Lenovo Y500 - Windows 7 Installation/Drivers -- Good Touchpad/Good Keyboard

Dear all,

I live in the Netherlands and last week I bought myself a Y500. Main specifications I was looking for was at least 8gb RAM and an i7 in a 15" Notebook.
I had heard good things about Lenovo (old IBM) and there wasn't much that could compete with the specifications of the Y500 therefore the decision was quickly made.

It was also my first introduction into Windows 8, but after half an hour playing around I knew this was not for me and I started looking for information about formatting the Y500 and installing Windows 7.

There is some very useful information that can be found on the internet but its quite fragmented, therefore if there are enough people interested I don't mind creating a step by step guide on how to deal with this downgrading.


One other thing to mention is that I don't have any problems with the touchpad nor the keyboard (luckily). My touchpad is a synaptics and not an Elan. I think the European market has got the good touchpads and keyboards;lucky us.

I look forward to find out if there are more people who got sick of Windows 8.

(add. I took out the 16GB mSata SSD and replaced it with a 128GB mSata SSD, I installed my OS on this one and am not using the cache system as it was with the 16GB mSata SSD)

 

Good to hear that you're loving your new Y500 and that the keyboard and touchpad are great! I just ordered mine and hope the Canadian Lenovo has updated them as well

I've been using Windows 8 for a month now, hated it at first but now it's actually not that bad. I wanted to switch back to 7 at first, just like you, but now that I'm use to 8, I think it's just as good.

Cheers mate!

 

Stay with W8. It's smoother and faster in everything. You just need to get used to the command and new stuff. Give it some time.
Other than that, faulty keyboards and touchpads were also in the Netherlands. If you browse Tweakers you can see a bunch of people complaining about their touchpads.
I also got lucky with my German model.

 

I am a sick of Windows 8 myself.
Glad to hear there are some Y500s that are free from error.

 

to those people who have used both the elan and the sypnatics, is there a large difference in the quality an performance in the touchpad. i personally a working elan touchpad and a working keyboard. (lucky me) the only thing broke on my laptop was a defected battrey lock that i accidently managed to fix{YAY}

 

@ZeoKZ I am getting the y500 pretty soon and am considering downgrading to windows 7... I have a couple questions: Are you using the dual gpu version? Also, what compatibility/feature issues have you had since downgrading?
@artwork Why not use windows 7 if you can get it working without any issues?

 

Windows 8 is a tab bit faster in startup and in general responsiveness. There are things wrong with it no doubt but the ease of access has increased. There are more updated drivers for win8 than 7 mainly because this was built for w8

 

I like Windows 8 overall and I've upgraded to Professional for $15 and then got media center for free so I'm pretty happy for the cost/benefit ratio. As mohammadbawany said, faster and more ways to access stuff. Just takes some getting used to but with gestures, you can get to everything you need very quickly. I don't miss the old start menu at all. The only thing that I miss is not being able to run WinXP in a virtual pc but I only used that to program my car and I haven't had to do that in a while.

 

I would love a comprehensive Windows 7 downgrade/install guide. I have a Y500 on order (4+ weeks) and plan to install a mSATA SSD for the OS and apps once it arrives.

 

@girthgirth
I dont have the SLI version. Basically I needed a good laptop to use for work but i wanted it to have some gaming capacities; this is good enough for me and if i would really want it i could get the GPU in ultrabay when its available.

If you make sure to use the Windows7 Drivers for the Lenvovo Y500 you will have no issues, at least i didnt. Only thing is that the Win7 dirvers can only be found on the chinese Lenovo website.

 

@Soper
When i have some free time on my hands i'll make a guide.

 

You might be right, I would have to take my time and get more familiar with it I guess. I try to run the same OS on all my systems so its a bit of a headache to adapt the other systems to my Lenovo. Nevertheless in the near future i will install it on my desktop and give it another shot.

I cant complain about the performance of my Y500 with Win7; startup time is 10.4s (cold boot), everything runs smooth, and I love playing Battlefield 3 without frame drops!

 

Holy s***t
my win8 does not boot as fast as that.

 

@mohammadbawany
he has win7 installed on an ssd... do you have win8 on one or are just using the preinstalled one for cache?
@ZeoKZ
I really want to see if i like win8, but i will probably have some issues. I dont want to sound like an a$$ but I have amassed many pirated programs and games and am afraid they wont install as smoothly on 7. Actually that is probably the only reason... So about your gpu driver, did you get the one off the chinise site and then update or did you just dl the latest driver from nvidia? I wish you had the sli and could test it but oh well

 

Nah I just have the hard drive

Sent from my ThunderBolt using Tapatalk 2

 

Everything works bro..I have a couple of cracked games myself and have no issues at all...