Windows 7 (Experience & Drivers)

Did anyone get a driver that supports switchable graphics on Windows 7?

 

installed today on x200, 32bit. no problems works great.

only 2 devices are not working: the fingerprint reader was installed and identified, but when I install the BETA software from Lenovo, I can't bypass the main screen of the application and the submit button doesn't work. any workaround for this?

another thing that doesn't work is the modem. I've tried to install the vista driver in compatibility mode, but no success. anyone got through this one?

 

instead of reading through 16 pages, i think i'll just ask here.

has anyone managed to get the "on the fly" graphics card switching in Win7 for the T400 to work?

 

Would be great if the OP (original poster Zuffox) could edit and put this link in the first post on this thread. Searching on Lenovo's site for windows 7 drivers was futile. EDIT: Zuffox added the link!

Anyway, I've got Win 7 working pretty well on my t42p including fn+zoom, OSD of volume and brightness now. Apparently I was missing the "system interface driver" which is why some of the keys did not work.

 

Hey I just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in... I'm running the Windows Server 2008 R2 release candidate and it runs like a dream on my T61. Every Windows Vista or Windows 7 driver I had worked and I'm even running the Aero interface. I only ran into one problem and that's that Microsoft left out full out of the box support for Bluetooth devices (which is understandable since it is after all a server OS). I was able to get Bluetooth up and running using a 3rd party software named BlueSoleil though. Hopefully Microsoft adds back in support before the retail version comes out. Everything else worked (including the fingerprint reader) and it seems to run about as fast as the Windows 7 RC which is way faster than Vista for those who haven't tried it out yet.

 

Has there been any updates on the screen brightness display for the integrated graphics? Works for discrete but not integrated for me.

 

Does lenovo plan to offer a driver for switchable graphics when Win 7 arrives in October? If not then Ill stick with vista as I switch between ati and intel GPUs several times a day.

 

i got my t400 a couple of days and i decided to make the switch to windows 7. i use server 2008 on my desktop and the idea of vista was repulsive, to say the least. unfortunately, i think i might have jumped the gun.

i'm posting on my t400 with windows 7 now, but i'm having to use a d-link wireless usb adapter to connect to the internet. i expected the intel wimax 5350 drivers to install with windows 7 since no one has mentioned any problems with that and intel indeed states that windows 7 includes drivers for the wimax 5350.

but windows 7 did not install the drivers for the wireless card. i tried installing the vista x64 version of the wimax software/driver and that seemed to succesfully install the drivers, but under network connections the wireless card is listed as local area connection 2/network cable uplugged. I'm not sure how to fix this problem and I need the d-link adapter for my desktop computer.

any advice?

 

they definitely will. dont worry about it.

yes, we discussed it a few pages back.

get the latest vista driver from the lenovo downloads page and you should be good. DO NOT download the driver from intel.com because those drivers are old.

although if youre looking for a switchable graphics driver than i'm not sure. the statement above is for the integrated vista driver from lenovos site.

 

Just did a clean install of the win7 RC, from a USB thumbdrive, everything was fast and smooth. Installed only the few lenovo drivers available on windows update. most of the hotkeys are working, I'm not bother by lack of on-screen display. working well now, except the USB ports on my ultrabase is not working. anyone had that issue. they should be standard usb hubs, quite surprised that it is not working.

 

I might be buying a OEM vista business system builders package that comes with a free Windows 7 upgrade soon. So I am quite happy to hear that the switching function will remain in place.

 

Anyone use any other video driver for their t61p and running Windows 7? The driver has been working fine for me, but I want to play Starcraft (super old game), but I can't play fullscreen. The nvidia control panel isn't working properly for me so I am hoping a different driver would work better for me.

 

Yes that has happened to me a lot. Interestingly the first beta was the most stable IMHO, all the other betas including the RC were worse. I am testing the RTM right now and it happened to me maybe 2 times in the last week and a half. Still better than the RC rate of once a day or once every 2 days.

 

i have a lenovo g530 and im using windows 7 and ive had no issues at all. except not being able to adjust brightness with windows 7 due to the intel graphic drivers for windows 7.. so i had to install vista drivers and force to use wdm 1.0

 

I installed Win7RC (1700) on my T400.
Got needed drivers from http://www.lenovo.com/windows7beta
All is seems to work well except HotKeys. When I try to install driver (6jvu10ww) after rebooting the system is getting freeze. After uninstalling this driver the system is starting well.
Any advices?
P.S. It happens when TPONSCR.exe is launching. If I deny its starting the system is booting well.

 

Has anyone tried Windows 7 on an Intel ssd? I'm going to making my new x200 tablet my guinea pig. I'm also curious about people's experience with internal evdo cards. I have a MC5725. I can't see that it would make a difference.

 

Question
Currently expecting my new W500 to arrive, I'm eligible for the free Windows 7 Upgrade.
I remember doing a clean install on my X61 back then when I got it with Vista and wanted to switch to XP. I managed to do it but it was a pain in the buttocks fetching up and installing every little thing step by step.
Will the Windows 7 copy I will be receiving have all of the drivers on it (Lenovo issued) for an idiot-proof care free clean installation of windows 7?I sure hope so.

Also, would it be my safest bet for system stability and LESS resource consumption switching from Vista 64 to Windows 7 64? I want to utilize 4GB and probably more in the future so I guess XP is out of the question.
I want speed and could care less about nice graphics and interface (I turn those off in the settings anyway for better performance, My XP professional looks like Windows 95 with the task bar and windows)

 

Can anyone help me out with this problem?
I recently installed Windows 7 on my Ideapad Y450 and i tried to install the OneKey Recovery but it says that its not compatible so its blocked!! now i dont think i can make a recovery disk. can anyone help?

 

I installed Windows 7 Professional (RTM) on my T500 last night. I got the drivers from the http://www.lenovo.com/windows7beta site. For Intel Turbo Memory, I just downloaded the same driver that is available for x64 Vista and installed that. Did not even need compatibility mode to install.

For graphics, I set the T500 into Discrete graphics mode - I did not want to experiment with switchable graphics. Maybe later.

For now, everythings is running real nice.

 

Hi,

I plan to do the same thing today. I have a T61, can i also download and install the drivers for that that Lenovo site ?

 

Yes, I think so. The page I and several others linked to contains drivers for a wide variety of Lenovo systems, also both x86 and x64 versions of some of the drivers. You will just have to know which are the ones that you will need - which device, and which version (32 or 64 bit). So it does require a little bit of thought when choosing what to donwload.

Here is a list of what I downloaded (this is also roughly the order I installed them):

• System Interface Driver
• Power Management Driver
• Hotkey Features
• Power Manager
• UltraNav Driver
• UltraNav Utility
• Fingerprint software
• ThinkVantage Active Protection
• Ricoh Card Reader (which I later upgraded anyway through Windows Update)

For the Intel Turbo Memory, I used the Lenovo provided Vista drivers (those were not on the Windows 7 driver page).

I downloaded the drivers for the graphics card from ATIAMD directly. They did offer drivers for Mobility Radeons this time around, there was no need to run the Mobility Modder or other tool to "cheat".

For all other devices (like the LAN or WLAN adapter, Bluetooth, etc) I did not download anything, just let Windows 7 install what it found (either the setup or through Windows Update). The Ricoh card reader drivers provided by Lenovo were even older then the ones Windows 7 was trying to install through Windows Update.

 

Hmmm...i see! So, i downloaded about 13 drivers from Lenovo and i will install Windows 7 on my T61 today. I plan to do a windows update just after the system is back on (from the upgrade) and only if i do not find something there, then i will install lenovo's one, correct ?

 

Read my post again, I made several revisions It should answer your questions. Sorry about that, I tend to write fast and fix later

 

Ok!

i have downloaded all of the stuff you wrote .

Ah, a last one: Does System Update will continue to be working after the Windows 7 Upgrade ?? If not, from where at Lenovo will i keep looking for updated (non-beta) drivers ??

 

I guess they will organize the product specific download pages to contain the Windows 7 drivers. They will probably make System Update work with Windows 7 at some point as well (I never used System Update, I like doing the downloading and installing myself )

But I am guessing these will not happen until they release non-beta drivers. When that happens? Sometime around October would be my best guess, with the general availability of Windows 7.

 

I recently installed Windows 7 on my Ideapad Y450 and i tried to install the OneKey Recovery but it says that its not compatible so its blocked!! now i dont think i can make a recovery disk. is there another version of OneKey Rcovery that will work with Windows 7?

 

Ok, i finally installed RTM last night and i am surprised that i have NO problem at all! I did an upgrade as i have a lot of software that i didn't want to re-install.

The only thing that i observed, is that after i installed the System Interface Driver (from the beta drivers of Lenovo), when the system boots, it does not display any splash screen at all. It has a black screen and then, after a while, gets to the logon screen.

Wired...

EDIT: There was an entry in msconfig that i do not know how it was checked ("No GUI at boot"). I unchecked it and book splash-screen is back on!

 

having no problems with my t500 on win7 pro. runs great, loving it right now!

 

anyone know when lenovo will release launch drivers?

i'm happy with RC so i wont be installing RTM, but i'd like some new graphics drivers for my switchable graphics along with some drivers for thinkvantage.

 

the support website is down. maybe they are updating it?

 

Yes, it still is (down). I hope that System Update utility will be back soon, Win7 compatible.

 

I've been running Win7x64 for a while now since just before beta 1 (then beta1, a couple of interim builds and then RC), and have for the most part had every device working properly on my T61p/T7700/NVQ570. Only hardware that gave me fits initially was the AT&T WWan card, but through dissecting some installer msi files and manually updating some drivers, and using the sierra wireless watcher, I even got that running.

I only installed the very basic of Lenovo utils/drivers, and only when it was something that was necessary or had a significant benefit over the win7 out of the box functionality - namely things like the System Interface, Hotkey/OSD, and notebook/chipset type things. Oh, and the power mgmt driver, but not the power manager app. Through most of this time, the only "official" win7 driver lenovo had was the APS driver/app, so most of these where run as admin in compat mode for Vista sp1.

I just threw in a brand new 500GB 7200rpm drive and went about installing the RTM build. I saw that there were many more win7 flavored drivers at lenovo, so my *essential* list above was pulled down and installed. All devices (including the WWan card) appear to have been found.

The only problem that I am having now is with the ultra-slim bay swapping. In the RC, I could swap the cd/dvd with the hard drive bay and vice versa with no problems - on RTM it only sees what is booted up with.

Anyone else experience anything similar to this? Which app/driver would be the most likely one that changed or that I need that would monitor that port?

Oh, and when I use the safely remove, it will say ready to remove, just won't see that I've put something new in place.

Keith

 

Make sure you're not doing the same thing that puzzled me for a while.

If you don't push in the tab at the bottom the system doesn't power up the ultrabay. I scratched my head a while at why it wouldn't recognize putting in the drive adapter or cdrom then realized I had to push that tab in.

Otherwise I'm out of ideas.

 

Have anyone suggestions for my HotKeys driver problem, I wrote earlier?
Win7+T400. Drivers are from Lenovo's site. On OS boot TPONSCR.exe is freezing out the system. And only reboot will help.

 

anyone got switchable graphics working on the T400 for windows 7?

 

I'm having several issues with Windows 7 x64 on my W500.

First, and most annoying, is that some programs will open, but not be accessible by me. For example, Windows Mail from Vista. It opens, according to the Task Manager, and I get new mail notifications at the bottom right, but I can't see the program at all. I can't alt-tab to it, and nothing happens when I click on its icon. Windows Live Mail just plain won't open, with an error that it might be installed incorrectly. This also happened with my installation of Eudora 7 at first, but after reinstalling it, it opens fine now.

Second, 7 seems to have a lot of problems with the ATI graphics card in this machine. Switchable graphics don't work, as everyone knows, so I switched it to use the discrete graphics in the bios. Strangely, it sometimes resets to using the Intel graphics chip. I don't know how Windows would be doing that, but it happens.

The most frustrating part is when using the ATI graphics and putting the computer to sleep. If I close the lid and leave the computer alone for an extended time, it won't come out of sleep. I think this has to do with the ATI card because it doesn't seem to happen with the Intel driver. All I can do at that point is hold the power button down and restart.

It's a 7 upgrade, and I kind of wish I had stuck with Vista until some of these issues are cleared up. Windows 7 definitely looks and feels nicer, but when I can't use some of my programs, switchable graphics, and considering the trouble with sleep mode, I have some regrets. I may try a clean install to see if I have the same problems.

 

T43 2.0GHz, 1.5GB RAM, Bluetooth, X300 GPU

My install went very well, i am dual booting it with XP Pro as well, almost everything worked exept most of the hotkeys and a power management driver, but i expected the hotkeys to not work. Bluetooth was instantly recognized. However i can tell many of the drivers are buggy, not fully optimized for win 7 RC 7100. Being in the same location, compared to XP Pro my wireless is noticeably slower, also the drivers for my X300 are not too bad but deffinitely not optimized yet. Also since it is Ultimate edition the power management isn't that great.

 

lifesizepotato:
As for the issue of sometimes switching to Intel .. did you also change the setting of OS Detectable in the BIOS? In addition to setting the computer to use Discrete graphics, also set the OS Detectable option to Disabled.

I have installed ATI drivers that I downloaded from ATI directly. They seem to be working fine for me (I do have the T500, but W500 and T500 should be fairly similar). Which drivers did you install? You can download the ones provided by AMD/ATI here:
ATI Mobility Radeon drivers for Windows 7 beta (32bit), version 9.7
ATI Mobility Radeon drivers for Windows 7 beta (64bit), version 9.7

 

I'm not experiencing that problem. Seems to hotswap for me with no problems. Like you, I only have the basics installed (sys interface, hotkey, PM driver).

The problem I tend to have with my drivebay is that it will hang the shutdown if I have the harddrive bay in there.

 

Okay, just upgraded from RC to RTM.

Problems so far (if anyone can help, give me a shout out)

-No Bluetooth, and no apparent way to enable it. Bluetooth worked great in the RC.
-I have an "Unknown Device" in Device Manager. I have tried installing every driver I know (AMT, System Interface, Hotkeys, Intel chipset drivers, etc.) and it still stays there. Don't know how to identify it so I can find a driver. Windows specifies the device's location as "on Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Embedded Controller".

EDIT: Installed an updated version of the Power Management driver (had already installed it) and that took care of the Unknown Device. Still no solution on Bluetooth.

 

I didn't realize ATI had Windows 7 drivers out yet! I'm downloading them now, hopefully it will help.

Also, I wasn't aware of that BIOS setting, I'll be sure to fix that.

Thanks!

 

did you get switchable graphics to work on these drivers?

 

Fixed my Bluetooth issue. Had to install TV Access Connections.

Having issues again with the brightness controls for the OSD (only under Intel, the Radeon side works fine). Installed Intel's Win7-x64 RC drivers from their download center, this did not fix that.

 

Just installed win 7 RTM on my x200 tablet. However, the touch screen is not working. I installed the beta drivers that I see fit but it still not working.

Ideas?

 

I just installed Windows 7 x64 Enterprise RTM on T61. The problem is that RTM no longer automatically installs NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M driver through windows update (as it did on beta and RC). Drivers downloaded from nvidia also won't install ("no supported hardware found").

So I'm stuck with unaccelerated GFX. I think I'll go back to RC.

 

Hmmm...i have the same system (T61 with NVIDIA Quandro NVS 140m) and i installed RTM of Windows 7 32 bit on 6th of August (i did an upgrade from Vista).

The installer didn't tel me anything about this driver and neither did the Windows Upgrade Advisor. Apparently, as i upgraded my previous Vista OS, the system uses the driver i had before and I do not have any problems so far.

Is your problem related to the 64bit version o 7 ?

 

I at least did not even try ... there is no Lenovo provided switchable gfx driver out yet. Until then I am using my ATI card always.

 

You can also reboot and just switch between GPUs in the BIOS. Inconvenient, but when you want to go from battery, there's a definite increase in run-time using the Intel 4500.

 

Same answer as objectref. I've read other places that it won't work, and I briefly tested that by enabling it in the BIOS, but it didn't seem to work. In fact, with Switchable on in the BIOS, it seemed to boot without any graphics drivers whatsoever. Rather than mess with a system I finally got working, I just set it back to Discrete and use that since I'm usually plugged in. Otherwise, I'll reboot and switch it manually to Integrated.

 

I solved my problem with OS freezing after HotKeys drivers are loading.
I installed last drivers for ATI GPU (via Windows Update) and now Hotkeys are working (and brightness OSD too).
Only Caps and Num warns are not showing now (like in Vista).