560z / Windows XP

[georg.hauer]

Hi,

i still have a very old Thinkpad 560z (Type 2640-B00) running. Currently with Windows 95B.

Have anyone experience to upgrade this TP to Windows XP?

The latest BIOS-Level refers to Windows 2000 only.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... SHY-3YTKKV

As i'm fearing to crash the system, i'm interested to get some insight whether it's possible and what's the best way to upgrade.
Thanks
Greetings from Germany.

[jdhurst]

It's probably not going to work. A number of earlier ThinkPads that came with Windows 98 (you said yours came with Windows (95) were designed with Windows 2000 in mind and would work well with Windows 2000. I did a number of such conversions on various models of ThinkPads.

But XP requires a machine certified for its use to work properly. Your machine was not so certified, so I very much doubt you would be happy with such a conversion.
... JD Hurst

[pianowizard]

I used to have a TP240 with 300MHz Celeron (slower than your 300MHz PII) and 192MB PC66 memory (faster than your EDO), and it ran WinXP Pro just fine. A bit slow, but it never crashed. If you have the maximum amount of memory supported (192MB), it's worth a try. As JD pointed out, you might experience problems, but you might not.

[jdhurst]

I, too, converted a TP 240 to Windows XP. It was my first foray into XP. It ran, but slowly, and not well. The power management function did not work properly. It was also in 2001 and XP was new so there was lots else that did not work. Today is different, so your experience might be different. ... JD Hurst

[jflores]

I tried that last night.
It worked ! Only 80 minutes to install
All hardware has been automatically recognized, incredible.
Way to upgrade was installing Win98SE, connect a portable drive bay 2000 thru PCMCIA (drivers are on IBMs site).
As far as it is a legit copy of win98SE (with serial), XP simply upgrades automatically, no questions asked !

performance is pretty good, thanks to a 128 MB EDO memory SO-DIMM I found on eBay (which leads to a grand total of 196MB, which _is_ enough for XP)
The hard disk is slow and noisy (10GB travelstar) however, and slows paging down. I will retry that very soon with a 60GB, 7200rpm travelstar. Just for the heck of it and see how far the 560z is useable with XP.

As a sidenote : installing win98SE and the required patches, fixes, drivers was a real PITA. But I did not suspect XP would run so well !
Also, keep in mind the 560z does not allow (as far as I know) booting on a CD-Rom Drive, be it USB or PCMCIA.

Now I have an ultra light weight notebook for xp
Hope this helps !
Joscelyn

[pianowizard]

The hard disk is slow and noisy (10GB travelstar) however, and slows paging down. I will retry that very soon with a 60GB, 7200rpm travelstar. Just for the heck of it and see how far the 560z is useable with XP.

Please let us know how much improvement you get with that 7200rpm drive. I bet it'll be very noticeable.

[x3ss]

ANY windows runs on any pentium compatible pc/laptop [codewise]
the limitations are set only by the ram and microsoft that puts checks on hardware before instalation of windows.
windows xp should run even on the slowest pentium cpu [75mhz] but you will need at least 128 mb of ram to actually do something with that pc.
even driver support is built in because the microsoft team puts all the drivers from the last version of windows in to the new one for compatibility reasons and for ease of use: you put an old sound/video/network/pci/isa card in your windows xp pc and it works after bootup.
so you can try and fit XP on any pc/laptop you have around that has at least an intel pentium 1 cpu or compatible.
you can use nLite to slim down an windows xp install CD or use an already slimmed down version of windows XP SP2 that flyes around the net.

C.

[jflores]

OK, I put a 7200rpm, 60gb travelstar into my 560z to see how much it would improve boot-up and general functioning with Windows XP SP2 installed.

Wow. This thing FLIES !

Boot time with old & noisy , 4200rpm drive was 2mn from switch on to the windows XP desktop (including 30 seconds POST).

Boot time with the 7200rpm drive was 1 minute overall - which, excluding the 30 second POST, results in only 30 seconds.

Better yet, although the 560Z has a 8GB boot partition size limit, you can still benefit from the 52 other GB by creating a second partition with Windows XP as an added bonus - and without HDD overlay or disk manager, which makes things compicated

I couldn't believe a 10-year old Thinkpad would be useable at that point. I have learned a lot. Therefore I will give a word of advice to anyone trying to do the same.

Previous install was somewhat hectic and long : I installed Windows 98SE and then Windows XP using a PCMCIA Portable Drive Bay CD reader - which is LONG : 80 minutes, once you have solved the win98 driver & interrupt conflict issue (a nightmare to solve)

I did the new install using my old faithful Thinkpad 600X, which was a breeze simply changing the drives. Once installed, I put it again in the 560z and voilà

Anyone knows what the lowest limits for Windows NT, 2000 and XP are regarding CPU and RAM ? I am wondering if my Thinkpad 701C would accept Windos NT 4 or Windows 2000...

Joscelyn

[pianowizard]

ANY windows runs on any pentium compatible pc/laptop

Except for Vista, which won't even let you install unless you have at least 512MB of RAM.

[x3ss]

@pianowizard:
this is because microsoft put a software check in the installer as they put in the widows Me setup, it won't install if you have an CPU smaller than 150mhz.
so again the system requirements are a software limit not a real hardware limit like in videocards and games.

PS: i actually installed vista on my T23with only 384mb of ram! it wasn't flying but it worked

[georg.hauer]

Hi all,
i tried last night as well and it worked.
Many thanks to Joscelyn

I used a 560z, currently with 96MB RAM and 6GB Harddisk.

The following steps are required
BIOS update to the last level ieet29ww (1.07)
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... SHY-3YTKKV

I had to update from Windows 95 to Windows 98 - as the XP-Installationprocedure wasn't starting properly. This may be a problem of the CD-ROM is used. Which is a 1969-010 CD-ROM, connected via PCMCIA.
The tricky part has been to create a boot disk for Windows 98, which supported this CD-ROM.
The site of Philip Semanchuk provides some useful background for this - including driver for the 1969-010 drive.
http://www.semanchuk.com/philip/560ZInstall.html

Next step was to run a WindowsXP command-line installation - which copies the installation files from CD to the hard disk and run afterwards the XP Setup Program.
To do so, you need to access the XP-cd-rom, switch to the i386 directory (cd \i386)
and start winnt


At the end it worked - XP is running, all extensions like CD-ROM, USB or PCMCIA Wireless Network Card have been recognised ... the system isn't as fast
but sufficient as ultra light laptop, to have some internet access or office work when traveling.

Next step will be to look for some more RAM.

Greetings from Germany
Georg

[dsvochak]

At times in the past I've had both W2K and XP installed on a 560Z with a 233mhz processor and 96mb ram.

If you take the advice about turning off unnecessary services and eye candy that jdhurst has given innumerable times, it's not too bad for office style applications. The biggest difference between a 560Z with XP and a T23, for example, is the boot time. Once the 560Z is up and running there's only a marginal difference (a second or so) between the 560Z and T23 in the time it takes to load Word 2000.

I've found that, if you first install W2K or XP within the 8gb boot partition size limit, you can then use something like Partition Magic to expand the partition to the entire disk with no problem. Like anything else, you'd want to make a backup before trying it but it worked without a hitch for me. As the saying goes YMMV.

[gychang]

I tried that last night.
It worked ! Only 80 minutes to install
All hardware has been automatically recognized, incredible.
Way to upgrade was installing Win98SE, connect a portable drive bay 2000 thru PCMCIA (drivers are on IBMs site).
As far as it is a legit copy of win98SE (with serial), XP simply upgrades automatically, no questions asked !

performance is pretty good, thanks to a 128 MB EDO memory SO-DIMM I found on eBay (which leads to a grand total of 196MB, which _is_ enough for XP)
The hard disk is slow and noisy (10GB travelstar) however, and slows paging down. I will retry that very soon with a 60GB, 7200rpm travelstar. Just for the heck of it and see how far the 560z is useable with XP.

As a sidenote : installing win98SE and the required patches, fixes, drivers was a real PITA. But I did not suspect XP would run so well !
Also, keep in mind the 560z does not allow (as far as I know) booting on a CD-Rom Drive, be it USB or PCMCIA.

Now I have an ultra light weight notebook for xp
Hope this helps !
Joscelyn

I have the same TP and excited about your experience, but have several questions. Presently I have 96MB of RAM.

1. Is that the maximum RAM (looks like the TP can exceed the limit on the manual), I am strictly a linux person but very interested in getting higher RAM.
2. Exactly which model of the 60GB HD did u use?, available on newegg?

I would very much like to duplicate your experience.

gychang

[georg.hauer]

Hi Gychang,

regarding the maximum ram, that's depeding on your onboard memory - mine had 64 mb. I changed the 32mb ram module to a 128mb ram module. That's the max i found - needs to be 128 MB EDO SODIMM (144 pin, 3,3V). 64+128 = 196 mb total ram
Be careful - i first bought a wrong one - perhaps you check with the seller before hand.
I bought mine from
http://www.ballistechs.com/
There you can check the compatibility with your model.

Regarding the harddisk, at the end i decided to stay with the old one, as i just use this laptop for internet and some office work when traveling.

Greetings from Germany
Georg

[Marin85]

Guys and gals, since you are discussing installing XP on quite old piece of hardware (quite in the style "mission impossible" ), does anyone consider nLited XP or even Micro-XP? Considering the machine you want to install XP on, a somewhat modified version of it would make things much easier and more comfortable (to use), and what is the most important part, it won´t eat all the resources of the machine.

Marin

[mattbiernat]

+1 for nlite. check out also services which you are not going to use and a little guide on how to speed up XP - http://www.blackviper.com/
i have a T23 with 256mb or RAM and my windows XP installation takes only 87mb of RAM and that's with windows XP SP3 with firewall enabled (which you do need).