Installing Windows 8 on a T60

[rjashall]

I'm looking for links/advice on installing Windows 8 on a T60. I'm particularly interested in the situation with Drivers and also what to do about Rescue and Recovery. Is it right that it doesn't support Windows 8, and what does that mean in terms of the pre boot partition - do I not need to set one up?

Any advice much appreciated.

[hhmcsv]

Win8 installs itself, and I have not had any driver problems. However, a few utilities needs to be added manually, and I have learned to stay away from Lenovos System Update, which will install programs which will not run.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 01#p732201

[Norway Pad]

Be aware that most drivers, apart from those who are listed as compatible with Win8, needs to be installed in various kinds of compatibility modes. I don't use Rescue & Recovery, so don't know about that, but I made all Fn+Fx combos, etc. work. This is also the reason why System Update will mess things up.

There is also another thing you should keep in the back of your mind: Win8.1 will now be offered you as a free upgrade. In my case it turned out as a mistake to do this direct upgrade, as my T60 stopped working properly. However, other users report that this upgrade worked fine on their T60s, so I suspect that some driver incompatibility caused my issues. So I would almost suggest that you do the Win8.1 upgrade first, while you still have a clean Win8 install, and THEN install the drivers in your Win8.1 environment. That is the way I will try to do it, unless I am able to install and activate Win8.1 directly with my Win8 key. (There are instructions on how it can be done, but I can't verify that the described method will work)

[hhmcsv]

My experience was, for win8 and Win8.1.1 that no special drivers need to be installed, i.e. that a look on "device manager" after installation will most probably show no yellow exclamation marks on hardware not installed properly.
Another thing I forgot to mention is, that if your T60 is configured with the Intel 3945abg wireless card, this will not work properly under Win8. No errors on installation, but internet performance will be minuscule. Instead, buy and install a ATI card, I used this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-IBM-Ather ... OU:GB:3160

[Norway Pad]

You are right. When I said "drivers", I also included Lenovo system software. By definition, two different things. So most of the stuff I installed was actually system software and not drivers. I did however have a couple of unknown devices on my T60 after the Win8 install. I specifically remember that the Intel chipset driver was needed, don't remember the other one. So it could also have been incompatible system software, or even a random application, and not necessarily drivers that caused my issues with Win8.1.

[gordor]

By default you should get drivers for everything on the thinkpad when Win8 installs; I recommend putting in the Lenovo driver when a specific Win8 32 or 64 bit driver exists and only then. If you are running 64bit make sure all your drivers are 64bit same for 32bit. The Lenovo utilities don't work well if at all in Win8. I use Acronis home instead of rescue&recovery; this is a much better product and onsale it is cheap ~ $20. Also buy and install something like " Classic start8" to get a fully functional start button back. I have run 64bit 8 pro Since Dec 2012; just upgraded to 8.1 no issues.

[rjashall]

Thanks for all the advice, really useful stuff. I will see how it goes.