Thinkvantage /disadvantage? System Update 3.14

[vtfootball]

I'm typing this on my Macbook Pro while one of 3 of my new T61p's installed Vista Ultimate for the 3rd time.

First of all...I love the build quality, screen (WSXGA), and everything else about the T61. All of the posts that pick on it are just being picky. It's a beautiful machine even compared to my 2200 $ macbook pro that I love.

Here is what I did:
1. Ordered fully decked out T61p with Vista Home Basic preinstalled. My plan was to install vista ultimate 32 bit and use Thinkvantage system update 3.14 to get all of the Lenovo software and drivers up to date.

2. The 3 T61p computers arrived and I booted to the Vista Ultimate 32 bit cd. Created 2 70GB partitions and installed Vista on the 1st partition. Install went perfect on all 3 machines and booted to Vista Ultimate.

3. Installed System update. Ran system update and allowed install of all Critical and Recommended updates. 322.xx mb download on each laptop. Error received: Aplication error UACSdk.exe stopped working and was closed, Event viewer application error ID 1000. When it finished the update it asked for a restart.

4. During shutdown all three computers got the blue screen of death with a stop error. When the machines boot back up they get to the hard disk check which passes, I hear the vista startup tune but the screen never gets passed the status of the hard drive checks.

5. I have now, on one of the laptops, used Gparted to remove the recovery partition and am in the middle of installing vista from scratch. The reason I did this is because I talked to a support rep at Lenovo last night and he said that it may be related to the recovery partition...either way I dont want the recovery partition taking up 6GB of space on the hard drive.

After all that long text I guess my questions is, has anyone else experience this? I know I'm not the only person on earth who buys thinkpads with the lowest OS to save money knowing that they have a copy of a different os that they want to use. Should I not be using the system update tool? Any help would be great! It's over 100 degrees here in VA today so I'm inside all day playing with these laptops.

[vtfootball]

I reinstalled Vista Ultimate from scratch again. This time I installed System Update (got UACSdk.exe stopped working and was closed while installing System Update) and only let it install the Intel Turbo Memory update which is the only critical update listed by the system update service. After this it went downhill again until I finally uninstalled System Update and the intel turbo memory driver at which point the system would not start up again in anything other than safe mode.

Now I have done the following:
1. Installed latest BIOS 2.18
2. Reinstalled Vista from Scratch for the 4th time

I am going to do the following:
1. Let Windows Vista upadate whatever it wants.
2. Download manually the rest of the updates needed from Lenovo site, not including any of the thinkvantage stuff...until I hear from someone that it's good or bad, or good with XP but bad with Vista...what's the deal with Thinkvantage?

[vtfootball]

I just reinstalled again and manually installed the drivers from the Lenovo site. Same exact result. It is def the intel turbo memory that is having the problem. Everything works fine until I install that driver and then during shutdown and restart I get the BSOD and the computer never starts again. Should I upgrade to XP Pro.

[Andrew T]

Should I upgrade to XP Pro.

Yes. I fix computers as a hobby. I tell everyone to go with Windows XP. Most of the problems that I get are with Vista, no matter what brand of computer. I always offer my customers the option to "upgrade" to Windows XP because that OS, while it does have it's fair share of problems, is alot more bug free and stable than Vista. I suggest getting XP and waiting for Windows 7.

[vtfootball]

Thanks for your advice. I tried to boot up with my XP Pro CD but it does not see a hard drive. Is there a simple way to get around this?

[Andrew T]

Is it a SATA hard drive? You may have to find the SATA drivers for your hard drive to be recognized. My friend had this problem with his HP laptop when he tried to downgrade to XP.

[vtfootball]

Ok....I feel like such a stupid %$#! I was using a checked/debug version of Vista Ultimate. I downloaded it from my MSDN subscription by accident and had used it on all those unsuccessful attempts. Man, I feel stupid but also happy because now everything is working perfectly with regular Vista Ultimate.

Andrew, it is a SATA drive. The IBM guys said something about 4 boot sectors and having to get ride of them in order to install XP Pro on the drive. I have no idea what boot sectors are.

[Andrew T]

Are you still looking to put XP pro on your machine? I'll look into the boot sector thing for you if you want.

[SHoTTa35]

it's WAAAAY more simple than that.

Just go into the bios then go to Config - SATA and turn on Compatability mode.

XP by default doesn't work with SATA drives (controllers rather) and therefore you gotta either Press F6 when you first boot up the XP CD (it says so at the bottom fo the screen) or you change it to compat mode so that XP can see the drive as a regular IDE drive (sorta)

AS for Vista being a pain, well i guess each person has their needs from an OS and XP fits some better than Vista but i use Vista on my T60 and lots of other people here use it too with 0 problems. Since you've got a MSDN account, download the already integrated SP1 version of Vista and then install with that. It'll be super sweet!

I would also remove turbo memory as it was a great idea on paper that didn't pan out. The system will work just great without it too.

[vtfootball]

Andrew, thanks for your help. Now that I have vista installed I am going to stick with it...it's actually working very well. I was able to run the Thinkvantage System Update and installed all of the critical and recommended updates with no problem at all. Now I really like the Thinkvantage tool set. I probably got upset with it to quickly when I was using the freaking checked\debug version of Vista.

SHoTTa35, thanks for the info. I have 2 more of these things going out to 2 of the guys I work with. If they decide that they dont want to stick with Vista I will use that info to put them back to XP. I actually did end up getting the Vista Ultimate SP1 from MSDN and it worked perfectly.

This T61p is soooo nice. I am a big fan of my Macbook Pro, 2.4ghz 15.4 screen, but this thing hangs with it for sure. IMO the build quality is awesome, feels original Hummer H1 sturdy. I have been a fan of Thinkpads for a while. I have some clients that use them and coworkers and have wanted one for a while. I'm very happy I'm sitting here using it now.