x64 for something).

I might do it on my notebook next month to see how it goes.

I did notice on my T60p there seems to be some issues with it (the ATI drivers have some component which throttles the CPU to 80%). And sometimes the display doesn't work properly when first powered on, presumably due to the old driver. At any rate, the intel-GPU Z61t board works a lot better on Windows 10. ATI has always had poor drivers, which is a shame because of eyefinity and all.

[oskidbear]

Hello micrex22,

Did you notice any driver conflicts or disabled components in Device Manager?

After updating my Z61t from Win7 Ultimate x64 to Windows 10 Pro x64, both my IR port & my Ethernet ports were disabled. I haven't yet been able to find relevant drivers for these devices.

I'm already planning to perform a clean install of Windows 10 Pro x86 this weekend, but am still curious if others have had disabled devices on their Z61.

Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to provide.

[thinkpadcollection]

A concern is cost of ddr2 memory to upgrade to 4 even 8GB pairs.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[micrex22]

A concern is cost of ddr2 memory to upgrade to 4 even 8GB pairs.
Cheers, thinkpadcollection

DDR2 2GB sticks are thrown out by the bucket load daily (if you work in I.T., all of the vista and late XP laptops are being retired: many of wihch have DDR2 SODIMMs). Thankfully I am not short on these. 4 GB DDR2 SODIMMs are less common.

Hello micrex22,

Did you notice any driver conflicts or disabled components in Device Manager?

After updating my Z61t from Win7 Ultimate x64 to Windows 10 Pro x64, both my IR port & my Ethernet ports were disabled. I haven't yet been able to find relevant drivers for these devices.

I'm already planning to perform a clean install of Windows 10 Pro x86 this weekend, but am still curious if others have had disabled devices on their Z61.

Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to provide.

I have some random device not found (the mass storage controller), and my IR has a problem (although I am not sure how well Windows 10 supports infrared).
See here: http://i.imgur.com/d31Uy4m.png

I did not have any issues with Ethernet, Windows 10 found all of the drivers when I installed it (sans that random thing).

[GnatGoSplat]

I let my Z61t upgrade to Windows 10. Previously, I had Win7 on it and Lenovo System Update 4 kept all the Lenovo custom apps and drivers up-to-date.
After upgrading to Windows 10, System Update 4 didn't work, and neither did the Power Manager. I installed System Update 5 which seems to be the proper one for Windows 10 and it recognizes the model # and serial number of my ThinkPad, but there is an error. I forget the wording, but something about no packages being found for my machine.

Are there any Lenovo programs that still work under Win10 or are desirable? Power Manager is out, it doesn't work at all. HotKey w/Onscreen Display doesn't seem to work. I downloaded a newer one for Windows 10, probably designed for a newer ThinkPad. Installed fine, but didn't actually work (no OSD), so I uninstalled it. Found a newer Lenovo System Interface Driver, forget what that's supposed to do, but it didn't seem to do anything at all except clog up my task manager with a bunch of stuff running and doing nothing. I still have Lenovo Active Protection installed, but can no longer get to any screen that shows sensor status and whether it's working, so I have no idea if it's even working or just doing nothing.

Or are most of you just running without any Lenovo programs at all?

[TPFanatic]

I got Power manager installed by renaming the setup file to setup1.exe, from setup.exe, and running in Win7 compatibility mode. Power manager seems to work.

On Screen Display seems to be gone. I suppose I also have Active Protection System on my test machine, but I haven't verified it does anything either.

Since Z61t has intel graphics you shouldn't have any of the dealbreaking issues with Switchable Graphics that my T500 had with Win10, ie. failure to resume from screen timeout and lack of brightness control.

Apparently Win10 has worse battery life than Win7 because it will always be phoning home and wasting resources.

[GnatGoSplat]

The battery icon in the system tray of the Power Manager worked, but on bootup and anytime I accessed any of the options in the context menu, it would say "Power Manager has stopped". So Win7 compatibility mode makes all the options work? Guess I don't need Power Manager at the moment because my battery decided to crap out suddenly. Cells are good, but the board in the battery pack fried. What luck.

Nope, no issues with graphics. Brightness control works fine and Win10 has its own OSD for that if using the manual Fn brightness controls.

I wasn't able to use mine long enough to notice the worse battery life. I'm sure some of those things can be disabled, although I kind of like leaving Cortana enabled for answering trivial questions like "is it going to rain today?"

One thing I'm surprised about is nobody mentioned issues with wireless. My Wifi won't connect on a cold boot. I have to disable/enable it. To fix it, I had to write a .bat file using devcon.exe to disable/enable it, and a Task Scheduler task that triggers it on Power-Troubleshooter Event 1 (computer has returned from low-power state). I looked for newer/better drivers first, but couldn't find any.