Windows 7 (Experience & Drivers)

Oh, I saw it, but the name of driver was confused me. Now I installed it and can confirm, that it works for T400 Win7 64.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Downloaded/installed. T400 w/ Win7 Pro x64 RTM.

Working like a charm so far, brightness levels back to what they should be, allowing the display to dim down a lot.

On screen display of brightness level also working again.

Thanks.

 

Yeah, ATI was bought bei AMD

I'm on 32bit, brightness levels changed for me as well, but OSD is not working, could this be due to another driver?
€: works now, forgot some drivers

 

I installed the Authentic fingerprint software from Lenovo Win7 beta site one month ago. I can load the software but it just doesn't allow me to enroll the fingerprint, saying that the censor is not ready.

 

Are you sure you have authentec. I had the same issue, but after installing the UPEK driver its been smooth sailing.

 

finally it has been released...going to try this out when I get home

 

When I tried to install UPEK, it wouldn't let me saying this is not a compatible version.

 

Uggg, the switchable drivers had the same issues with the intel graphics as just the plain intel drivers.

 

Are you talking about the display corruption?

I heard something about it being related to having an uneven amount of memory. I do know that I used to have that problem but not since I went from 3GB memory to 4GB memory.

For what it's worth I'm on a T400 with 4GB ram, Win7 Pro x64 RTM.

 

OK, using the device manager have you tried to point the reader or other unidentified item to the installation folder of Authentec (or subfolders) and force the driver install? Outside of that I don't know what else it could be.

 

Is there any where I can get more information for this switchable graphics driver? What machines does it support? I have a feeling it won't be very W500 friendly at the moment... downloading anyway.

 

OMG...I want to get W7 rockin' on my T400 but don't want to mess with BETA drivers.

Jesus Christ this Vista crap is pissing me off.

 

What about making an image of your existing installation und just try it out? Windows7 works pretty well for me, except you can not adjust the brightness when using the ATI.

 

Anyone else getting massive power draws under integrated graphics witht he switchable drivers? I just installed 7 on my laptop today and on integrated I'm getting around 18w draw. On Vista it fluctuated between 8-10w. Mean while I'm on discrete cause I'm only getting about a 12w draw.

 

On the other hand, is anybody getting problems with 'Fan Error? This message pops up when I boot the computer and shuts off automatically. I've had it twice since Win7 installation. It seems to go away when I pull out and put back the battery though.

 

Nvm to my post, I forgot some drivers and it is all cleared up now.

 

you guys should just wait it out and not list complaints with the beta drivers.

w7 is out in less than a month so we should expect new drivers in the next few weeks.

 

If Lenovo were like most manufacturers and did not post beta drivers for 7 everyone would complain because they did not try. LOL!

 

Honestly guys, I'm running the RTM (I have a TechNet Plus membership) of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on my T400. No issues at all. All drivers working.

I have to switch my graphics in the BIOS rather than via Power Manager, but that's it. Otherwise, it's all good, and Lenovo's "beta" drivers have worked excellently for me. Be it Bluetooth, fingerprint reader, webcam, wifi, graphics, sound, or the onscreen volume/brightness controls, there isn't one feature I don't have working at this point.

 

Same... T400 with W7 with some rather high power drain of 12-14W on integrated. Seems like they haven't really optimised for the power usage. Hope they will fix it before Oct 22 with a new round of drivers and make all releases compatible with W7.

 

Well said, and agreed. It doesn't matter though. People will always find a way to complain, b****, moan, and whine, until the end of time.

 

Installed windows 7 32 bit on my X200...

Only problem so far is sometimes after resuming from sleep mode, the wifi card stops working. Any fix for this besides Disabling then Enabling again in the Network Connection window. (switching the hardware button on and off doesnt work)

 

same thing happens to my T400....i've been using W7 UL RTM since about mid-august and i've just gotten used to it....its not a big deal, but i hope the official drivers fix this issue

 

ATI display driver has just got an update for win 7. Anyone try it out yet?

 

On the Lenovo Win7 drivers page there is a "Win7" version of Power Manager, version 2.43. Lenovo just released the 3.01a version of Power Manager for Vista.

Has anyone tried the 3.01a on Windows 7? The readme/web says its for Vista, but I would guess it should work with W7?

 

It installs on W7, but switchable graphics on T400 doesn't work on it.

 

What software do you use to measure the current power drain?

 

Only 22 more days till W7 release!!! Hopefully Lenovo will have finalized drivers out by then.

 

Power Manager, look on the battery tab. Only functions when on battery (obviously)

 

I have a Thinkpad W500 running Win 7 64 bit. Everything is working fine but have 2 items in Device manager that have errors:

- PCI Serial Port
- PCI Simple Communications Controller

How do I figure out what drivers I need for these? Thanks

Jonathan

 

The PCI Simple Communication Controller should be the Intel AMT thing. I see it too in my T500. I have Intel AMT turned off in the BIOS, yet the device still shows up in device manager. I never bothered to install the driver though. I don't think anything "bad" comes from that, as I would not use it anyway.

Then something else ..

I have installed the switchable graphics driver on my T500 and switching works (with Power Manager 2.43, that was also released for W7). But I experience the same thing described by some of you, related to T400: the notebook uses way too much power with the integrated graphics.

Also, the ATI setup crashed - just like the Catalyst drivers from ATI I have used until now. This is caused by me having installed Visual Studio 2008, which installs updated versions of some DLLs (MFC). Even though the old DLLs are present, the programs use the new ones, and ATI setup cannot handle this - I had this issue with other programs as well, but those were fixed by their makers after a while. Hope ATI can fix this issue soon. Until then I have to use the command line installer to uninstall the old driver and install the new switchable driver.

 

installed it....dont see much of a difference...but then again im using the intel graphics most of the time

 

I just smashed the screen on my T400 because I got so annoyed at Vista. It sucks, it's the worst, most piece of crap OS ever.

You guys think Lenovo will give me warranty service if I say it just broke? There are no psysical signs I think, just the screen looks cracked on the inside.

EDIT: Jk, but, i really do hate Vista.

 

Just 5 minutes ago, Windows Update said it had an update for my video card drivers (NVIDIA quadro NVS 140M), a September 2009 update for Windows 7.
It installed perfectly and guess what: it didn't ask for a reboot

 

Why would you let Windows update your graphics card drivers?

 

Because the ones i had were the old Vista ones and i already had one blue screen because of the display driver (so something was not right and i could have another BSOD in near future). Lenovo does not have any Win7 drivers yet for Quadro NVS, so, i fail to see why i shoudn't install them from Windows Update.

 

Vista can be a pain.

Windows 7 is a breeze....much better in all respects. Looks like they finally learned how to do power management.

I can suspend/resume at will and never have an issue; none of those "failed sleep/resume" modes where you have to hold the power button and force a shutdown. I got this all the time with Vista, even on a clean install.

I'm throwing Windows 7 on old laptops, and runs decent. The only problem is the LCD fade over time, rendering them hard to use. LED screen help fix this, so I won't buy a screen without it now.

 

Win 7 x64 had a nice NVIDIA package for me as well. I have the Quadro FX 3700. The driver versions are different on NVIDIA's driver downloads site. It's 8.1.x etc, when NVIDIA's packages start with 186.3x (whatever the number, not sure). After trying to install a driver manually, Windows didn't like it. Hmmm...anyone know anything about this? Thx!

 

im confused.....on the win7 drivers pages for lenovo....there are drivers for the switchable graphics......did lenovo finally bring support for on-the-fly switching in windows 7?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ThinkPad Switchable Graphics Driver for Windows 7 (64-bit and 32-bit)

Symptom:
The current version of the ThinkPad Switchable Graphics Driver for Windows 7 (64-bit and 32-bit) may not function correctly on Windows 7.

Solution:
A Windows 7 compatible version of the ThinkPad Switchable Graphics Driver for Windows 7 (64-bit and 32-bit) is available.

Download the ThinkPad Switchable Graphics Driver for Windows 7 (64-bit and 32-bit) - (160MB)

Operating System Build Level: Windows 7 RTM version
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Yes, they did.

 

FleXx, read the posts above. For me and at least two others the power consumption while using the integrated (Intel) graphics is too high, certainly higher than in Vista.

But otherwise it works good for me. Although I may not be getting that much battery life, under light use in my lap the notebook stays very cool without the dedicated graphics (wasn't too bad with dedicated either if I just remembered to switch to a light use profile)

 

thanks for the heads up....but i went ahead and installed it......it works properly....but i havent tested the battery life....but i wouldnt expect anything too good since im only using a 4-cell

 

Yup, I have been using it also for two days now.

I wish they would release the new version (v3) Power Manager also for W7.

Hopefully Lenovo will get all of these drivers and utilities finalized this month when W7 officially launches. Until then I can overlook small bugs and issues

 

Yes, they're calling them the Windows 7 "Beta drivers", which already work, and they keep getting updated, so Lenovo is not dropping the ball here. Excellent service. Take a look.

 

How do you know which driver applies to which thinkpad?

 

The T500 and T400 are the only ones in the thinkpad series that use switchable graphics i believe......they both use the same driver package since they both have vid cards from the 3000 series...

 

I'm talking about the Windows 7 drivers overall. How do you know which driver applies to which thinkpad?

 

Yo CrunchDude! Maybe you can help me out with this question I have about the switchable graphics drivers!

On my W500 running Vista, I always only needed 1 driver, called the switchable graphics driver. It would come bundled with the ATI Catalyst driver as well as the catalyst control center and also the switchable graphics driver. Basically it was all just one big package. The only other graphics driver I needed aside from that was the driver for the Intel GPU.

Now for win 7 on these beta drivers I see that ATI display driver at the top and then also the switchable graphics driver down below. I'm guessing I have to install both right?

 

Some are labeled others are not. I guess you have to know what hardware you have in order to know which is appropriate in the rest of the cases.

 

Once the drivers are released, the drivers will be more organized by which model right?