T60 w/ X1400 - Presentation Director / Omega drivers woes

[dr_st]

I'm having a hard time with the Presentation Director on my T60 with SXGA+ and ATI X1400. The laptop is docked and connected to an external monitor via DVI.

When using the latest (not so new) Omega drivers installation, it refuses to change schemes properly.

Most notably, it allows me to change to change from external monitor to internal LCD, but when I try an extended desktop setup, it claims that "settings cannot be applied properly". I have to go manually to the display settings and tick the "extend my desktop" box.

Tried several versions of the software, including old one from T42, which works like a charm with Omega drivers - same result.

Installing official Lenovo drivers seems to make it work, but before I resort to that - anyone has any good experience with Omega drivers and scheme switching on these machines?

[LegendaryKA8]

Have you tried using the Mobility Modder to load newer Catalyst drivers instead of using the relatively old Omega releases? I'm now running a V5250, but bumping up to the newest Catalyst from the 'latest' Lenovo drivers solved a few issues for me. It's worth a shot at the very least.

[dr_st]

Have you tried using the Mobility Modder to load newer Catalyst drivers instead of using the relatively old Omega releases? I'm now running a V5250, but bumping up to the newest Catalyst from the 'latest' Lenovo drivers solved a few issues for me. It's worth a shot at the very least.

Interesting idea. Will it allow me avoid the Catalyst Control Center, and use ATI Tray Tools instead?

[LegendaryKA8]

I'm not sure about using the Tray Tools, but I still get the Control Center on startup. Actually, for some strange reason it's not even wanting to run on my machine, but I get full functionality, including Powerplay.

[dr_st]

So looks like I finally got it to work.

I installed the recent Mobility Catalyst from this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=79821

(Installed only the driver, without CCC).

But the real trick I think was installing older versions of Presentation Director and Hotkey driver - the ones that are used on my company-issued T60 1952, and work just fine there.

It was a mini-nightmare though.

First, obtaining the link for Presentation Director 3.06 was far from easy. It appears that it exists on the Lenovo download base, but there are no direct links to it, and all the links to 7ru22ww.exe online point to the old IBM repository which is now gone. Anyways here is the link if you ever need it:

Presentation Director 3.06

At this point, scheme switching was perfect.

But it turned out that this old version does not work with the new version of the Hotkey driver which I already had installed, so Fn+F7 functionality was gone.

To get it back I had to copy the older hotkey driver from my other T60, and install it.

And now finally it seems everything works.

I must say I am slowly getting fed up with the Lenovo utilities... They seem to get more bloated and more broken over time. Presentation Director 4.07 (latest) refused to change schemes at all on my T60, no matter which driver was installed. :S

[vinuneuro]

Have you tried using the Mobility Modder to load newer Catalyst drivers instead of using the relatively old Omega releases? I'm now running a V5250, but bumping up to the newest Catalyst from the 'latest' Lenovo drivers solved a few issues for me. It's worth a shot at the very least.

+1 . The drivers from Ati are about 10 revisions past what's available from Lenovo. Definitely fixed some major issues for me with the x1400. I tried Omega drivers, wasn't too impressed.