Z61t Vista Upgrade - Problems - Any Suggestions?

[billp117]

I have a Z61t model 9440-ACU and just upgraded to Vista last night and this morning. I have about ten hours invested and I can tell you the process is a pain in the [censored]. I have installed OEM versions of Vista in my Desktop machines (Intel and ECS motherboards) and everything went fine. Clean installs were the best and Vista found all my desktop hardware with Zero problems. One machine was seven years old and worked just fine

The ThinkPad update did not go well. I removed almost all the software in the computer based on the warnings from the Vista Advisor and the Lenovo website.

I have most everything running, but I have total failure getting the ThinkVantage button to work and ThinkVantage Productivity Program can be launched in Vista, but the mouse skips all over the screen where the program is displayed. It will run if you are quick and this point to the mouse buttons and the scrolling button. They are not working properly.

The original software that ran the camera is not working. The camera works with my webcam program...but the IBM camera/scanner software does not recognize the camera.

My opinion is that the upgrade process is not for your average computer user. The process is flaky and unreliable. Lenovo should have prepared "restore" disks that included Vista and all the required drivers to make the system work correctly, plus creates the necessary hidden space on the hard drive to restore Vista if required.

I am very disappointed with the upgrade process and will probably have to invest countless hours debugging the process and finding the correct solutions.

I love ThinkPads and I can live with Vista...but if I run out of energy for this upgrade, I may just install my old hard drive that has XP running just fine.

[billp117]

I just could not live with the flaky installation of Vista on top of XP. I put the Vista Business Upgrade disk back in and selected the advanced setting and installed Vista clean. The install took about 20 minutes and was almost running perfect.

I then went to the Lenovo driver site and entered my model number and Vista operating system. Then downloaded Update 3.0...and then ran that program...it required 28 downloads for software and drivers...but it does it all at once (another 1.5 hours required). I am almost 99% finished and will probaly have them finished. Just some more tweaking and I should be finished.

My next step is to install Office 2007 and transfer all my Office 2003 settings and PST files.

My recommendations and observations:

Vista installs faster if you do a clean installation...20 MINUTES TOPS
Vista looks better from a clean installation...don't know why
A clean installation pervents legacy software from corrupting Vista
Upgrading takes way too long and opens you to frustating results
The Z61t runs fine on 1 gig of memory
Vista performance score is 3.1 after the installation of all the drivers

Good luck with your Vista Upgrade...err...Clean Install

[Kyocera]

My suggestion/opinion - cut your partition in half install XP on the first partiion, then do an advanced install of Vista on the second partition. This way you can run what you need in XP and still be able to start getting used to Vista, you can still swap files between the two with no problems.

My T60 performance score is 4.0.