Vista 64 Bit?

Yes, I continue to customize and customize. I have not called MS yet re activation yet as I am trying to get this system liveable.

There are many things to mention. After talking to Phil, I've come to the conclusion that for some reason, you can't backup and restore a product key when going from 32 to 64 Bit Vista. So I will have to activate.

There are lots of little surprises. In Stallen's clean install there is the implication that you need to download tons of drivers. You don't. Vista has almost all the drivers and what drivers it does not have it will download as soon as it has internet access. I had pctured a very baren environement until I had loaded the lenovo stuff and that's not the case at all. I was even surpised to see that vista has what it needs to run my WWAN card which was a shock.

The PC easy transfer was a huge time saver but it didn't save everything such as the contents of my Send To file and it also migrated over all of the Lenov Driver and SWtools.

There is one visible difference in Vista64 that is visbile to a technical person. Vista64 has two Program Files directories. The directory Program files is apparently intented for 64 bit applications and Program Files (x86) in intended for 32 bit applications which will soon become legacy applications. This is transparent to installations.

I have yet to install much of the Lenovo stuff. I have no brightness control ( Is all of that under Hotkeys?) or audio control buttons and of course my Lenov function keys do not work.

I have installed and tailored lots of layered products and have many more small ones and lots of tailoring to do.

And yes, I started with ultimate and installed ultimate. I wish I had a license for Business.

 

Yup the brightness osd,volume etc are all from the hotkey driver.

My experience with vista x64 install was smoother than I expected. The only daunting task was the preinstall prep - backing up and making sure I had all the necessary drivers downloaded and saved in the order that they will be installed in.
The one thing I wished worked in vista 64 was the thinkpad fan control util. Everything else just works.

Hope everything goes well.

 

I think the System Interface driver also needs to be installed for the brightness osd, volume, etc.

 

So that's what the system interface driver is for.

Hey you all, I'm having business problems.

You know the phony activation number on the bottom of these laptops? Microsoft says it's up to lenovo to get that straight. Sooooooo I'm getting ready call lenovo support.

 

Not Good. Not Good at all.

Phil has been through this with "no problems".

I had very different results. Be the following stipulated:

1.) There are people in the Microsoft Activation Center who do not understand thier own policies.

Phone call #1 (was to 'Indja')

What is it about Indian that Indians do not want to actually listen to what the problem is?

Microsoft India insisted that Vista-32 and 64 will require different serial numbers. They do not. Microsoft India wanted to treat migration from 32 to 64 bit as if it is an upgrade. It is not.

Call #2.

I was referred to Microsoft Customer services. They knew about the pseudo-product ID on the bottom of laptops. Their position as:

"If lenovo did not give you a valid Key it's up to Lenovo to supply you with one."

Call #3.

Lenovo Customer Support. They understood the problem BUT their means to help were organizationally limited. Yes, lenovo was prepared to send me a new Vista Distribution BUT only for 32 bits which really would get me now where. Organizationally, they could only send me exactly what i was sold.

Lesson: (Remembering Phil's experience):

2.) Sometimes you will reach good people.

3.) Sometimes you won't.

Phil had good luck with this, I didn't. I had access to another legitimate Key so I am activated now. It's resolved for me but other people would find themselves buying a new copy of Vista.

In other words... this process could lead to an OS-less system.

 

If it doesn't work, you can always revert back to 32 bit tight?

 

It an owner has made a backup they can. Lenovo will supply an activated 32 bit copy. They will not send a 64 bit copy. I did have a backup but that isn't really the issue.

 

Renee - just curious, were you trying to use the activation key that was actually stored in your registry, from a keyfinder ( http://www.magicaljellybean.com/beta/), or the fake key on the bottom of the laptop? It may be that neither would work online...

 

I know the one on the bottom will not work.

I tried to use the ABR system and it didn't work. I have a hypothesis as to why it didn't work. My Vista distrution, that I used to install Vista 64 was an MSDN distribrution. I believe part of the Product Key systems are capable of recognizing what is MSDN and what isn't. In looking back at all of this, I think the that the product key system was smart enough to detect that the Lenovo OEM key was a mismatch.

At no time did I attempt to do an internet activation. It was just that after I did the ABR restore, that my system never showed activation. The other thing was that today my grace period was cut from 30 to 15 days.

 

Call in for the activation and just answer their questions...

1. Are you using this copy of Vista on one system? yes
2. Did you buy this yourself or did it come with a PC? answer whatever.

 

It's taken care of Flamenko. But where to call?

No one asked me questions like at the Activation center. The people there were full of misinformation wanting to treat 32 bit migration to 64 bits as if it were an upgrade and as if they had to have different product keys.

 

Ark,

As it turns out, that wasn't the version of Watcher I needed. It's behavior is different and it seems to be wired specifically for their 580.

Finger print driver, Productivity center (we have to give the blue button something to do), the hotkeys and system interface are in. It's beginning to behave a lot like a thinkpad.

No WWAN yet. Yesterday, before you found that copy of watcher I sent a note to Sierra asking them. My Windows mail definitely has a problem and I am hoping there will be an answer on my desktop waiting for me when I arrive home.

I yes... I am experiencing far more erratic cursor behavior than I used to.

 

I think you are spot-on about the MSDN/ OEM key incompatibility. Those MSDN distros are totally whacked, in my experience, and sometimes have timebombs buried in them. Still don't know whether I want to try this, but thanks for keeping us all posted...

 

I've always had really good experiences with my MSDN subscriptions. But you can't mix and match them apparently.

OK, so now Access connnections are in and working. I still have to deal with UltaNav and my Watcher Problem.

 

I'll continue looking for the Watcher software, Renee.

 

You are so kind. We have the picture that there are many versions of Watcher. The thing is, the first time I found it, I do remember that it took me about 30 -45 minutes of looking around. The thing is.... I can't remember where I found it. I'm sure it was on the sierra site. I didn't hear from Sierra today.

 

Does anyone know which component the Lenovo battery display is?

Please, please don't say power management.

 

It's the ThinkVantage tool called Power Manager.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-67216

 

Thanks Ark,

I'm going to forego that one. Although it does supply some nice battery information, I never have been crazy about that component. Vista has that maller one that sits in the notification tray. That'll be the one I use.

 

I'm sticking with Vista's power management. However, the Lenovo battery meter is MUCH more accurate and Thinkvantage Power management has more advanced power managment options.

 

Renee, is there anyway you can find the version of Sierra Watcher that you are using? Maybe open up the program and look under help?

 

Stallen,

I'm going to take your advice. I really wasn't crazy about Lenovo's power management but I did like the battery display, so I will reinstall it.

I've about finished. My system is in good shape with one bug. Windows Mail is broken and I believe Easy transfer had something to do with that. Oddly enough, this morning I received a piece of mail on it and it spontaneously recovered. I had some mail cleaning up to do and it's failing again. Otherwise my system is in good shape.

I'm glad I did this. For me, when I instal a system it's a huge deal because of all of the layered products I have to add and also to re-establish an environment.

If I had one piece of advice to give, it would be to plan ahead. I would carefully evaluate easy transer. It did a lot for me, but not everything. To a large degree, you can also tell it what you want saved and it will save it for you.

Ark,

I rather anticipated this happening and before I formatted my old disk I looked carefully at Watchers Help files and also at Help About and there was not a clue. I did this to the extent that I even took a screen shot of Watcher's help about and I still have that, there just isn't the slightest bit of information on what version of watcher that was.

 

Can you right click the .exe file of the Watcher and look in its properties?

 

Ark,

I reformatted that disk. There is no longer anything to look at.

 

Oh yeah. My bad.

Any emails yet?

I'll continue looking.

 

Still working on the emails......

 

Mail is fixed !

Something was corrupted from the easy transfer. It took a while to diagnose the problem. I exported the mailstore to another directory so I could work on it. No matter what I did, mail still reported an unknown error with no further error information. So

I
1.) cleared out the mail store directory.
2.) created another user on the system.
3.) recreated my email account information
4.) exported this account in a file.
5.) Logged off the new user and relogged on as me.
6.) imported the account information
7.) Imported the old mail store.

Everything now works fine !!!! What an obnoxious error.

Ok, one thing left.....

Power management.

 

OK, I found something interesting. Apparently inside the USB Modem of the AirCard 595U, it has the MC5725. source: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/Jama/3300

So now I'm in search for the software for that and came across this link:

http://www.sierrawireless.com/support/sd_ac595u.aspx

Which leads to here: http://vzam.net/

Could the VZ Access Manager work?

 

Hmmm the first one looks interesting, Ark and I will make that a priority. I have been avoiding the VZ access manager like the plague as it is another piece of advertising software made for less than technical people.

Watcher is really valued because it's small and does only one thing. I treasured it and cannot believe I didn't store it away. I kknow why, when I found it, I didn't know how valuable it would be nor did I know that it would not be discoveral be again.

I will go and try that other one!

 

I'm assuming the U in 595U stands for USB. So instead, I went looking for the watcher for the 595 pc card which has relations with the MC5725.

How does this look: http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/FI...ess-AirCard-595-PC-Card-Watcher-Utility.shtml

 

Ark,

I will try it out.

Please send me a PM with your email address. I just found a version number in the photo I made.

(I was smarter than I thought).

 

YOU DID IT!!!!!

That's it!!!!!!!! We are still have a slight revision difference but it makes no difference. The watcher you found, really works well.

Thank you ever so much. I'm going to write you a note and interoduce you to the watcher and show you why it's so neat and how close you came.

Before you found it, I sent a note to Sierra and showed them the Help About and I'll be curious to see what they come up with.

Renee

 

OK,

The power manager is in and mail is fixed and tons of layered products have been installed.

Functioning is the same as it was when it came out of the box except I'm running Vista 64.

I am surprised at how much bloatware I chose to put back in. I really like many of the features.

I did learn one thing. The erratic keyboard behavior I described yesterday, seems to have come from not installing UltraNav. Since I installed it last night, I haven't seen any erratic keyboard behavior.

Thanks to Ark, Klutch, Stallen for all of the emotional support. This isn't a small job when you have a complex system. I am defragmenting the disk now and can't wait to get home to do a backup of this disk.

 

Glad you are getting it all worked out. Did you get that PM I sent you yesterday about adjusting the sensitivity for Ultranav touchpad. There might even be some other adjustments in there to fine tune it to your liking.

 

Yes, I did and thank you.

I think the "thumbs" problem is one that is more likely to be a problem for men since they have larger hands and thumbs.

With the orginal software, I never had the cursor problems I was having yesterday. It was pretty severe and they all went away.

Phew, Stallen it was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it.

 

We all did it!

Tell us how Vista x64 is going for you after a few days or so.

 

It was definately a problem for me! I'm a little embarrased to say that I couldn't figure out what the he77 was going on until I googled and discovered that it was my thumbs tapping on the touchpad that was causing the problem (along with a little too much touchpad sensitivity).

 

Ark,

Vista 64 is nice. However the trickier you are.. the trickier it is. It taught me a lot. 32 bit applications run in an embedded VM in vista. In addition to Program Files and Program files (x86) there is also a SysWow.

If on either XP or Vista you try to delete Notepad, you can't do it. Since XP, I have replaced my system's Notepad with Notepad2. It's a really nice freeware editor that I use all the time.

XP would let you delete it, but it would immediately replace it with a copy from cache. I learned to delete the copy in cache and replace it with a renamed Notepad2. This worked for XP but Vista doesn't have the same cache structure so with Vista, I would normally boot the distribution disk because vista's will not have it's file protection system and replace them.

I tried this on Vista 64 and was astounded to see that sometimes the renamed notepad2 came up and sometimes the old version came up. That has how I discovered the SYSWOW directory with a third copy of Notepad in it. WOW is the name for the VM running legacy applications and of course there was a copy of notepad in there.

So there are interesting differences.

Not only that, I have a long term project based on Access databases. The I/O engine for that is called the Jet engine or MDAC. I knew there was no MDAC for 64 bit applications, but apparently there is non for the WOW.

So we live and learn....

 

"Tell us how Vista x64 is going for you after a few days or so."

Learning of the Day:

Almost immediately I noticed that Vista 64 comes with two versions of IE a 32 bit one and a 64 bit one. I was very pleased with the 64 bit one as it was noticeably faster and snappier than the 32 bit version which led me to wonder why the two versions?

Then today I was referred to a Flash site and went to install Flash and received this notice:

Flash Player support on 64-bit operating systems
Issue
Flash Player is not supported for playback in a 64-bit browser.

However, you can run Flash Player in a 32-bit browser running on a 64-bit operating system.


Reason
Adobe is working on Flash Player support for 64-bit platforms as part of our ongoing commitment to the cross-platform compatibility of Flash Player. We have not yet announced timing or release dates.


Solution
To use Flash Player to view Flash content on a 64-bit operating system, you must run a 32-bit browser.


TechNote DetailsLast Update: 11-14-2006

Ouch!!! This is not Vista or Microsoft's fault. This is clearly a flash issue. Adobe has been slow in making the transistion to Vista <period>

 

Well that's a new one. I never knew flash isn't 64 bit yet, which is really surprising since flash is a very common applet. Thanks Renee.

 

I have been running Vista 64 for about a month on an X61s and it works great. Firstly, I'd recommend using Windows Mail and monitoring the two MSFT newsgroups. vista.general and 64bit.general .

Second, OneNote and Groove are not fully functional in Vista 64. A very useful feature, Send to OneNote (which works like a printer driver), does not work in Vista 64.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA101668651033.aspx#9
Send to OneNote 2007 print driver and Internet Fax not available
on 64 bit OS. Groove Folder Synchronization not available on 64
bit operating system. Office Clean-up wizard not available on 64
bit OS. [see the installation notes under Office 2007 Ultimate]

Third, document searching doesn't work: Here is the fix:
http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/km...e-2007-documents-on-windows-vista-64-bit.aspx

Fourth, Apple Itunes works except you need the special DVD burning driver:
http://www.agileprogrammer.com/dotnetguy/archive/2007/11/22/23851.aspx

Fifth, the usual Cisco VPN client only works in 32 bit. Their newer client which not everyone uses, does work in Vista 64.

Sixth, document preview doesn't work for adobe pdf documents as it does work in Vista 32.

 

Thanks!!!

I had one to add to that also.

Although there is 32-bit MDAC support there is no 64 bit MDAC support. MDAC is the JET database engine for Access databases.

I like Vista 64 too. I do believe that's it's going to be awkward for a few years until everything is fully 64 bits. Again this is not MS, it's typical of platform changes and software catching up with the platform.

 

It just won't work *yet* on the 64 bit browser (still works on the 32-bit), I wish it would work because I would use that on my desktop all the time, it definitely is alot faster.

 

Hello, I am the author of ABR, and I am interested to find out the problems you were having with the activation. There are no differences between the keys and activation on 32bit and 64bit, and they can be moved between architectures without problems.

The requirement is that the original system you run the backup on must be the factory installation. If you installed Vista yourself, then activated online or by phone, it cannot backup that activation. I saw you mentioned MSDN versions of Vista, which may need to be activated using a different method, but they did also release the full version of Vista on MSDN, and that version is identical to what you get on a DVD. If you check that the files created by running the backup contain something, then the backup ran successfully.