Windows 7 on T Series

[dabrye]

Hi All,

I just want to know if some one has installed Win 7 on a T series, I own a T400 but i'm not sure about hardware compatibility and performance. I hate Vista (home premium).

dabrye

[jjesusfreak01]

I have it on a T60, which is two generations behind the T400. It runs great as of now...still working on a few software compatability bugs, but those are for really old programs. If you have all of your stuff backed up and Vista installation discs handy, I would go for it. It will probably run alot better than Vista on your system.

[neenee]

I run W7 RC1 (official release, I won't touch the leaked builds) 64-bit on my T400.

I have no hardware problems and I have no complaints about performance.

I have installed various drivers from the lenovo support section.

[DAH]

At this time I would recommend NOT installing the 6jc705us Access Connections software. There are reports of this software causing memory leaks in both 32 & 64 bit Windows 7. The older 6jc703us version works, but has limitations. I'm running a T60p and for the most part prefer Windows 7.

[pae77]

I'm running leaked build 7201 x64 on my T61p. Everything is working much better than it did under Vista, especially now that Lenovo has some W7 specific drivers. And this is an "upgrade" installation from a previous build of W7. It's extremely stable (far more so than Vista ever was) and ready for mission critical work, imo. My T61p feels unleashed, as if it has something like twice the speed and power over what it felt like under Vista.

[kafri]

I'm running leaked build 7201 x64 on my T61p. Everything is working much better than it did under Vista, especially now that Lenovo has some W7 specific drivers

I'm running Vista Ulitmate on my a T61p and I've grown sick of it for a long time. I've kept using it up to now because I didn't want to install XP instead. Now, as W7 RC is available I can't await to get rid of Vista and install W7. What is the easiest and best way to completely deinstall Vista from my harddrive? As my harddrive is only 100GB I don't want Vista hidden on some backup partition to occupy valuable disk space. Your advice would be highly appreciated!

[p090]

Since win7 i've decided to join this forum, this being my first post.

I installed win7 on my T40p (PM 1.5GHz 1G ram 40G hdd 64MB Mobility Radeon / FireGL 9000),
and i have seen some uncharted territory for this combination.

The result after shallow testing is as follows:
- Video card works with Mobility Radeon 9000 XDDM driver from vista (the one made visible by unchecking the "show only compatible drivers"). The official xp drivers seem to work better with 2D, but cause bsod with 3D (ati3duag.dll)
3D performance seems at least equivalent to that of XP tested on quake 3 and revolt with maxed settings
2D slightly lower performance - e.g. switching movies to full screen has a slight lag, movies in full screen have a slightly visible horizontal line in the upper region when the whole scene is in motion, movies use 50-60% cpu as compared to around 20% in xp, flash/stream/tube videos have a lower fullscreen framerate as compared to good watchable fullscreen framerate in xp.
- Fn power combinations do not work properly out of the box - "display off" key doesn't work, "suspend" key works, "hibernate" shuts off the display without any further remedy until reboot as far as i tried, "shutdown" button does the same. Included power configuration for power off/hibernate is as it should; suspend, hibernate, shutdown work/resume properly from start menu, display off works/resumes fine from windows power timer.
Tried chipset/power management/battery maximizer/function keys xp drivers without resolution, however i didn't spend much time with this issue.

In general it seems to work fine out of the box, except for the issues above. The vital necessity would be to install the video driver, and eventually the synaptics driver for the advanced functions and settings tab in the "mouse" applet.
Other than that, overall performance, stability and functionality with minimal to no settings/customizations, is at least equal to that of xp sp3 after loads of installing, disabling, cleaning, defragging, tweaking after the fresh install. As far as i'm concerned i haven't seen other areas where the system is "worse" than xp, but mostly doing better.

My main discontent for now stays with 2D acceleration (as well as the same "basic/classic" explorer interface being rendered from cpu), fn keys, and trying to find working "classic" uxthemes such as the ones that were made for xp.

If there is a "win7 on T40p" area i would be curious to know about it, it is a real shame for this as well as other machines to just be "ignored" by their own driver manufacturers, for most operating systems other than the one it was preinstalled with. And apart from all other miseries linked to ms, windows generally has a tremendously function limited, bearly customizable desktop environment, officially dumbed down on these generations of machines either to the squared gray "classic" interface or the "basic" hideous blue uncomposited aero. There isn't Any comparison between that and the "all popular" rich functionality and looks from the likes of nix' kde&compiz that work gloriously on this machine with nothing other than the open source driver.

[pae77]

Since W7 is only available as a release candidate, I would not recommend completely doing away with your vista installation at this time. What you should do if you want to run w7, is either install it on a partition on your existing hard drive and keep the vista installation, so you have a dual boot situation, OR, just buy another hard drive, put your vista drive away as a backup and install W7 on the new drive. Hard drives are really cheap now. You could probably get a 200 GB or larger 7200 rpm hard drive for less than $60. I believe I saw 320 GB 7200 hard drives recently for around that price with rebates, although they may be slightly more expensive again. You could also get a 500 gb 5,000 rmp drive for pretty cheap I believe.

But if you want to go ahead and wipe out your vista installation (which I do not advise at this time), you could just do an upgrade install from Vista to W7, or back up all your data to external media of some kind and do a clean install (recommended, even though it's more hassle) which will require you to reinstall all your programs and copy your backed up data over to the right places. There is migration software available to help with that latter task, but I haven't tried it.

[secsam127]

I run W7 RC1 (official release, I won't touch the leaked builds) 64-bit on my T400.

I have no hardware problems and I have no complaints about performance.

I have installed various drivers from the lenovo support section.

Neenee, does this mean your fingerprint reader is working? Mine shows up in Device Manager, but when I open the Lenovo Fingerprint software, it says that it can't communicate with the sensor.

Also, when I boot into 7, the Intel graphics are activated by default. I have to manually change to ATI.
Did you have this problem? Any solutions?

[jjesusfreak01]

windows 7 has built in biometrics so there is no need for a lenovo sponsored app, so long as you dont need it for anything more than logging uin

[Proteus]

Win7 RTM x64 is flawless on a T61p. Install OSD driver, lenovo PM and system drivers, and you are all set. Lenovo fingerprint works fine too (all above from Lenovo Win7 beta site). Access connections duplicates existing OS functionality and is useless.

Win7 positively screams on a T61. And unlike Vista, also works fine on a T41p and A31p too.

[secsam127]

Was able to get the FPR working with the driver from AuthenTec (driver from Lenovo didn't seem to work).
At first, it would show up as being unavailable, but after a few reboots, it started working.

One think I have noticed though is that it won't work for the initial login. I have to log in with my password and booting fresh, and then FPR will work every time after this. In Vista, with Lenovo driver/software, the FPR worked for the initial logon as well.

[mlevin]

I'm running leaked build 7201 x64 on my T61p. Everything is working much better than it did under Vista, especially now that Lenovo has some W7 specific drivers. And this is an "upgrade" installation from a previous build of W7. It's extremely stable (far more so than Vista ever was) and ready for mission critical work, imo. My T61p feels unleashed, as if it has something like twice the speed and power over what it felt like under Vista.

At this time I would recommend NOT installing the 6jc705us Access Connections software. There are reports of this software causing memory leaks in both 32 & 64 bit Windows 7. The older 6jc703us version works, but has limitations. I'm running a T60p and for the most part prefer Windows 7.

I run W7 RC1 (official release, I won't touch the leaked builds) 64-bit on my T400.

I have no hardware problems and I have no complaints about performance.

I have installed various drivers from the lenovo support section.

I have an MSDN copy of Windows 7 that I'd like to run on a T60p (8741 model). A few questions:

• Any gotchas I should know about?
• Will most of the Vista drivers (wifi, keyboard volume keys, bluetooth, etc.) work on Windows 7?
• Will any of the Lenovo-specific things like Access Connections, Presentation Manager, etc. work ok? Or am I better off letting Windows manage those things itself now?
• Someone mentioned that there are Windows 7 driver downloads available now. Where do I find those?

Thanks!

[yak]

Someone mentioned that there are Windows 7 driver downloads available now. Where do I find those?

Here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... -BETA.html

Unfortunately Lenovo decided the 60 series is too old to include in the supported systems listed on this page (it starts with 61). However, people report that these updates work anyway. I do hope they will, the essential ones at least, as I'm going to install Windows 7 on my T60 too as soon as it's available.

[mlevin]

Here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... -BETA.html

Unfortunately Lenovo decided the 60 series is too old to include in the supported systems listed on this page (it starts with 61). However, people report that these updates work anyway. I do hope they will, the essential ones at least, as I'm going to install Windows 7 on my T60 too as soon as it's available.

Thanks!

I'm sure most of them will work on the T60. It's not that different than the T61... I'm going to cross my fingers and go for it.

[andrej770]

I have have updated my T500 (2.8Ghz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD - 2081-CTO) to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit. Don't install the ATI video drivers (from the vendor) yet or you will have to use a restore point to get back to the Windows 7 video driver until Lenovo gives us one. I tried the updated driver from the ati.amd.com website and my screen would never come back up. 7 seemed to install all the necessary drivers to do almost everything (Blue Tooth, WLAN, Video, Sound, Mouse, etc) . I am using the beta copy of Access Connections (mainly because I need to connect to a LEAP network at work), GPS, WLAN, and any other 64 Bit beta driver. All seems well.

Besides all AIT/Video issue, AND the fact that most of the beta software is for 32 bit, I am good. I am using it as a production machine now.

7 is great! - Next - moving to 6GB RAM. 4GB 1066 SODIMM in one slot and 2GB 1066 SODIMM in other (until I move to 8GB - or better put - its more reasonable in price).

[kai]

I'm running Windows 7 (x86) on a T60.

Installation went smoothly and at first I used all vista drivers since I didn't know about the Lenovo Windows 7 beta program. Then without a reinstall, I uninstalled most of the vista drivers and replaced them with the beta Windows 7 drivers.

There were 2 unknown devices on initial startup, the ACPI powermanager driver and also the infrared. The power driver can be sorted by driver download but the infrared driver can be found by using windows update.

Graphics drivers were via windows update, then I used Driver Heaven's Mobility Modder to download v9.3 of the ATI catalyst drivers to talk to the X1400. (don't use v9.7, it doesn't have the X1400 drivers in it)

Everything appears to run smoothly but one issue I've noticed is that after a long period of no activity - such as when I go to bed I close the lid of the machine and the lid just blanks the display, but it doesn't set it to sleep or anything like that - on using the machine again, I cannot control the brightness of the LCD display. Fn-Home/Fn-End does nothing but I can use various other Fn combinations to do things such as Fn-F4 to standby (tried to do this and resume to see if it kicks the brightness control into action, but it still doesn't come back to life). Fn-PgUp stil enables/disables the ThinkLight.

Another thing is that there seems to be a few random periods where there might be intensive hard disk activity and everything becomes unresponsive for about 20 seconds or so, which can be a little frustrating.

Has anyone run into these problems? If you have any suggestions for fixing these little problems, it'd be much appreciated.

[mlevin]

I'm running Windows 7 (x86) on a T60.

{snip}

Has anyone run into these problems? If you have any suggestions for fixing these little problems, it'd be much appreciated.

I just installed Win7 on my T60p yesterday. No problems at all out-of-the-box except that Windows only detected a PNP display, so I had to go into devices and search for a new driver. It found the Thinkpad display and upon reboot everything was great.

I knew about the beta drivers so I installed a few (hotkeys, hard drive motion sensor, etc.). Everything is working great so far!

[yak]

Guys, if you're saying about your out-of-the-box experiences, it would be a good idea to give a more detailed specs of your machines or at least the type number so one can look it up at lenovo.com.

[Fletch31]

I have been running official release Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit on my T500 since August 7th. Enterprise is just the business channel version of Ultimate. It has all the same features. Microsoft released Windows 7 Enterprise to business clients on the 6th and I was able to obtain several installs through their software assurance program. Lucked out because the software assurance for me ran out at the end of this month.

I purchased the laptop from Lenovo in April of this year. It has a 2.4 P8600 processor, 4 gigs DDR3 ram, biometrics and switchable graphics.

Everything is working snappily and as it should with the exception of my switchable graphics. I attempted reinstalling the Lenovo Vista 64 drivers for the switchable graphics but when I attempt to switch video cards by right clicking on the battery meter and select the performance option it doesnt do anything and stays on the energy saving card. The only way I can switch video cards is through the bios which is kinda clunky. If anyone knows any workarounds to enable switchable graphics through the OS, I would be most appreciative.

Other than that, I am very pleased with the performance I have with Windows 7 and would consider it an improvement over Vista Enterprise as far as speed of opening programs and boot and shut down times. I actually did the upgrade from vista on this laptop and did a clean install on my desktop and can tell no difference in performance between the two for normal tasks. Both are noticably improved over vista. I usually do clean installs but was interested in seeing if there was any difference and I wanted to test the compatibliltiy of my vista laptop drivers to see if all was as advertised with Windows 7 having driver issues worked out. With the exception of my switchable graphics software switch loosing function, all has worked perfectly.

[mlevin]

Guys, if you're saying about your out-of-the-box experiences, it would be a good idea to give a more detailed specs of your machines or at least the type number so one can look it up at lenovo.com.

Mine is a T60p model 8741. No significant issues at all with Windows 7.

http://snurl.com/qe7by

[andrej770]

One thing I forgot to mention is that there are no sound/audio drivers (from lenovo Beta) for the sound/audio. Microsoft installs a sound/audio driver, but for me, in order to use the headphones, I have to go to control panel, and select the headphones as the default device (before I start the media program I want to listen to). I know Lenovo was having some issues with the T400, 500 drivers anyway, so I did not install the Vista sound/audio drivers (even with the fix I found on here that worked on Vista).

If anyone has a workaround or has more information on the sound/audio driver, please post.

Thanks,

[yak]

I run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta today on my T60. It reported no issues with the hardware besides the Fingerprint Reader (it says I should run the Windows Update after upgrading to make it operational).

However, it says there are "Minor issues" with the ThinkPad Keyboard Customizer (as seen at the bottom of the above linked report, ThinkPad-Tastaturanpassung in German) which I use to map the Fn- shortcuts to right Ctrl on my external keyboard. I wouldn't want to loose this functionality.

Can anybody already running the 7 say something about it?

[yak]

OK, I'm replying to myself. I've installed Windows 7 and I indeed had problems with Keyboard Customizer. I have enabled controlling of the volume using the external keyboard's right Ctrl and arrow keys but trying to use them simply crashed the customizer process.

However, the problem dissappeared after I installed the System Interface Driver and Hotkey Features to get the OSD working. Now the Keyboard Customizer works without glitch, at least its features that I use.

[andrej770]

I installled the Beta version of Access Connections because I needed to use it to access my companies wireless AP's via LEAP. While I was on Vista, I exported all my profiles. Now that I am on 7U-64, I have imported all the profiles, but cannot edit the wireless Security type of any of them. Get an error that the profile is not available. Any profile without any security settings I can edit and I can create a new profile, but can't create a new LEAP based profile.

I would love not to have to use Access Connections at all. I only have it installed because of LEAP. Does anyone know how to setup a LEAP connection in native Win 7? OR does anyone know how to create a LEAP connection in Access Connections in Win 7?

I was thinking I should uninstall the Beta version and install the Vista version and see how it fairs. What do you think?

Thanks in advance,

Andrej770

[thematrixz]

Does anyone have problem using Wireless N ? Mine to loses connectivity every few minutes, then reconnects itself.

My setup: T60, Atheros wireless driver from Microsoft (couldn't find one on the IBM Beta site), Buffalo N router, WEP enabled.


If I connect to a G wireless network, the connection is very stable.

[emeraldgirl08]

I have W7 7100 RC installed on all three of the laptops on my sig.

The one that surprised me is the T30

The thing that I had trouble with OOB with T30 was the wireless and graphics. I had to connect to the router with an ethernet cable to download the updates. I'm not too sure how I got the wireless working I went to the Dell site to download the Truemobile driver but that wouldn't work. For those of you wondering "Why Dell?" The Broadcom wireless card I have has a native driver from Dell (I'm pretty sure of this) and my original Cisco Aironet card cannot work with "WPA-TSK" in Linux. The Broadcom also adds "G" capability to my T30 whereas the Cisco was only "B" wireless.

It did install but it wasn't prompting for the password and I'd get a "cannot connect error." After hooking up via ethernet cable I looked in Optional Updates and saw a driver update for the Broadcom card. I installed that and tried the wireless again. I noticed the icons were a little more polished at first and then... the prompt for a wireless password!



Next was the ATI 7500 driver. I went to Lenovos site and downloaded the ATI graphics driver for my model type (should work with all T30s) and installed it. Before installation device manager was showing a VGA compatible device which resulted in slow graphical rendering and all symptoms of non-driver installed performance.

The ATI driver worked!



After installation of my favorite programs (I'm pretty much a minimalist except for the Object Dock program) and a scandisk and defrag the T30 is great with W7!

The only bottleneck in my setup is the Hard Drive. I still have the crappy 4200 Travelstar in mine. However, for all intents and purposes, with very little programs on this- it runs pretty decent

[pae77]

I'm now running W7 Ultimate x64 RTM obtained (and legally activated with a key) from MS Technet. If ever there was year to get a Technet subscription, this is it, with both W7 and Office 2010 expected to be released within the one year subscription period.

W7 continues to rock on my T61p. Very happy with it. So much better than Vista . . .

I did an in place upgrade from the RC build I was using. There are ways of doing that even though it may not be officially supported. That worked out great. I'm using the relevant available W7 drivers from Lenovo. All is good, except I would like to see a W7 compatible version of Presentation Director. But that is a very minor issue that I'm sure will be resolved very shortly once W7 has been officially made available to the general public in late October. Edit: No longer need PD because W7 has the functions I need: (Fn-F7 or win key + P).


(Edit: Removed speculative "guess.") I set up a VPN connection using W7. I don't have or want Access Connections on my rig. W7 does a very nice job of managing network connections. Actually, the less Lenovo software the better, imo, but for best performance a few (but not many) Lenovo drivers are unfortunately unavoidable. It's nice of Lenovo to make the essential ones available so early.

[yak]

All is good, except I would like to see a W7 compatible version of Presentation Director. But that is a very minor issue that I'm sure will be resolved very shortly once W7 has been officially made available to the general public in late October.

It probably won't be resolved, see this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=79562

[bill bolton]

About the LEAP thing, although I don't know what that is, I would be very surprised if W7 didn't natively provide a way for you to set up such a connection.

It would definitely be helpful if everyone here kept their comments about what Windows 7 is able do to things that they have direct knowledge of, rather making guesses!