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

Were the three files on your computer? Would you mind sharing their location... I unhid all of my files and directories on my T61, and was still unable to track them down.

 

I think he might mean he found them on the web, not on the machine. As far as i know the T61 doesn't have the necessary files that you need to make a Vista Disc, but I heard some laptops do.

 

Maybe I missed mention of this but thought I'd post anyhow since I have my ThinkVantage button working after a clean install of Vista Ultimate 64 on my T400. I just ran through the guide but didn't install the productivity suite until the end, then ran the HotKey install from Lenovo's website. Blue ThinkVantage now works to bring up the onscreen ThinkVantage center lower left...

But maybe I missed it and someone else already posted somewhere else and had this working now. Just came across this thread in my attempts to get it working after the fresh install.

 

I'm having the same issue as DmZ (see below): At this point, everything is installed and wroking EXCEPT the modem. I ran into the same error message when trying to install the modem drivers, only I have not been able to find UAA High Definition Audio Class Driver for Vista from Microsoft or Lenovo. Any help would be appreciated! TIA

 

I just got my laptop and plan on doing this soon. Only thing is, I don't have a Vista CD and the link to download the files and burn your own keeps saying "Denied".

Does anyone know where I can get the three files?

1. boot.wim (116 MB)
2. install.wim (2.24 GB)
3. X13-49120.exe (73.7 MB)

Thanks.

 

nice complete guide.

 

I followed the guide and i'm at the step wher i'm trying to turn on the bluetooth. Fn+F5 doesn't work even after installing thinkvantage connections.

I can't find where to turn it on? Thinkvantage doesn't even have it listed. Device manager shows "unknown device" and "biometric reader"...

Do I need to run windows update to see if it finds it that way first?

Thanks,

 

Interesting. Maybe you found the fix for the Thinkvantage button. I will have to check it out sometime. I usually don't boot into Windows much, these days.

 

I gave up on the link posted in this forum, it has been broken for a long time. That was the only legal place to get these files. I would suggest you search ebay for an anytime upgrade disc, either 32 or 64 bit based on what you want to go with. Or borrow any(OEM, retail) Vista disc from your friends

 

To answer my own question, it turns out that the modem was disabled in BIOS (hmm, I don't recall doing that myself, but anything's possible). Anyway, once I enabled the modem, I was able to install the drivers without further ado.

 

I just want to make sure that the licensing will work okay if I replace the HD. My T61p came with Vista Ultimate. I borrowed an oem disk of vista 64 from a friend and want to do a clean install. Even though the hd is not origonal, the licence program should still work right?

 

my machine had the files... have you searched for a hidden folder on your machine in a location like C:\WAUUPGRD\sources? orev's mentioned that not all machines contain the files, but it's certainly worth taking a look.

good luck!

jeffrey

 

Yes it should be fine. This is the way i did my clean install, I replaced my 80GB drive with a 200GB drive aftermarket. Follow this guide EXACTLY and and read all the readme documents that come with the drivers and things should be ok. Make sure to pay special attention to Orev's ABR utility and the steps that it requires. This is the part where it grabs the license, and this is what is used in the new drive during the installation. In the list of steps there is a part where Stallen tells you to replace the old hardrive with the new, replace it then.

 

Hello,

Will this work with my HP laptop?

And also, the licence key determines which version of Vista is installed? So do I have to obtain a licence key specific for Ultimate to install ultimate over my Home premium?

If the disks contain all versions of Vista then obtaiing the licence key is the most important thing then (legally I should add).

Thanks for any help you guys can give me!

 

I just bought a Vista Anytime Upgrade disk off eBay. Now my question is, Can I use 3 DVD-RW for the 3 DVDs required for the backup discs?

 

Thanks for the guide, it worked perfectly. I replaced the Vista Home Premium 32-bit shipped OS with a clean install of the 64-bit version from an Ultimate 64-bit OEM disk.

Just curious what the ACPI Power "Management Driver" does over the standard Vista power management? Is it really necessary? - It mentions F12 functions but I couldn't find any further info on this.

Thanks again

 

Yes, this should work for your HP laptop, though this guide is geared toward a Lenovo Thinkpad T61. You will need to check HPs site to see if they have the drivers you need for download.

Yes, you need an ultimate key to install Ultimate(either 32 or 64 bit, your choice). But you cannot buy a machine with home premium and go to Ultimate with the same key.

YES.

 

You should be able to. I am not a 100% sure though. I used 3 DVD-Rs without any problems.

 

After clean installing Home Premium 64-bit I noticed that Aero was disabled and I also had a score of 1.0. Later I told Vista to recalculate my score and this time it came up as 4.5. I don't use Aero but thought this was interesting.

 

Okay so I installed ultimate 64 bit to my new hard drive. Everything is working great, except for the bluetooth. The driver installed, and device manager says it working, but I cannot connect my mouse. No matter what I do it keeps telling me it cannot find a device. Any ideas?

 

I can't really test my bluetooth, since I don't have any bluetooth devices at the moment. After you did the clean install did you install SP1? Maybe that might help? Not sure. When the mouse worked before the clean install did you have the software that comes with it installed?

 

I got it working. I guess the mouse wasn't in the detecting state; I know I'm an idiot. I actually installed the OS with SP1. I got a copy of the 64bit disk from a friend, and I used vlite to slipstream SP1 into the install.

 

Cool, so your bluetooth is ok. What do you mean the mouse wasn't in a detecting state? Was it not turned on or too far out of range?

 

Probably means the mouse wasn't in pairing mode. Like a BT headset, you have to do something special like hold down a recessed button on the bottom to put it into pairing mode before associating it with a computer.

 

Hi guys,

I have a Windows Vista Upgrade DVD (courtesy of a friend), and I was wondering if it matters that on the disc it says 'April 2007'? Is that too old? Would it make any difference if I bought a more recent disc? Just a thought before I go ahead and do a clean install of my Home Premium 32 bit.

Thanks.

 

Bump! Bump!

 

A newer disc might have SP1 on it already, saving you from downloading it through Windows update. It is always best to use the newest disc, but it should be no big deal. It should be fine. Mine didn't have SP1, but I just got SP1 through windows update after the clean install steps.

 

Thank you FireSnake. Can't give you a rep cos 'I need to give someone else first' - strange!

 

Hello!

I've bought a new Thinkpad with Vista Home. I am thinking of doing a clean install of Vista again. For another system of mine, I've already purchased & installed Vista Business. I'll be selling that old one without the OS. Is it possible that I could use ABR utility and get key and registration information from older notebook, and use it on the new notebook when doing a clean install? Will that work?

 

ABR will only work on a system that was either:
a) pre-installed from the factory or
b) you re-installed using a recovery disc or other OEM supplied disc
If you did the install yourself and during the install had to type in a product key and then had to activate it, ABR will not work for that.

 

What kind of bloatware is on the T400s? aside from the thinkvantage program.

 

Thanks for the guide! I got my x61t two days ago and followed the guide almost to the tee, except I didn't install the UltraNav drivers (still don't know what that is...)

I still only get a 3.5 for my Windows experience index with 4gb of RAM I guess integrated graphics is just that bad, good thing I don't need any fancy schmancy graphics.

Auto rotate doesn't work though, I'm a little annoyed about that. I read that it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't? I can press the "rotate screen" button, but it's a bit of a hassle.

 

Hi Guyz,

thanks for ths post and the discussions, which helped me getting my system up, with dual boot of xp and vista. Both 32bit.

I ran into a problem. Even though I have xp sp2 and I followed the thread for driver installation, still was not able to get my xp up with SATA AHCI enabled. After I installed storage matrix driver, on reboot, I was hit by the bsod with 00..07B() error. So I had to continue remaining driver installations in compatibility mode of SATA.

Later, I installed vista over xp as dual boot, and during installation, I kept SATA as AHCI(i forgot, one other than the compatibility). Once I got vista up, I again changed SATA to compatibility to boot into xp. But the problem is now, I am not able to log into vista with SATA compatibility mode. Again BSOD.

Is there any work around, which I can do inside xp or vista for both the systems to be functional in either in SATA or COMPATIBILITY. I have already wasted 2days, kind of afraid of installing from scratch again. Pls, pls advise.

Thanks

 

The bloatware that is installe
is fairly minimal. Microsoft Office trial, Business contact manager (with SQL 2005), Abobe Acrobat (which I consider bloat...Foxit Reader is much better), and a few others. There are also a few icons on the desktop which launch an installer, but are not installed.

A couple uninstalls and reboots later, along with a registry clean, and it's running great.

Just for kicks I did a clean install, and found no difference in performance. The clean install is waste of time if you already have the version of Vista you want installed when you buy the laptop.

 

You need to install both of them using SATA mode. Do not use compatibility mode. Since XP will not be able to find the disk without SATA drivers, you must integrate the drivers into the XP CD. Look into using nLite for that which makes it easy as possible, but it is still a bit of a pain. There are also some guides around here on how to do that.

Also, it sounds like you installed XP and Vista on the same partition. If that's the case, it is strongly recommended that you don't so that. You need to have 2 partitions on the disk drive, one for XP and one for Vista. You will not be able to share programs between them either. If you install Office, for example, you must do it twice -- once on Vista and again on XP. Such is the life of running dual boot.

You should ask why you need to dual boot. It really is a pain, and unless you really need XP, you probably shouldn't do it. Even then, there are other ways to get XP running, such as in a Virtual Machine, where you do not need to worry about dual booting. The only time a VM won't work well is for gaming.

 

Thanks for the reply. I actually need dual-boot due to some reasons, and I had installed xp and vista in two different partitions, so there is no problem booting into them with bios stat in compatibility for xp and bios sata in ahci mode in vista. I tried to install xp in sata mode following the guide that uses intel storage matrix driver, but to no succes, only to discover BSOD on booting on to xp. Could sbdy lemme know any workaround, with this addtional information. Slipstreaming sata driver into xp installation disk is one way..but installing xp again and all drivers is a pain..so want to continue with current installation.

 

I've just got a retail copy of Windows Vista Business 64bit with SP1. Does the installation procedures change? Or should I just follow the steps in the first post.

Thanks

 

Install procedure is the same, but you probably won't be using ABR unless you already have Vista Business installed by the OEM (it can be 32-bit or 64-bit).

 

Sorry if this has been beat to death elsewhere. In one month, my original vista install was messed up enough that I can no longer get the recovery media command to work. It either says a resource is busy or the little red dots go back and forth in the tool for a long enough time I consider it hung. It also won't shutdown (without a hard power down) .

When I called the Lenovo support guy, who seemed to know his stuff well, what they all used in their machines it was 100% XP. Do folks here think Vista works well enough now to prefer over XP ? I definitely don't want to have a "clean" install go this bad this quickly but I admit, I'm a sucker for the nice look of Vista, just completely worn out trying to troubleshoot it.

 

Yes, Vista works fine. Anyone still clinging to XP has not realized that the world has moved on without them.

XP is fine too, but there's nothing wrong with Vista.

 

Hey all,

I’m planning to get a T400 and I am customizing right now. I plan to get Vista Home to save some cost as I already have a free key for Vista Business from my college.

I am still dearly attached to XP on my T42 but I think it’s time for an upgrade. After reading through the guide it seems that I have 2 ways to upgrade from Vista Home to Business.

1) Upgrading within Vista itself without doing a clean install. Is this possible? This would also mean that the ThinkVantage bloatware would remain right? Should I create the restore disk prior to upgrading to Business or could I upgrade to Business and create the restore disk which would have Business if I ever do restore it to the factory setting? Somehow I feel this is not possible as the restore disk would only be created for Home.
2) Upgrading after a clean install. This mean I would follow the guide until I reach Step 3 #8 & #9 where I enter the product key I have and choose Business right?

Thanks for all the help.

 

Special thanks to Orev and Stallen - with your guides, clean installation is as smooth as silk. Easy to do. Thumbs up guys.

 

Apologize in advanced if this was asked already (I admittedly didn't read all 150 pages)...

I'm looking to follow this guide once I receive my x61t, but I think I have a problem.

The x61t doesn't allow an internal dvd drive, and I didn't bother ordering an external dvd drive. If I want this installation to work, do I need to borrow somebody's external dvd drive?

As soon as I receive my x61t, I plan on taking out the 160GB HD it comes with to replace it with a 320GB. So I'm wondering if I can just use the 160GB HD as an external hard drive to somehow solve this problem?

 

You might be able to follow these instructions. They are made for a flash drive, but will probably work with a regular external hard drive as well. Be prepared to tinker with it until you get it working correctly.

 

I don't have Vista Anytime Upgrade DVD, but have one of the Vista DVD which my cousin gives to me. I was doing according to this guide until step 3 and installing Vista; but when I skipped filling out Product Key and went to next screen, it guided me to the Custom (Advanced) Installation without letting me chose my Window's Version. So, what should I do? just continue? Thanks for the help!

 

It means your DVD has been preset to install a particular version of Vista. You can remove this preset, probably by using something like vLite. You will need to burn a new DVD when you are done. Look around online for how to do that with vLite.

 

Thanks!
Can you say specifically how to remove this preset using vLite?

 

Look at my guide here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228
and look for the section "OEM Re-Installation Disc"

 

thanks! appreciate your help!

 

Tried this clean install today in an attempt to improve things up on my X301 and move to 64-bit Vista from 32-bit Vista business. I have a 64-bit OEM Vista disc that I used to build my desktop system.

Anyway when I get past the first couple screens and click on the install now I get this message:

A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, please insert it now.

---------

the X301 has that thin (Mat****a DVD-RAM UJ-844) CD/DVD drive. Doesn't look like it really has a driver.

Any recommendations on how to get out of this dilemma would be appreciated.