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    T400 + XP SP3? Do the drivers work?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by philosopherdog, Nov 21, 2008.

  1. philosopherdog

    philosopherdog Notebook Consultant

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    I gave up on Vista x64 this morning. I couldn't take the endless drive thrashing, the Vista heartbeat as its called. There's no real solution to it. So, I did a downgrade to XP. The T400 comes with the downgrade disks, which was nice. Anyhow, I was surprised to see that it's just SP2. Has anyone got SP3 to run on it or are we stuck at SP2? I'm worried some of the drivers might not function. Anyone? I appreciate it.
     
    philosopherdog, Nov 21, 2008
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  2. David

    David NBR Random Reviewer NBR Reviewer

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    I wouldn't be worried if the disk only has SP2. You can always download SP3 from the microsoft website which I'd highly recommend :)
     
    David, Nov 21, 2008
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  3. srunni

    srunni Notebook Deity

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    Yes, it works fine for me.
     
    srunni, Nov 21, 2008
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  4. reg767

    reg767 Notebook Geek

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    I ordered my T400 with a Downgrade to Win XP. It arrives Monday, 11/24. I MUST use XP on my machine for work. Is a total and complete CLEAN XP installation recommended? I'd love to avoid that ordeal if possible. The various "horror" stories abound here and other places. Is the T400 so unstable? Appreciate the comments, thanks.
     
    reg767, Nov 22, 2008
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  5. receph

    receph Notebook Evangelist

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    XP runs fine and relatively clean. I installed SP3 right away.

    Now using Vista for other reasons, but XP was okay.

    Except for the office and don't remember what sw it came with.
     
    receph, Nov 23, 2008
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  6. IBM_Lenovo_User

    IBM_Lenovo_User Notebook Geek

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    Go for it, bro :D

    I am using Windows XP SP3 and it works flawlessly with all of the drivers installed. Moreover, although I have installed a huge number of applications whose total size comes to ~35GB, my T400 still runs exceptionally fast. I am really happy with the machine (and the OS as well) :)
     
    IBM_Lenovo_User, Nov 23, 2008
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  7. zachman123

    zachman123 Notebook Geek

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    I'm thinking about switching over to XP... how is the power management though? I've heard that with the T400, Vista is actually more efficient, but I wanted to see if anyone actually notices less battery life switching to xp.
     
    zachman123, Nov 23, 2008
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  8. receph

    receph Notebook Evangelist

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    vista does better with power management. I used to get 9.5-10.5W at idle with XP. It's down to 7.5W with Vista.

    The difference, to me, is substantial with the 9-cell battery
     
    receph, Nov 23, 2008
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  9. philosopherdog

    philosopherdog Notebook Consultant

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    XP is totally stable on the T400.
     
    philosopherdog, Nov 23, 2008
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  10. Potstickr

    Potstickr Notebook Guru

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    I second that...our T400 ran great with XP SP3 and all of the drivers worked...after experimenting with Vista Business (32bit), i only run XP SP3 as a virtual machine now...for me, Vista provides almost an hour of extra battery life than XP with a 6-cell...
     
    Potstickr, Nov 24, 2008
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