Win 8 GA on a T60

[xcguy]

Loaded up the product release of Windows 8 on a Thinkpad T60p with an ATI Fire GL 5200 graphics card. Windows 8 loads a "basic vga" driver for this card. Seems to perform OK. However, the laptop power configurations report that it doesn't support Standby. Powercfg reports the issue is the graphics. Anyone else run into this problem? Is there a solution/workaround to making standby (sleep) work with the T60 and this graphics card?

[ri4naire]

I'm trying to run Windows 8 32 bit Pro on my old T60 but I'm not having any luck with the display drivers. I can only get a mirrored display out the VGA port. Can anyone elaborate on exactly which drivers they're using?

It's a 2637 T60 with the ATI Mobility Radeon x1400. I started with all the W8 drivers from the Lenovo site, I've tried adding Vista drivers like one person above mentioned, and then I tried the AMDDriverDownloader to try and get the Catalyst Control Program. The AMD auto-installer says there aren't any components for me to get, it doesn't even get past the Analyze stage, so I tried it in Vista SP2 compatability but still no go.

All I see in screen settings is a single monitor, nothing to extend desktop to. Any help would be appreciated, I hope it's something simple I've overlooked.

[J888www]

So far everything is working fine, my preference goes to Wins 8 Pro rather than my previous Wins 7 Ultimate.

I am interested if MS considers to support Windows 8 for T60/T61 series.

Why should MS support T60/T61 ?

Lenovo supports Windows 8, whether they continue to support Wins 8 is altogether another question. There's Systems Update 5.00.0019, Active Protection, Intel Chipset etc etc etc, but I wish they have support for Power Manager and the FireGL GPU............maybe given more time and it will become available in the future as it is still at a very early stage in regard to Wins 8.

To those who find it awkward navigating Wins 8, maybe creating Shortcuts for "Shutdown", "Restart" and "Sleep" on Desktop, change Icons [ (C:)>Windows>Systemss32>imageres.dll ] and then pin it to Start Screen for convenience would be helpful.
Also, create a "Search" Shortcut, rename to "All Apps" (change Icon if you so wish), pin to Taskbar (use as old Start button) and Start Screen, then delete this Desktop Shortcut.

[pianowizard]

To those who find it awkward navigating Wins 8, maybe creating Shortcuts for "Shutdown", "Restart" and "Sleep" on Desktop

Or just hit "Alt" and "F4", just like for all previous versions of Windows. If you are viewing an active window, then you need to click the Desktop area first, and then hit "Alt" + "F4", again, just like for all older versions of Windows.

Windows 8 is my favorite version of Windows of all time, beating both Vista and 7, though this does take into account its unprecedentedly low price. I got my copy for only $14.99 plus sales tax.

[DaElderGeek]

Windows 8 runs great on either a T60 or T61p with the following exception. With W8 RP Microsoft "broke" multi monitor support on the ATI FireGL V5250. Multi monitors worked fine on the T60 with both DP and CP. As for the Win8 tiled UI, it can be bypassed altogether.

My favorite solution is a free utility called "Pokki" (http://www.pokki.com). It completely restores all the start menu functionality and then some. To coin a phrase, it is altogether "insanely great". Even better, it's free. I now boot directly into the desktop and the only time I see the tiled UI is if I want to go there. With Pokki installed it is a much better OS than Win7.

There are also other options for restoring Start button functionality on a non-touch computer. One of them is "Start 8" published by Stardock. I used it on DP and CP and was totally happy with it. It was free prior to the release of Win 8 RTM. Now they want $5.00 for it. The price is very reasonable but Pokki is both better and free. There's also something else I tried called "Vi-Start" published by lee-soft.com. Like Pokki, it's free. It worked fine with DP, CP and RP. It restores a nearly exact duplicate of the Vista start menu. Since the RTM of Win 8 Vi-Start no longer starts automatically. I had to manually go to the desktop and execute it each time I booted. Now, with Pokki, I'm a happy camper and don't have to be bothered with tiles unless I choose to.

Hope this helps someone.

[J888www]

My favorite solution is a free utility called "Pokki"..........

Having tried this including a few others, I settled on a program called "Classic Shell" as I found this to be more similar to the old Start Menu of other versions of Windows, there is an option to choose from Wins Classic, Wins XP or Vista/Wins 7.

I do hope that Lenovo is supporting drivers and utilities for Windows 8 especially in the case of the ATI FireGL driver............it defeats the objective of updating the Systems Upddates for Wins 8 and then provide nothing else to update.

I have searched high and low, East and West and everywhere but to no avail, just cannot find a graphics driver which will install in Wins 8. Somehow, I have a suspicion that the issues of installing the GPU driver lies with Microsoft. Although I like Wins 8 very much, I am considering downgrading back to Wins 7 Ultimate as the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter is simply poo, it just doesn't work well enough.

[DaElderGeek]

. . . . .I do hope that Lenovo is supporting drivers and utilities for Windows 8 especially in the case of the ATI FireGL driver............it defeats the objective of updating the Systems Upddates for Wins 8 and then provide nothing else to update.

I have searched high and low, East and West and everywhere but to no avail, just cannot find a graphics driver which will install in Wins 8. Somehow, I have a suspicion that the issues of installing the GPU driver lies with Microsoft. Although I like Wins 8 very much, I am considering downgrading back to Wins 7 Ultimate as the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter is simply poo, it just doesn't work well enough.

When I had my T60p the Win 7 drivers wouldn't work, but I was able to install the Vista driver for the FireGL 5250 in Developer Preview and Consumer Preview. It would generate two errors on boot up but then it would work just fine. When I asked on ATI's support forum they wouldn't give me any help; just pointed me to Lenovo. When CRelease Preview came out the Vista hack no longer worked. That's when I made the somewhat dubious decision to upgrade to a T61p.