first thoughts on T500 + need help

i started using my new T500 today, and i have to agree its amazing. the screen turned out to be pretty nice, the keyboard is not bad since its my first lenovo i cant feel the difference. overall im really enjoying the system.

now the thing i really need help with is that all this thinkpad software thats loaded on here! im not a business user. so i dont know which elements of the thinkpad software i should get rid of. somebody please help me out with this i dont really know much about any of this software and i feel like my pc would perform much better without a lot of it.

also, whats with the three partitions??? and in xp i always used to just keep all my stuff in a separate folder on the main partition. on my laptop they have just the one big partition called SW_Preload, and two smaller ones. one is for boot i dont care about doesnt take much room but the one called Lenovo is taking like 10gb.

i think the lenovo one is for the recovery discs. can someone also explain what these recovery disks are exactly??

and vista might take longer to get used to than i previously thought. why is there a public folder??????

 

and i keep getting a vista error about "thinkpad access connections gadget com server has stopped working"

any ideas?

 

I hear you on the Vista thing. When (if) my T500 comes in, it will be my first experience with Vista (ordered Vista Ultimate). I have been trying to learn a little about it while waiting on my T500 to ship. I like to understand what's happening behind the UI, so this change is pretty major to me. I am sure it is going to take me a while to figure out how things work.

 

I've been getting this error all day, too. It seems my ThinkPad left the factory without their process being completed.

I was getting this error, and another driver error for the Synaptek touch pad. But, none of it matters now, as my Vista bootup freezes before the login screen is shown. (I'm waiting on Lenovo tech support).

 

I solved the error. I simply uninstalled Lenovo Access Connections. I might put it back on my laptop later but right now i gotta figure out what Lenovo software i need to keep and what i need to remove.

If some one can help me with that it would be great!

 

i think if you burn the recovery media , the partition will delete (or at least that's what it suggests) check out the clean VISTA install guide

any pics?

 

i got home and realized that my dad took the camera on his trip so i will be putting up pics on here tomorrow night.

i need a guide to optimize vista business anyone have any suggestions??

 

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=513758

 

i burnt discs but the partition is still there.i think im going to leave it and just get rid of some of this lenovo software. my boot time is longer than i expected.

 

hmm..it should atleast hide pretty soon, mine did (although it didn't successfully burn)

 

The hidden partition stays there even after burning the RnR discs but it doesn't take up much space so I wouldn't worry about it. Plus it gives bootup functionality to the blue thinkvantage button. say you don't want the hassle of a clean install but want to remove some of the bloatware.

All you had to do is hit that blue "Thinkvantage" button while booting.
That would bring up the "Rescue and Recovery" utility.

Then --> Restore your system --> Restore my hard drive to the original factory state --> I don't want to save any files --> Custom factory recovery.
You'll get to the screen where you can choose what bloatware to keep (if any) during the reinstall process.

Upon completion of the reinstall, your system would be
mostly bloatware free.

 

are there any options to repartition (to custom partitions) the HDD on the custom factory Recovery?

 

so morphy would it also let me choose which thinkvantage software i want and which ones i dont want?

 

No I don't think so. Rescue and recovery is designed for recovering to its original factory state with minor customization and other system recovery functions ie backup files to an external and reinstall with apps or without the apps. which means a full reformat. You can use other disk partitioning tools like ghost, trueimage, partition magic, windows disk mgmt, DiskPart, partition logic, parted magic.
More info here:
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board?board.id=Special_Interest_Utilities
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Pre-Installation_steps

yep it should. Before I did a clean install on a new HDD, I ran through this procedure on my factory drive just to see what I could remove and it let me choose any or all of the Thinkvantage software.