T61: Experience installing Windows 10 Technical Preview

[richmo]

My T61 running Windows 7 was getting slow...really slow. Probably 15 minutes to fully boot, sometimes minutes loading a web page. I know its a good idea to rebuild a system now and then, but I probably have a good 5 years on it since doing that, so no surprise it was running that bad. I decided a month or so ago that once I finished taxes, it was time to see if I could revive it or time for a new computer.

My original thought was going to Windows 8.1, then eventually get the upgrade to 10. I figured if the T61 couldn't handle the upgrades, I could always go back to Windows 7. But from what I've been hearing, recent builds of the Windows 10 Technical Preview are quite good, so I decided to give that a try.

Before making you read on, I will say that this all went surprisingly well.

My next decision was whether to go for the 32 bit version or 64. I had been running 32 bit Windows 7 and I only have 2 Gb RAM in the T61, so in some ways, the 32 bit version makes sense. But, I figured I'd go for broke and install the 64 bit Windows 10. If it completely fell on its face, I could always try the other.

Since my old system was so messed up, I decided to do a full install, wiping out all applications and data. Made a list of what applications I wanted to reinstall and backed up data that I wanted to keep.

Went to the Microsoft site, downloaded the 64 bit Win 10 Technical preview and created a DVD from the ISO file.

I had read where some had display and other problems getting Win 10 working. I did not. I think a mistake some make is performing the initial install expecting Wifi to just "work". I normally use the T61 wireless, but for this install I found an Ethernet cable and hooked it directly up to the router before turning the laptop on. I don't know for sure, but I would definitely recommend the wired hookup as I saw plenty of LED flashing on the Ethernet port as the install went on. I would guess that some of that is Windows setup going out to Microsoft servers to get appropriate device drivers, which could very well include the built-in Wifi.

The install went fine and eventually Windows 10 came up. It seemed a little sluggish at first, but once I used it a few minutes it seemed to perform better. Even though I was hard-wired, I could see the Wifi bars at the bottom of the screen and clicking on them showed the list of Wifi devices I usually see. Sound seemed fine, the laptop display looked good, trackpad worked fine as well as the pointing stick. Opened up Internet Explorer and downloaded Firefox, which also worked fine.

Then I shut it down, disconnected the Ethernet cable and fired it up again to see if Wifi worked. It did, as expected. Shut down again, then put it in the ThinkPad docking station. Started up again. Wifi again fine, the external mouse (Microsoft wireless) worked right away as well as external speakers. My HP Photosmart printer was recognized and drivers loaded without me having to manually load HP drivers. The only gotcha was that the external Acer display came up Standard VGA with no visible way to change it. I went into Windows Update, let it do another set of updates and shut down again. When I started up again, the Acer was recognized and I had the enhanced resolution.

Since I've installed a few applications that I use (Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, GnuCash, etc.) and they all seem to run fine. Overall, the laptop is performing much better than it had been and it is definitely not headed for the garbage heap. I was surprised that the 64 bit Win 10 worked at all. In fact, I've just ordered 2 2Gb SODIMMs, so I'll be running 4Gb shortly.

The only problem I've had so far is that sometimes the video mode will switch from the 1600x900 resolution as an Acer device to the default (800x600?) resolution, listing the device as Generic VGA. No idea why that's happening. Could be a Windows bug or maybe this is a result of me running with only 2Gb of memory. In any event, restarting the laptop corrects the problem without having to go into the Screen Resolution window.

Of course, since I did a full install, the "ThinkVantage" button doesn't do anything and the ThinkPad and Lenovo apps that come with the system are not present. I never remember using them anyway, so no great loss.

One other thing: when I opened up Internet Explorer, a popup window explained the presence of the 'Project Spartan' browser and even showed the icon to click to run it. I have yet to see Spartan show up. I use Firefox (or Chrome) most of the time anyway, but I'd like to check out Spartan at some point.

That's about it. I'm happy to be fully operational other than very minor glitches

[Norway Pad]

Hello and welcome to the forum. Good job on the T61 there.

The only problem I've had so far is that sometimes the video mode will switch from the 1600x900 resolution as an Acer device to the default (800x600?) resolution, listing the device as Generic VGA. No idea why that's happening. Could be a Windows bug or maybe this is a result of me running with only 2Gb of memory. In any event, restarting the laptop corrects the problem without having to go into the Screen Resolution window.

That's because you have no proper graphics driver installed, nothing to do with memory. The generic Microsoft graphic drivers seems to have problems picking up an external monitor like this. And any graphics performance or graphics functions you might have had will be somewhat crippled. In my experience all these newer OSs work fine on the older laptops - until you try to install some of their specific drivers that aren't compatible with anything newer than Win7. Particularly graphics drivers. They seem to have a tendency to mess things up, and it's at that point that these new OSs becomes a challenge, like you read about.

In the case of your T61, you didn't say if you have nVidia or Intel graphics. But if you go to the Win10 section of this forum, I think there is a post there indicating that one user successfully installed his T61 nVidia graphics drivers in Win10. So it can be worth a try. But make sure to create a restore point and a recovery USB key first, unless you fancy doing the whole install over again. A non-compatible graphic driver can make your install lock up with no other way back than reverting to a restore point. Or don't do anything. If you have no problems with graphics performance, and you can live with the minor glitches, maybe it's best kept like it is.

[Shredder11]

It would be interesting to know the full specifications of your T61, just so we know how much CPU and GPU power you have. I find that the older Windows 7 Pro works very fast and smooth on my Z61p (T60p more or less), which is slightly older than your T61. However I do have a Intel SSD drive in my Win 7 Z61p machine, the other Z61p models I have use slow old style physical drives.

[richmo]

Thanks for your replies and suggestions. I'll look up the specs the next time I fire it up. I know there were several flavors to the T61 and without looking, I couldn't tell you which one I have. It is unmodified since the factory...I have not yet added memory or gone to an SSD.

Mine also ran Windows 7 fine for quite a long time, but as most computers do, performance eventually degraded as applications were added.

[Morten]

Another gotcha is that without a proper graphics driver, sleep mode may not work. That was the case with T4x discrete-GPU laptops and windows 7 as I recall. Sleep mode, if do want to use it again, should be high on your list of things to test out under windows 10. Good luck, and thanks for sharing!

[T0ni_T61]

I have successfully installed and use the NVidia graphic drivers (latest version 341.61 dated 5/5/15) on Win10 64bit (build 10074) I am testing on a 5 year old Lenovo T61 laptop

NVidia driver site identified a Quadro driver – and documents on:

http://psref.lenovo.com/WithdrawnBook#

confirmed the laptop has a Quadro NVS 140M chip.

Not unsurprisingly the driver works better than the generic driver obtained during the original install. Eg the laptop now plays HD m2t, AVI…files at full 1400x900 native screen resolution.

T

[l00nix]

Installed Windows 10 preview on my T61 7659-A71 - Intel Graphics Adapter 965. All worked out of the box including networking (wifi) and display. Only change I made to the machine was I added an SSD drive.

After the install I had two "System Base Devices" in the Device manager which I solved by googeling and finding this page https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T61-and-pr ... d-p/187894.

In that discussion reference is made to the "Ricoh Memory Stick Host Controller" and downloading and installing the 7kss55ww.zip driver solved the issue.

I found it here http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... ss55ww.zip.

Pretty cool to be able to run Win10 on this "older" machine. Performance seems ok so far.

Cheers

l00nix