Annoyances X220 under Windows 10

[CometCKO]

I've been testing my X220 running Windows 10 for the past 3 days. For the most part, things seem to be working well. I'm still checking things like battery life and everyday usage.

One thing that continuously annoys me is the pointing stick actions. I have disabled the trackpad in BIOS ever since I purchased the X220 two years ago. So I use the pointing stick exclusively. It works fine in Windows 10 with the Synaptic drivers that were part of the upgrade. However, when I click on the task bar or the tray, every time a prompt box appears, it will disappear (go behind other windows) as soon as I move the mouse pointer off the task bar/tray. Alt-tab works differently in Windows 10, so I can't just alt-tab to the prompt. I've taken to hitting the tab key every time a prompt box appears, which can freeze the window so I can mouse over to it without it disappearing behind.

I think that whatever the mouse is hovering over is "live" and unless I only have a desktop, the mouse "switches" the live window to the full-screen app and the prompt or other non-maximized windows disappear. I've fiddled with mouse settings, but so far have not been able to solve this minor annoyance. It is most troubling when I click on the new start/search function from the task bar. As soon as I move the mouse to the search panel, it disappears! So it is unusable despite being a nice feature of Win10 as it works on another computer (my desktop computer).

Any suggestions for how to fix this? I'm going to try a different set of drivers, maybe see if older ones will work correctly. I'll report back if I solve it.

Other than that, not too many surprises. The Windows 10 64-bit Pro in-place upgrade went quite smoothly, taking about 1 hour over my wifi connection, with multiple reboots. Subsequent updates & downloads have fixed any small things that didn't work, all without any intervention on my part other than running update multiple times over the past 3 days since I upgraded.

Windows 10 loaded a "lenovo companion" that seems like a sales tool for lenovo. And lenovo updater loaded the lenovo bridge which also seems like it has no user benefits. I was using a Dolby sound driver instead of the factory sound driver and that no longer works under Win10. The conexant drivers result in inferior sound quality.

The function keys seem to work so far, although the computer now always boots up with the Bluetooth radio on, and I have to use the Fn-F5 to manually turn it off. It's possible there might be some BIOS issues, since I'm on BIOS version 1.38 using a Middleton whitelist-modified version for my Intel AC7260 WiFi card. I know the latest is version 1.40, but from the changelog it did not look like there was anything reported there that I need.

Most of the applications I've tried have worked flawlessly, altho first use is often laggy, but improves afterwards. I'm using several 32-bit programs, some of them quite old and they seem to be fine.

I'm still on the fence whether or not to stick with Windows 10. I've got an image of my original Windows 7 Pro to which I can return. It was certainly more comfortable not having to deal with surprises, but the up-side is that I'm learning a lot about settings and effects in Windows 10.

I'll report back as I progress, especially if I can solve the annoying flying/switching windows issue.

[CometCKO]

My problem with disappearing windows is Fixed! The poor pointing stick has multiple control programs giving it instruction. Windows seems to have mouse options, Lenovo has some more and there are some specialized Synaptic menus as well. I couldn't find one to solve a major issue I've had since upgrading to Windows 10.

The problem re-stated: Whenever I have multiple windows open and click a program on the task bar that does not open full-screen, the window disappears when I mouse over to it before I can interact with it. So the effect is I get a prompt box and then the little god in the computer snatches it away before I can click on it. "Fooled You!! Can't click on ME!"

Well, the solution was in an unusual place. I had to search for the "Ease of access center." when that opened, I could arrow down to the item "make mouse easier to use". Lo, and behold there is a command line for "make it easier to manage windows"
where you can UNCHECK the "Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse"

Finally! This seems to have fixed what was a major useability problem for me