Windows 7 on a Thinkpad T40

[dgyee]

I have a TP T40 1.5gb processor with 2 gb ram. Despite what many are saying, I have been running Vista Business successfully with no real peformance issues. The only problem that I have is with the video (which is expected), e.g. using Windows Media Player, and and running my LifeCam NX6000.

I plan on upgrading to Windows 7. Should I install it over Vista Business or reload WXP and load Windows 7 on top of WXP. In otherwords will Windows 7 remove any unused files or features in Vista Business. Thanks..

dgyee
TP T40 2373GU8, 1.5mhz, 2gb, 80gb hd

[synergy]

How did the hotkeys work on your T40? Any issue at all?

[ZaZ]

I always prefer a clean install. Vista always lures me in with the slick interface, but after a couple weeks starts to annoy me with little issues like network drives or it hangs at times where XP does not. Glad it's working good for you.

[sktn77a]

How did the hotkeys work on your T40? Any issue at all?

I used a T61 set of Vista Business recovery disks to load the system and utilities on my T41. Everything worked fine except the video driver (had to manually install that from Vista). I'm guessing you should be OK with a T40 if you update the BIOS and ECC to the latest versions.

[synergy]

Could you tell me what ECC stand for?
Is that a hardware or software update?

[Paul Pennington]

[quote="dgyee"]I plan on upgrading to Windows 7. Should I install it over Vista Business or reload WXP and load Windows 7 on top of WXP.?/quote]

The only way you can upgrade is from Vista. The upgrade does not work directly from XP to 7. The only way to get from XP to 7 is to wipe out the hard drive and do a clean install of 7.

[RealBlackStuff]

Could you tell me what ECC stand for?
Is that a hardware or software update?

It should be ECP and stands for Embedded Controller Program.
It's a Firmware update, to do with the BIOS.
Don't go play around with it if you don't know what you are doing!

[thinkpad1]

The only way you can upgrade is from Vista. The upgrade does not work directly from XP to 7. The only way to get from XP to 7 is to wipe out the hard drive and do a clean install of 7.

Wipe out the entire hard drive? What if you dual boot or have XP on a partition and other operating systems on other partitions?

[RealBlackStuff]

Wipe out a partition (or the XP-partition) he meant.
You can always do a dual/triple/quadruple, etc. install.

[Tasurinchi]

I always prefer a clean install

I'd second that.

Actually I never did any OS upgrade in my life, always clean installs. You must be sure you have backups of everything though.

As a side note: I have installed Win7 RC on a R50 and it's up and running (very smooth). I had to tweak the graphic card's drivers a little, there are several topics in this forum with very valuable information about that. I think you'll enjoy Win 7 in your T40.

just my 0.02 cents

Cheers

Tasu

[lukee]

Hello, I performed User Experience Index test on my T43p and here is the result:
"Grafika" means Desktop Graphics (Aero)
"Herni grafika" means Graphics for Games
"Primarni pevny disk" means Primary HDD speed

http://www.squadramoravia.com/common/w7pro.png

Admin edit: Replaced large inline image with a link. Please keep images < 50KB AND post a warning in the thread's original subject line ("*PIC*"). This typically means that the originator of the thread is the only one that can do that.

[dgyee]

As a side note: I have installed Win7 RC on a R50 and it's up and running (very smooth). I had to tweak the graphic card's drivers a little, there are several topics in this forum with very valuable information about that.

Please elaborate on "tweaking the graphic card's drivers" or can you point me to a good topic on this subject. I am having a problem in Vista with Windows Media Player. The audio and video are not in sync. Do you know if this can be corrected with updated drivers or is this a video memory issue.

[Tasurinchi]

Please elaborate on "tweaking the graphic card's drivers"

Hi dgyee!

At that time I asked my friend google and I got the following link: http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php

Just followed the instructions there and I got a quite good working system. I had to give up Aero, but this was not a deal for me as the notebook was given to my dad. He doesn't watch HD movies or stuff like that.

I rarely use Windows Media Player (I mean very rarely, in fact I cannot remember the last time I used it) so I did install VLC player in the R50 and could watch a couple of .avi and .mpg movies without any issue.

Just take two things in consideration:
1- I was using Win 7 RC build 7100, I have no experience with Windows Vista
2- I installed this on an R50 using the ATI 9000 card

To be honest I have no clue what the problem could be in your system (it will be useful if you post your machine type in your signature). It could be missing drivers, defective graphics card, lots of programms running in background, missing codecs and a lot of other things.

Normally is a good idea to have the latest Windows upgrades and patches. I would recommend you to try VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) as well, it's a free software with all codecs integrated and I never had a problem with it. It's very ligth weighted and does not use lots of system resources when running.

Hopefully this helps you a bit..

Cheers!

Tasurinchi