New T520 arriving soon. Update procedure

Greetings all

I will be receiving my new T520 with the FHD screen, bluetooth and 128 gig SSD in a few days. It was the doorbuster special.

I want to update drivers, windows, etc before I load applications and data. Is there a procedure that you all use? I have noticed that there has been better performance (for example) with intel drivers instead of lenovo drivers in some cases.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

I would highly recommend that you first burn T520 recovery disks once you have setup your T520 when you recieve it. After that, you could reformat the partition and reinstall Windows 7 from scratch (check the forum for specific instructions). Finally, install your own drivers and setup your T520 again.

 

AES,

What would be the benefit of reinstalling windows 7 from scratch and using my own drivers and setting it up again?

 

The W520 I received recently from Lenovo had all sorts of bloatware that wasted space and boot time (not as much bloatware that comes w/ a Dell). If you install Windows 7 on your T520 from scratch, system performance tends to be better and you can install their Thinkpad drivers anytime from their support pages.

 

I have just setup my new T520. Like my previous machine, a W500, I do not see the need to clean install. Just remove the programmes you don't want. I didn't have to remove too much at all. I did not agree to Norton, though! Update your OS, and also use Lenovo Thinkvantage to update Lenovo programmes. There are few other things that do need fixing, but will discuss them in a review...The system performance is electrifying. That will do me..(smile)

 

Thanks antskip

Completely reinstalling the os and drivers seems like an extremely drastic step. Maybe that's why so many people have problems with their computers.

Your approach is quite resonable and is what I would do.

I look forward to your review and tweaks.

Rob

 

I am not trying to sway you one way or the other but there is nothing drastic about clean installing windows and drivers. Takes a couple of hours. Advantage - full control over what you have on your machine. By the way, most problems that people are having are not OS-related most of the time. It's either due to hardware/BIOS/firmware or user incompetence.

 

I do reformats on all my computers (except my netbook) every 2 ~ 3 months, and I tried a clean install on my W520 just to see if it's actually worth it. In my opinion, it was a lot more work than it was worth, and I decided to just revert to the factory image after an hour. I especially missed the ThinkPad welcome screen, though.

 

I am eager to hear the fixes that antskip made.

Ferganer, were you able to quantify the improvements in performance with the clean install?

 

I agree that you don't have to reformat your HDD, but I still recommend that you create the recovery disks.

 

What I found, in comparison to my W500 (see profile):
1) Stunning machine; gorgeous screen. Panel brightness level 11 equivalent to level 15 on W500 WUXGA. Even the keyboard light is much brighter!
2) 15.6' FHD has lower PPI (141) than W500's 15.4' WUXGA (147), and both text and graphics density are noticeably less dense. The FHD colours are dramatically "warmer" than for the WUXGA - I am not sure whether I like the change or not. Though I prefer a WUXGA, the LED FHD is wonderfully bright, and the main reason I upgraded from the W500.
3) Once software "established", system quiet and quick. Boot time 5 secs quicker; shutdown time the same. SSD's in both systems!
4) T520's sound (the speakers?) dramatically inferior to W500 (tested with identical youtube clips)
5) Keyboard still wonderful!
6) Really like the new delete button, and also the easier-to-press start button
7) Intel X-25M 160GB SSD provided very similar in performance to my 2 year old 120GB OCZ Summit (third party). Crystaldiskmark showed only speed differences were in sequential writing, where the Summit is 50% faster, and in 4K random writes, where the Intel is 4X faster. I expected the 160GB to provide 40GB more room, but with Recover Partition and for some reason more space taken up by the factory-installed software, the spare room came out identical!
8) i7-2630QM combined with Nvidia Quadro NVS4200M with Optimus: Concerns I had about the power of the quad i7 cpu being also a drawback seem unfounded. It runs very cool. CPUID monitoring indicates lower temperatures both idling and under load. When the W500's Penryn T9400 runs 2 cores at 2.5GHz, the T520's Sandy Bridge i7-2630QM runs 4 cores at 0.8GHz. The T9400's integrated intel gpu was so mediocre, I always used the external ATI Mobility FireGL V5700; but the Sandy Bridge's integrated intel gpu runs most operations just fine (though I am at this stage unconvinced about the Intel drivers compared to ATI's). The T520's Nvidia Quadro NVS4200M is in reserve for more demanding operations. In performance it is not so different from the ATI Mobility FireGL V5700 on the W500 - but of course both of them create more heat than the internal intels.
9) Appreciate an extra usb2 (at back) compared to W500. The vertical usb slots of the W500 have been replaced by the more common horizontal usb slots on the T520.

After initial startup sequence, did the following:
1) Created recovery DVD's - very time-consuming and annoying!
IMHO, Lenovo can and should provide these - or if too difficult, provide full installation DVD's (OS and drivers) [as all my Dell laptops used to have as standard]
2) Windows 7 installed with defrag scheduled - I turned it off to be sure it won't happen (smile)
3) Other preferences for SSD: turn off recycle bin, system restore, file indexing, and Windows Defender (use Spywareblaster and Superantispyware)
4) Lenovo HDD active protection system enabled, even though Lenovo-provided SSD. Removed this
5) Did not install Norton AV (use Avast)
6) Removed bing bar (!), thinkpad toolbox (HDD-oriented), and a few more Thinkvantage tools, as for W500
7) Turned off superfetch (as it was a Intel SSD, done by Intel SSD toolbox), but can be easily done manually
8) Changed FHD's OS PPI from 125% factory setting to set to 110%, compared to WUXGA 120% (factory default also 125%)
9) Increased fonts size to Trebuchet MS/Tahoma bold 14 in menu etc settings, rather than 15 for WUXGA
10) Updated Win OS and Thinkvantage software
11) Installed 64bit flash, 64bit Microsoft Office, 64bit Pale Moon(Firefox substitute), Avast antivirus, spyware blaster, etc
12) Found that the "factory setting" did not include enabling optimus in the bios - so it was turned on
13) Rescue regime: Created Win 7 restore image to external HDD; also the Paragon equivalent; each to be re-created at least once a month. Created Microsoft Synctoy echos of all data on external HDD, for frequent incremental backup. Lenovo Factory restore rescue DVD's as last resort, as well as Rescue Partition (considering removal at some stage to regain room on SSD)

As far as possible, I setup the new T520 in identical fashion to the W500. Most changes were due to very different screen.

 

Lenovo should provide your recovery disks? When you create your own recovery disks, each of the recovery disks are optimized for your specific system.

 

I didn't really do any tests with the stock image but what I can tell for sure is that a clean install system has always run snappier than the stock image on all laptops that I've owned. I do a clean install on all my computers and, actually, reinstall windows a couple of times a year to rid the system of the clutter that it eventually accumulates. I've clean installed Windows maybe a hundred times so it was not a big deal for me to do another install on my T520.

Second improvement is the hard drive space. This was important to me as I only have 80GB on my SSD. No matter what you do with the stock image, you won't get the same amount of space freed as you do with a clean install (given you have the same set of applications and personal data).

Third reason I clean install is that I have a Windows 7 Ultimate license and since I use Bitlocker a lot it made sense for me to get the cheapest possible Windows version and do a clean install.

One thing I recommend when you do a clean install on a laptop with NVidia Optimus is not to install Windows graphic updates. Install the Optimus graphics driver first as it has both the Intel HD graphics and NVidia graphics couples in one driver.

 

Thanks antskip

I really don't see the value in a clean install. I will take your suggestions. I enjoyed reading your impressions.

 

Antskip,

Just received my t520. I love it and the screen is wonderful. The computer is very fast. I disabled the hdd active protection as I have a ssd. The program did not want me to disable it but I did it.

I played with the ppi and will try a few more things.

Any other suggestions? It seems that all the bios settings and the setup was good.

Rob

 

Great! I hope you love the machine as much as I do! After a couple of days of ansgt as I "tuned it in" (mostly turning off rogue progams that run themselves - e.g. windows defender, system restore,,,), and turning on optimus, I have not had to change anything. It is just as quiet as my old W500 - i.e. silent most of the time - and an amazing screen (though a little lower resolution). I have edited my initial review/setup post above - you may or may not have noticed? - not much else to add - once it all works great, just leave well alone.

You should completely remove the thinkvantage HDD "active protection" program through control panel. That will stop any objections...

 

Thanks for all your help antskip.

It was greatly appreciated.

 

interesting. Could you detail some of these optimisations?

 

They do have recovery disks. Tech-support sells them for $50. They are not covered by the warranty.

 

To the OP, how are you liking the T520's fhd screen??

I just ordered a T520 and am going to sell my 3 week old T420.

I really tried to like the display but in the end watching a movie on it was a grueling task..