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

does slipstreaming the vista sp1 rc into your install image make any of the driver downloads redundant?

 

You cannot upgrade from a 32bit OS to a 64bit one, you must do a clean install. There is a rumor that you might be able to do this when Vista SP1 is released, but as of now you can't.

 

Thank you! My vista business license is an upgrade 32 bit one, I have a 64bit anytime DVD. If I do the clean install using 64bit anytime dvd, after installation I active the key with just input the key at the system windows, not using ABR. Will this work?

 

I would skip the activation for home premium altogether and do the clean install using the "upgrade" method, which you can find out about here:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_upgrade_clean.asp Install business using that process, however it's still not an "upgrade", which means it will not migrate your already installed programs into the new installation. Also make sure to backup your data.

It might be worth it to use the ABR backup before you start, just to have your home premium registration saved, in case you might want to use it in the future.

 

That method not so easy. I am planning to do following:

1. Upgrade the current Home basic to business with the 32 bit vista business upgrade DVD.
2. Use the ABR to backup out the 32bit business license files.
3. Do a clean install using 64bit anytime upgrade DVD to 64 bit business, using
The 32bit business ABR

I just a little worried about the step 3, can this works?

 

At the moment, ABR cannot backup license files for anything other than OEM factory installations. It will not be able to backup the activation after you do the upgrade to the business version.

 

If so, how about change to following?

1. Upgrade the current Home basic to business with the 32 bit vista business upgrade DVD.
2. Do a clean install using 64bit anytime upgrade DVD to 64 bit business.
3. Then active it using the business 32bit upgrade license code?

Orez, any better method to do 32bit to 64 bit with an upgrade license?

 

You might be able to get away with that, but as far as I know, the 64 bit install process won't import the activation from the 32bit installation, and I'm not sure if it will consider it upgradeable. I think it's something your going to experiment with, because the process you're trying to do is not really tried. The tried methods would be:

1) upgrade from home 32bit to business 32bit
2) Use the upgrade "hack" method here to do a clean install of business 64 bit.

I'm not sure what the problem is with the winsupersite method of installing. It's a pain to have to do the install twice, but that's the best way to get the "clean" install.

The other question is that for a clean install you will have to reinstall all of your programs, where an upgrade will try to migrate them. However, the switch from 32 bit to 64 bit will not allow that, so if that's a problem, no matter what going to 64 bit is going to be an issue.

If you can reinstall your programs, I recommend doing the winsupersite method, and also formatting the drive first to get it totally clean. BACKUP ALL DATA FIRST THOUGH!!! IT WILL BE DELETED!!!

The main problem here is that you are doing 2 things at once, going from Home Basic to Business, AND going from 32bit to 64bit.

PS. your license code is not specific to 32bit or 64bit, it works on both.

 

Thanks Stallen and everyone that contributed to this guide ! Everything went smoothly.

I do have one question though ... my battery doesn't charge anymore.

Anyone seen this ?

 

what are your battery settings? Mine is set to recharge at 40%.

 

It shows a percentage of 97% and says "plugged in not charging"

I tried undocking it several times thinking that it was just hung up ... but that didn't work. ( that's why it dropped from 100% to 97% )

 

that's normal on vista. I'm not exactly sure but the threshold for recharging is 96% by default maybe lower I'm not sure. Just double click on the battery icon and click on Battery Info>Maintenance. You can see and change the settings there. generally its not good for the battery to have that hi a recharge level.

 

The battery isn't charging at all. It's like I am missing a driver.

It detects that I am plugged in and that I have a battery. I have gone through all of the settings but can't find anything.

 

if you place your icon over the battery icon on the tray bar what does the message say? "charging will start when below x %?" I'm assuming you have Thinkvantage PM, if not the Vista equiv should be similar.

 

It says 97% available ( plugged in, not charging )

Current Power Plan: High Performance

 

Its only tellin me what your current battery level is. What we want is at what level does the battery start to recharge. Have you gone to control panel>power options and looked in there?

 

Ah ha ! just figured it out !! I found the setting in Power Manager under Battery Maintenance. I allows you to change the charge thresolds and ALSO change when the battery starts charging. ( nice feature )

morphy, Thanks for the help !! For some reason before I did the clean install the battery would start charging as soon as I plugged it in regardless of what the percentage was. I actually like this much better !!

I am really getting to know my machine well !!!

 

On a different note:

I would like to reinstall Diskkeeper does anyone know where to find this ?

Thanks !

 

does anyone know if you the vista image form a MSDN subscription can be used to perform the clean install so I don't have to wait 1 month to get the anytime upgrade dvd?

 

Can you go from Vista Ultimate 32 to Vista Ultimate 64 by doing a clean install and using the backup-cert and backup-key recovered from your Vista Ultimate 32 machine using the ABR? Will this activate the Vista Ultimate 64 that you just clean installed?

 

Diskeeper is in the swtools folder you should have backed up in step 1. It is located: \SWTOOLS\apps\DKEEPER then click the setup.exe file. This version of diskeeper will only work for 32-bit Vista.

Sorry I really have no idea. I haven't really ignored your question... I just don't know. I'm unfamiliar with that disk. Since the disk must come from microsoft, my gut says it will work. But that's just my guess.

Yes, please read the guide. This question is answered at the top of the guide just below the link for the anytime upgrade disk

AND it is the third question in the F.A.Q. on the bottom of the guide

I actually enjoy answering questions, but I prefer that people at least read the guide and F.A.Q. before posting. Thanks.
BTW, welcome to notebookreview

 

Please rate this thread as "excellent" if you have found it helpful. You can do this by clicking in the upper right corner of the screen where the stars are located.

If for some reason you do not feel that this guide deserves an excellent rating, please provide some feedback so the guide can be improved.

Thanks!

 

Yes, I've done this several times with the MSDN Vista media.

 

Thanks for this fantastic guide! I hope it'll save my life and some of my hair as well!

But do you know, if the activation & serial codes depend on country? For example, if I bought my X61 tablet in Russia (russian Vista is pre-installed), can I install english Vista?

 

Thanks for clearing that up.

I've actually read this guide completely a couple of times already. But I was confused by this comment in Orev's guide:

"You can only install the SAME VERSION of Vista you already bought. If you're laptop came with Home Premium, you can NOT install Ultimate."

The part about not being able to go from Home Premium to Ultimate I understood. But the emphasis on "SAME VERSION of vista you already bought" made me think that if my pc came with Ultimate 32 then I wouldn't be able to do a clean install Ultimate 64 because Ultimate 32 is a different version than Ultimate 64 (isn't it?). And other comments in this thread along the lines of, You can't get something from nothing, further influenced my thinking about the feasibility of going from Ult 32 to 64.

But now I know, thanks to your reply. I'll post an update if I get a chance to try a clean install following your excellent guide.

 

Hmmmm, maybe Orev (the maker of the ABR utility) will chime in on that one. I would lean toward saying yes, but that's just my guess. I suppose you could try. No harm done trying it. It doesn't take long to install Vista and attempt to activate with ABR. Try it using "English" if it doesn't activate then just re-install using "Russian".

Another option might be to clean install using Russsian, activate using ABR, then just change the language to english by doing this: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/2bac0e03-c331-48fc-8b7e-b66b8007512d1033.mspx

Oh, OK I understand. Yes, it must be the same version in regards to basic, premium, business, and ultimate since those are "upgrades" that cost money. The ABR utility will not work if you try to go from one of those versions to another. However, going from 32-bit to 64-bit is not an upgrade that microsoft chose to charge for. The serial number and cert. are identical for both 32-bit and 64-bit. Therefore ABR will work for that. I personally went from Ultimate 32-bit factory install to 64-bit clean install using the ABR utility to activate without a hitch.

 

Thanks again Stallen for such a great guide and continued support !!

 

I used this guide several months ago when I got my T61p. I didn't know you could install a 32bit or 64bit version. I may have to think about a clean install in the near future to go 64bit, should help with all my number crunching.

You guide is awesome Stallen (not that you didn't know that already).

 

can anyone confirm or deny this?

 

Superb Guide!

But I have one question, if I extract the Vista key from my factory new OEM Vista Business, will my machine work afterwards? Or is a new installation required right after the extraction?

Thank you!

 

Thanks! Merry Christmas!!!

I cannot confirm nor deny. The best person to ask that question would be nuhi in the vlite forum: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=153

Yes, your machine absolutely WILL work. Backing-up the activation files just creates a copy of those files. It does not remove them.

 

Ok! That step worked pretty well.
Now i got these two files.
One of the files contains a keycode which is not equal to the keycode at the bottomsticker of my thinkpad.

Does this sound good?

 

Yep, that's right they should not be the same.

 

Another question.

I need to get the Vista Anytime Upgrade Disk.
Do you think Microsoft is putting the upcoming Vista SP1 on there when it is released?
Because for the moment my system works ok, and I could wait with ordering the disk, if they put SP1 on it.
So i could get a fresh and clean Vista SP1 installation.

What do you think?

 

I'm sure SP1 will be on the Anytime disk eventually. Who knows how long that will take. I'm not sure that there is any real advantage to doing a clean install with SP1 on the disk vs. doing a clean install with the current anytime disk and then just having windows updates download and install the SP1. Another alternative would be to use "vlite" along with the current anytime disk to slipstream SP1 and create a new install disk.

 

Is it possible to ordner a anytime disk now, and order another one in 2 month?

 

Well... I don't work for Microsoft. I don't make those decisions. I can't think of any reason why they would limit the number of anytime disks that a person could purchase.

 

i really liked the thinkvantage button usage for rescue and recovery in the pre-os/boot up.
is there any way that i could create a new hidden partition that contain a new clean vista installation and use them as my recue and recovery back up?

thanks a lot

 

That's not possible as far as I know. You can use the blue thinkvantage button for other functions. read this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2741784#post2741784

Otherwise the F.A.Q. of the guide has my recommendations for back-up and recovery:

 

I did a clean install, it worked very well

But i don't know the name of the software which manage the charging of the battery, you can set a % to reach before charging.

Does someone know the name and where to download it?

 

The program is ThinkVantage's Power Manager. You can download it from the Lenovo website.

 

ThinkVantage Power Management Utility. It is available on the driver matrix page called "Power Manager".

EDIT: Oooops! Thanks Arkit3kt. I hate when I don't realize there is already an answer on the next page.

 

I just finished a few minor tweaks to the guide. Probably the most important update is a tweak that eyecon82 brought to many users attention. Thanks eyecon82! I would recommend this to everyone unless you are using a hybrid hard disk drive.

If you are wondering whether or not you have a hybrid hard drive, then the answer is "No". You would know if you have one. Currently, they are not very common. If you have one, you would have gone out of your way to get one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive

 

stallen, if i wanted to revert back to the factory state of my X61, would it be simple, coz X61 don't have a optical drive.
if something goes wrong, and i can't boot into vista, what should i do?
i mean if something goes wrong after using the clean vista installation.
thanks...

 

I think I'd get an external optical drive. Isn't that how you are doing a clean install?

 

Here is the tool from ibm to restore mbr after clean install, so you can use thinkvantage or F11 to access hidden partition.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-54483.html

I tested it with t61p after vista x64 clean installation.

 

stallen or anyone please help?

I recently got a t61, and really didnt like the bloatware, so i decided to reinstall the OS, without backing anything up or looking for the hidden vista key first

At the time of the reinstall, i didn't know about your guide..or any others' =/
I actually used the recovery cds given to me by lenovo to reinstall the os, and it was a downgrade from vista to XP

Thing is, i want to reinstall vista from a retail/anytime cd now...since their oem recovery XP is full of crap too

But, since i wiped out the factory vista and resinstalled in its place the Lenovo oem XP, i cannot find the hidden partition, and thus my vista key hidden in the partition...

I have a 100gb HDD that has 80 gbs volume, and about 77 gbs free, so i suspect that the 20 gbs is still somewhere in another partition...however i cannot see it, not with a retail windows vista cd installation (where it lets u choose which partition to install vista)

So is there anyway that i can recover/access the hidden partition and my vista oem key stored in the partition?

ALso, i called tech support to ask them for an anytime upgrade disc, and the tech support guy told me that the key in my hidden partition is same one as the one on the back of my computer...I was like "bs...?" but then I wasn't really sure since i never got to look at my hidden vista key anyway...so can anyone please clarify? though this is secondary to my problem of actually finding the key

 

The key on the hidden partition is not the same, but they won't tell you that. Most people probably don't even know it. What he really means is that you won't be able to do a clean install using the key on the partition (without using my ABR tool), so you'll have to use the one on the bottom of the laptop.

If you can't manage to recover the key, it's not a HUGE deal, as you can still do a clean install using the key on the sticker.

 

You can try to find your product key with a different utility called the "Magic Jelly bean" key finder: http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder.shtml . I doubt that it can find your key since the ABR utility can't find it, but it's worth a try. If it does work then follow "Other Activation Options" -> "Plan B" for activation as outlined in my F.A.Q. at the bottom of the guide.

You can get a set of Vista recovery disks from Lenovo tech support for free if you know how to play your cards right. Hopefully you haven't already messed up by calling them. There have been quite a few people on the Lenovo thread that have gotten a set of Vista recovery disks shipped to them for free. All you have to do is call tech support and tell them you tried to burn a set of recovery disks but your laptop locked up during the process and now it won't let you burn another set. Do not call customer/sales support. They will charge for the disks. Tech support will ship them free if you tell them this.

So it sounds like you have two options.

1. Get the Vista recovery disks from tech support. Do a system recovery. Then follow the guide using Orev's ABR utility.

2. As Orev suggested, just forget about ABR, the OEM cert and key. Just follow the guide using the product key on your sticker. Call microsoft to activate.

Make sure to read the F.A.Q. at the bottom of the guide. It tells how to locate and remove the hidden partition.

 

Thanks Orev and Stallen

I did in fact manage to get them to send me the vista recovery discs (not arrived yet), as it turns out that by buying vista ultimate from them they gave me XP recovery discs so i could downgrade to xp...

magic jellybean finder gave me the key that was used to install the current running os, which is XP...so that's not much use for a vista clean install

stallen, your faq does give instruction to removing and taking care of the hidden partition from vista...but the os that i'm currently running is XP, and i have no idea how to access it or to even confirm its existence (did the XP install wipe out my whole drive including the hidden partition? i dunno)

tech support guy said that all the hidden keys, vista oem key, xp oem key were inside my computer to start with, so what i can infer from that is..

1. recovery cds dont have the keys...they just recover it from the computer
2. the hidden partition was not deleted as a result of XP installation...as that would disable me from recovering to vista from xp

please correct me if i'm wrong. and also tech support guy could be lying, as he did before...=_=

and yeah, i know i can still clean install with the sticker key, but it just irks me how the license i bought (hidden key) is inaccessible due to their stupid bloatware that i had to go through all this trouble to delete...and of course it was my fault for not reading the guides on this forum before wiping out my factory vista...=/

Thanks for the quick reply and help guys =D

ps. tech support guy kept telling me sticker key and hidden key were exactly the same keys...so i think that was some serious intentional misdirection as opposed to trying to tell me that i cant just plug the hidden key into an anytime upgrade install