T42 2373 and Vista - advice required

Message

Coulrophobe · #1 Post by **Coulrophobe** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:44 am

Hi All ! I'm new to the forum and need to leverage some of the knowledge sloshing about in here !
I've just gotten my hands on a T42 2373 with a big old docking station and the guy that last had it zapped the Windows install (think it was Win2000) with Kubuntu. I'm now keen to get Vista onto it and as a first step am going to add a 1Gb or ram to help things along a bit.
Am I likely to get Vista basic operational (Aero's not going to run as it's gfx are served by a Radeon mobility 7500)

Thanks for your time and any advice gratefully received.

Cheers

#2 Post by **KristianJ** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:23 am

Welcome to the forum!

You're right in that Aero probably won't work with your ATi 7500, and that an extra GB RAM will be essential in making your new T42 move well with Vista. It'll work just fine if you're planning to go with the classic Windows appearance. Depending on what hard drive you have (capacity and speed), you may want to upgrade that as well. If it's a 4200rpm drive, I'd highly recommend an upgrade to a 7200rpm drive with at least 80GB.

Some members may have recovery discs corresponding to the version of Windows you have on the COA on the base of the laptop that they can copy for you (I have a set for XP Pro, but I had issues with them, which is why I decided to take the plunge into Vista on my T42, which has the ATi 9600 and does reasonably well with 2GB RAM).

Finally, you may have a hidden partition on the hard drive that can restore the system OS to factory contents (accessible by pressing the Access IBM button when you see the BIOS splash screen on startup). But if you're that keen on Vista, you should be okay.

kyrotech · #3 Post by **kyrotech** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 1:40 pm

Vista works on Thinkpad T42 with Mobility 7500, no aero. Consider getting a fast RPM hard drive (7200RPM for best results) and absolute minimum 1GB ram with 2GB been recommended.

kyrotech · #4 Post by **kyrotech** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 1:42 pm

double post lag maybe sorry

#5 Post by **bill bolton** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:53 pm

I had Vista installed in a T41 2374 with 1.5GB of RAM and the Radeon 7500 GPU..... even with a lot of performance tweaking plus installing the Radeon 9000 driver to get at least tolerable graphics performance (scoring 1.9), it was still very slow overall.

Basically it wasn't worth the trouble! My 2374 is back to running Windows XP very nicely.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Coulrophobe · #6 Post by **Coulrophobe** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 4:35 am

Vista Home basic on and working surpisingly well with only a 40gb disk and 512Mb of ram. The new stick of PC2700 is on the way apparently - will slap that in once it arrives.

Next step will be to hopefully optimise whatever driver solution I can find for the graphics.

Thanks to all for your input

sugo · #7 Post by **sugo** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:29 pm

If you like Vista, go for it with at least 2GB memory. I will stick with Windows XP since it provides at least 40 mins more battery life on full charge.

T42 2373 and Vista - advice required

T42 2373 and Vista - advice required

T42 2373 and Vista - update

Who is online