Clean Install Guide (works for 32-bit or 64-bit)

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm glad it was a smooth clean install for you. It's nice to get that feedback.
(I work for feedback. I do this in hopes that it will help people out. When people let me know it is helpful it makes it worth the while.)

Have you noticed any performance and/or stability improvement?

 

Sorry about the driver question being asked again after you already answered it. I noticed after making that post and meant to edit it out, I guess it got lost in my to-do list.

Unfortunately Lenovo denied my payment option so I have to switch it once the offices open at 8 AM EST. I cannot wait to get my Laptop here, I'm currently on a desktop with 6 year old hardware.

 

6 year old hardware! I think you'll be impressed with your new ThinkPad when it arrives. However, it will probably take a clean install before you can fully appreciate it. ENJOY!!!

 

Yeah its a P4 2.4 GHZ, 1.5 GB DDR 3200, 6600 GT.

I have rebuilt the computer several times myself, but the P4 and RAM are already past the six year mark.

Also Stallen, if I were to buy the best SD Card on the market and use ReadyBoost would I notice any performance increases?

I have nothing particular against Intel Turbo Memory, but for my needs it does not improve performance in general. (I have no doubt your remarks about applications opening fasters etc. is true, however when running intensive graphic applications such as BioShock there are no gains.)

I also have a relatively nice 4GB USB Thumb Drive, its rated at:

Read speed: 34MB/s
Write speed: 25MB/s

So the debate rages on, to use an SD Card or Thumb Drive.

 

Please Read:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=175666&page=2

I have the 4GB SDHC Sandisk Extreme III card. One of the reasons I wanted the 15.4" T61 was because it had an SDHC compatible internal card reader. I stuck it in and leave it in. No need to attach and remove the thumb drive everytime I store my laptop in my backpack. Also, a thumb drive sticking out can get snapped off

 

Hey everyone,

I just did a clean install, everything works flawlessly. I just have one question: I can't find the Energy Star power scheme in the Lenovo Power Utility (it was there in the factory install). Does anyone know if it is possible to make it available (besides manually creating a new scheme)? Thanks.

 

I have seen this question asked before somewhere. I don't think there is a way to get that back. Maybe a future update to the ThinkVantage Power Management will include that power scheme. Until then I think you're only option is to find a T61 user that hasn't done a clean install and manually make one that is similar. I'm not sure what the energy star power scheme is all about, but I can only imagine that it is probably close to a balanced or max battery power scheme. Probably if you started with the max battery power scheme and customized it to shut down the hard drive while in idle, reduce screen brightness, reduce CPU performance even while on AC power you would have something closer to the energy star power scheme. I don't know why anyone would want that. Sure it uses a little less energy, but at the cost of performance. I can't help but think that the energy star power scheme is little more than Lenovo trying to say "Hey, look at us we are 'Green'." Maybe I'm too cynical.

 

Yes, I got the exact same problem. I used RR to burn the 3 DVD successfully. But when I tried to recover using the dvd, after booting from the first one, it ask to put in the #1 disk. When I put in, it said that is not the right disk. This is insane. I had thought the disks were damaged. Now it seems that we have to remove the hiden partition first to recover from the disks. but we do not know if the disks work. Any solution to this?

 

Definetely! Without all those bloatware and Thinkvantage utilities, there is a significant performance boost. And the boot time is amazing. It used to be around 5-6 min. earlier, and now it is exactly 55 sec. Terrific.

Well, couple of things by the way.

I could not see the hidden partition while formatting (tried almost everything). But I don't care. Now, I'm wondering, since it is there, can I install just Rescue & Recovery? If so, can you direct me to those instructions?

Once again, thank you for your efforts.

 

Did you use the diskpart guide to remove the hidden partition before doing the clean install? If so you probably just wiped it out when you did that. I have the guide set up to delete all partitions and create one new partition during the clean install just in case someone didn't completely get the job done with diskpart. If the partition was not seen during the clean install it is almost certainly gone.

Setting up rescue and recovery? I can't help much on that. In all honesty I just have had that much interest in using R&R and a hidden partition so I haven't investigated that much. It seems to me that hypertrophy checked into this and came to the conclusion that Lenovo might have a utility that requires booting to a floppy disk to run the utility ?? maybe ?? Supposedly the utility might re-establish the link between R&R and the hidden partition after a clean install. No one has actually tried it and posted results on the forum that I am aware of.

 

Searched the thread, didn't see this answered...

I followed the guide and installed the minimum ThinkVantage software, just the fingerprint reader software. I downloaded the latest Intel graphics driver, but the strange thing is that I only get a 1.0 Aero score, so naturally Vista wouldn't enable Aero. I tried downloading the latest driver from Intel and then it said it wasn't compatible with my hardware (X3100, so I have the right driver). So finally I install the driver that shipped with the system (I took a backup before reformatting) and bingo, I've got Aero. What's the deal?

Also, I noticed that the system goes to max brightness any time after the system has been shutdown or gone into standby. It never remembers where I left the brightness. Any idea what I can do for that?

Thanks!

 

I'm experiencing the exact same thing as JohnnyT back on page 38.. I followed all directions and the ABR tool even claims that it was successful in restoring the key/registration, but Vista is now claiming I only have 15 days to activate! Used to be 30-days before I ran the ABR tool...

One thing I have in common with JohnnyT is that we both seem to have an X61s... I'm installing Vista Home Basic 32-bit on a new drive.

Any help would be appreciated. I'd rather not go with plan C and use the key on the sticker.

-Ken

 

Can you send me a PM with the first 6 digits of the serial number in the backup-key.txt file?

 

stallen, many thanks for your extremely helpful postings here.

You have helped many and sure to deserve our saluatations.


rgds,
Benjamin Chin
10 Oct 07

 

Thanks for your response! I sent you the first two groups of numbers via PM.

 

probably somebody already asked these questions but i am reading page 32 and have not completed it yet, decided to ask anyways:
1. If i do a clean install, how much disc space will i gain, excluding the recovery backup partition which takes up about 7.5gb of space. On my laptop running vista basic, i see that i have already used around 17.5gb of space.

2. i am planning to upgrade to vista ultimate and i have a built in graphics card, is it worth it to upgrade ? i know its not the best case scenario, but will it work ok, i have 1.5gb of ram now and am planning to upgrade to 3 gb soon.

3. will i loose disk keeper workstation if i install ? is it downloadable from the ibm website ?

4. can i download roxio burning software which comes pre-installed from ibm website or is it any of their swtools folder

5. one really silly question, does the light button still work with the hotkeys installation

6. when i first got my T61, i was updating everything using the thinkvantage update utility and when it rebooted it said that ur system needs to have aero enabled but system resources are not sufficient. i had 512 mb of ram then. now i have 1.5gb and i have not seen that message again even though i re-started many times. maybe i am too optimistic but if my key says that i have eligibility for windows aero, will it work if i do a clean install with 1.5 gb ram ? can aero run on vista basic ? is it key specific ?

and stallen - really great job on the guide, will do a practice run this weekend installing vista basic again before i try installing vista ultimate next weekend.

 

Why?

 

It sounds like you found a solution to your video driver solution. Have you tried the most recent driver from Lenovo's download page?

Thanks for following this thread Orev. Any chance you can fix this?

Thanks!

1. First of all keep in mind that on any hard drive you need to subtract 7% to figure out the actual available hard drive size. So if you have for example a 100GB hard drive, it will actually be 93GB if it were totally empty. Vista takes somewhere around 8GB of space. So with a 100GB HDD you would have somewhere around 86GB of free space after installing Vista and before installing anything else.

2. Go to microsoft to see the difference between Vista version. Only you can decide if the extra bells and whistles of Ultimate are worth it. 3GB of RAM is a good idea.

3. Diskeeper workstation? do you mean defragmenter? If so it is in the swtools folder. But that version of Diskeeper is Version 9 and only works for 32-bit.

4. can't download. It's in swtools

5. light button works

6. I didn't think Areo was available on basic, but I could be wrong. Check microsoft website for that. Otherwise doing a clean install isn't going to remove any Vista functions. Whatever worked in Vista before the clean install will work after.

 

In both of those cases, the serial number did not match up with a lenovo laptop, which is probably what is causing problems like that. I'm waiting for more information on this case.

 

thanks stallen - i have a couple more questions for you since you have vista ultimate.

1. I currently have a 80 gb drive and i am planning on upgrading that this thanksgiving with 160 gb or 200 gb. If I rip the drive of from one of those portable disc drives with a 2.5" hard disk, will i loose the functionality of airbag protection, disc based encryption etc. from IBM ? i am planning to install some ibm tools as i like them a bit.

2. i am planning on installing windows XP professional too, is it possible to dual boot? is there a guide for that on this forums, searched but couldnt find it here, can you please provide a link.

3. if i install windows xp and with windows ultimate installed on a 80 gb hard disk, and i image it using ultimate, will it take a disc image of only vista or of the entire disk with XP

4. later on if i upgrade to a 160 gb disc, how will the partitioning of disc happen, is it like a percentage basis or is fixed as in the image. why i asked questions 3 and 4 is that i have a 6 yr sony laptop whose company discs partition the disk as a percentage of 60% - 40% and the copy the image of C: drive.

5. I have a 8gb ready boost usb drive, i always have to plug it back in after i restart the computer for the vista to use the readyboost feature, is there something which will just automatically use ready boost on this drive even on restart and not wait for me to assign some space on the usb drive again every time after i restart the machine

aadadams : I read that some people reported having problems copying their license keys and activating their machines, I know I can always follow plan b or finally end up calling microsoft, but since I have a list of things I want to change in my laptop slowly, i dont want to end up calling microsoft soo often
if i cant do it this weekend, i will just restore laptop to its original state and wait until i have everything i want in place.

 

I tried ABR for that very reason, but alas in my case no joy. I have called MS ALOT over the last few months, and I have not had any issues at all. As far as contingencies go it was a minor inconvenience. it is true that I coulod call one day and they may indicate that they won't provide activation, but to this point I have not been even remotely discouraged. Something interesting is that after the last time I called I have not had to call back because my subsequent activations went through over the net without issue. YMMV, but if ABR does not work it is not the end of the world.

 

I'll do my best to answer some of your questions and I'll provide more thorough answers for the ones that relate to the topic of this thread. Don't forget to read the F.A.Q. at the end of the guide.

1. Please read from the F.A.Q.: " • Will I loose any functionality of my laptop after the clean install?" Otherwise everything else is functional or possible with a download or install from swtools.

"Airbag protection" is actually called ThinkVantage Active Protection. Please read " • What is ThinkVantage?"

2. It's possible to dual boot. Google: Windows XP Vista dual boot. Something has got to come up.

3. I haven't tried. Let us know what you find out.

4. I think the answer to this question is in the Complete PC restore Guide. I have the link for that in the F.A.Q. " • If I can't use the blue ThinkVantage button, how can I restore my clean install?"

From the Complete PC Restore Guide. Rread the explaination for the "Format and repartition disks" checkbox...


"This screen asks you whether or not you want to format and repartition the disks before you restore the data. If you select the Format and repartition disks option, Complete PC Restore will repartition and format the hard drive you are restoring to exactly as it was when you made the backup. If you do not choose this method, it will just erase the hard disk and restore the data to it. If you are using the same hard drive that you originally used to back up your computer then you may want to select the option to Format and repartition disks. On the other hand, if this is a new hard drive that you have partitioned in a different manner, then you should not select this option in order to keep your current disk configuration. It is important to note that with either option you select all the data on the disk you are restoring to will be erased. When you are ready to continue, you should click on the Finish button."

 

Thanks for that input aadadams. That's why I came up with "Plan B and C" in the F.A.Q. "What do I do if ABR utility does not activate?" Plan C is basically what you did. This was a much needed F.A.Q. for some reason a few people want to go into heart failure when ABR didn't work for them. There is no need for that when "Plan C" is a sure thing.

The ABR utility is a nice convenience for 99% of the people that use it. Otherwise, as you said, "it's not the end of the world" if you need to call Microsoft.

 

Here is what came up on my first search.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=163955&highlight=XP+Vista+dual+boot
Read post #7

 

thanks stallen and aadadams for your answers. i will find out how the disc image works and report back when i get my ultimate key.

Hooray - just did a clean install - everything went completely perfect - now installing drivers as we speak. A BIG thank you to Stellan for writing up a perfect guide and always lurking in this thread to answer all questions.

i have vista basic installed - i have 36 processes running after install - before there were 90 or so
and 6.5Gb of disk space used up after install and number of process increased to 44 after installing all drivers except bluetooth. did i do something wrong with the hot key installation, does that cover all hotkeys which u see a blue sign for ?

i tried the method u mentioned as Fn + F5 did not work, even after installing access connections, i am not able to turn on bluetooth Fn + F5 doesnt work


let me see if I can contribute anything to this thread later on

 

Stellan - finally everything installed on my laptop - is good as new now.. working great - and fast too.... but somehow my disk space increased after installation - now it stands at around 11 Gb, where did all my space go ? i didnt install anything else except whats listed in page 1... I wonder...........

 

Most likely the swap file.

 

Check out the guide in my sig, "where's my disk space?"

 

I finally received my T61-6465-CTO and played around for a while just to see my hidden partition and vista crash everything else. Bear with me, please:

Day one: I powered the machine with a linux live CD in it, so I could inspect the hardware *before* Windows is installed. All looking well, I proceeded to install Vista.

Day two: While resizing the hard drive to make room for Linux as dual-boot, I noticed that the hidden partition and the Vista partition are f**ked up - both partition borders were overlapping. I did not have much time to spend on it and since linux installed flawlessly, I just started using linux...

Today: Vista would not boot at all (black screen, nothing moving/responding). I tried using the ThinkVantage button to "rescue" some of the Vista (the Activation code using ABR) but... to no avail.

So, here is the question: When ThinkVantage does not work, when Vista is totalled and cannot be accessed, how do you recover one's activation? I have no trouble accessing data with a live CD or through the linux installed... I have no clue which files/directories might hold the activation files. No ThinkVantage, no Vista, overlapping partitions - what do I do?

Cheers,

 

Did you create the recovery disc's?

 

Nope, did not... Stupid of me, indeed but fact is - I don't have them.

 

Did you run the ABR utility before you started changing partitions and installing other OSs?

I have read in the threads that you can get recovery disks for free if you call Tech support and tell them you attempted to make recovery disks, but your computer locked up while making them and now it won't allow you to make another set. But you must call TECH support to get them for free (not customer service they will want to charge you for them).

 

I am posting this for someone that has requested 64-bit drivers for the Monaco Optix XR (DTP-94) colorimeter. Unless you own a Monaco Optix XR colorimeter, please disregard this post.

 

BTW, anyone who has found this guide helpful please click on the upper right corner and rate it as "excellent". (there was a certain someone along with all of his alter ego login screen names that rated this guide as "terrible". Hint-Hint post #12 through #18).

If for some reason you don't think it deserves that rating, please provide some constructive criticism so I can modify the guide.

Thanks!

 

Thank you! Since the warranty of ThinkPads follows the machine and is "owner independent", I purchased the machine from USA and had it shipped to Switzerland (where I live). Please advise if calling local TECH support is the right thing to do, or I should call TECH support in the USA?

 

If the unit has an international warranty then you can call Switzerland. If not..., You can check the warranty by going to warranty lookup on the Lenovo support site and entering your serial number.

 

That's a good idea. You can also call them both. If one of them refuses to send the disks for free then call the other one.

 

I'm first time using vista, wondering:
How to do
"Back-up this file... c:\swtools\drivers ...and place it on a USB drive or a separate disk"?

 

Copy it using right click and context menu then paste it to a USB drive. Simple as pie.

 

Stallen,

How do we get fn+f5 to work to open up the wireless/bluetooth control? So far i have a productivity center, hotkey driver, system interface driver, CSS, and fingerprint stuff from thinkvantage installed, for some reason the fn+f5 doesn't work! Thanks

 

Of all of the stuff you have installed all you need is the hotkey driver and system interface driver.

I would start off by uninstalling-> reboot and then re-installing them-> reboot. If that doesn't work, then try installing ThinkVantage Access connections. Fn+F5 should work after installing access connections. Then uninstall access connections. Fn+F5 will still work after uninstalling access connections. (I mention this in step 2 of the guide "Bluetooth Driver Install Tips".)

Let me know how that works out.

 

can i use 64 bit windows with core duo ?

 

stellan - this was my observation and i dont know how true it is - i noticed that my laptop had a graphics card score of 3 when i installed the graphics drivers which ibm website had listed. i know for sure that my T61 showed a score of 3.4 when i first got it. later on when i tried to update my laptop using intel download page displayed drivers - my score went up to 3.3 - now i dont know what drivers would be best for my laptop... mine is just a built in graphics card X3100.. any thoughts on this...

 

Thanks. I'll let you know how that works out..it seemed very odd to me

I didn't intall the thinkpad PM update from windows update..maybe that has something to do with it?

 

No, I don't think so. Intel Core Duo only does 32-bit. the Intel Core 2 Duo does 32-bit or 64-bit. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core

Use whichever one works the best. I would NOT be to concerned about the Windows scores. They are not very reliable. I would just use whichever seem to provide the most stability and performance. There is very little difference between those drivers. If you insist on benchmarking, PCMark05 would be a better benchmark that will check overall system performance including some moderate graphics that would test your internal graphics. PCMark05 can be downloaded for free. Try it with both drivers and use the one that gives you the better score.

 

honestly..who cares about the windows score...it doesn't do anything besides letting your system use aero or not

 

Stallen,

Now that I think about it...last time I did a clean install...I remember my fn+f5 not working until I did a windows update...i subsequently received a bsod and did another clean install, however this time, before my initial windows update after a clean install, i hide the update for thinkpad pm manager...i will install that and see what happens this time

 

did you try this? ^^^^^

 

Nope...but I did try this

my other assumption was correct....it was the PM manager that controls this...i didn't install it and 'hide' it in my windows update..i installed it and now it works!

 

I am about to do my clean install with the new 7k200 drive. Is there anything different about this drive for the clean install? It is supposed to have disk encryption so I was not sure if this is additional software that needs to be installed or a feature of the had drive.

This is a lenovo preconfigured t61p with the 200gb drive they are selling.

Thanks

Jim