Win10 22H2 for T430s?

[dr_st]

My T430s is stuck on Win10 1909. It hasn't been used much in the last couple of years, so I haven't bothered with updates.

Now I'm thinking about making it a school laptop, and so maybe I should get it up to date.

I also have a small hope that it will fix this annoying issue I've been having - every once in a while the Windows Update process starts hogging the CPU for prolonged periods of time (maybe searching for updates, even though it never downloads them, as auto update is disabled).

Wondering if folks here who have experience with this generation of systems have an opinion - whether it's going to work better with Win10 22H2 or the old Win10 1909.

Not going to put Win11 or any flavor of Linux on it.

[RealBlackStuff]

You can download W10 LTSC e.g. here.
I currently have W10-2019-LTSC on my T480, soon to be updated to W10-2021-LTSC.
Both are extremely debloated versions, check here.

[TPFanatic]

I'm not sure it matters too much. I never updated my P71 past the 20H2 it was shipped to me with, and it looks and feels exactly the same as my X230 that I installed 22H2 on. For that P71 I was able to run one of the security updates for CVE-2024-30078 despite no official update being sanctioned for 20H2, I confirmed I received an updated System32/drivers/nwifi.sys driver. Aggravatingly the "security only" update also reinstalled MS Edge.

I've been aggrieved by similar runaway CPU processes on my X230 with 22H2. The latest one that bothered me was some automatic Microsoft process that felt it important to read every single registry cell, repeatedly, automatically, and never stop! I speculate it was checking for "tampering", such as the security edits I made to prevent system access to certain services such as Windows Update when I wanted it to leave me alone. I don't even remember what solution I found to stop this process, I remember roaming through Task Scheduler and Services and disabling a lot of stuff.

I am so aggrieved by how out-of-control I feel using Windows 10 that I am accepting whatever associated risks there are of getting pwned and have returned to installing NT 6.1 versions of Windows on my personal devices. Eventually I'll investigate if purchasing a license to a contemporary version of Windows Server will yield me a better experience, otherwise I'll be a proud luddite Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 user. If Microsoft would let me buy ESU for Server 2008 R2, I'd do it, because they include patches for CVE-2024-30078. But I'm not sure how to buy the license.

I'll conclude with that since you've already resigned yourself to sticking with Windows 10 anyway in spite of it going "out of support", I'd say stick with 1909, hunt down a solution for that particular runaway Windows Update process, and don't try to fix whatever else that isn't broken. Microsoft and Lenovo have already moved on from the ThinkPad T430s, now it's up to you to do what's best for an otherwise still entirely fully functional classic ThinkPad.

[RealBlackStuff]

I bought my T480 in January 2023 and checked with Linux Mint (on a USB-stick) that the machine was properly functioning.
Put it aside until May 2023 before I even installed an OS on it, MicroWin10-LTSC-2019.
Checked that it worked, then put the machine away again.
But because I got notified, I am now downloading Windows 10 Halo LTSC-2021, an update of the above MicroWin10.
Don't know when I'll install it, let alone use it.
So far the T480 is just a nice-to-have that I got cheap ($125) and will act as a spare.
All the time I have been, and still am, using my trusty T440p.
And this T440p has Windows 7 Pro/SP1 on it without ANY updates since 2018.
The only thing that gets updates is the Firefox browser and Malwarebytes, when I think of running that.
This T440p will continue with W7 until it croaks!

[dr_st]

I've been aggrieved by similar runaway CPU processes on my X230 with 22H2. The latest one that bothered me was some automatic Microsoft process that felt it important to read every single registry cell, repeatedly, automatically, and never stop! I speculate it was checking for "tampering", such as the security edits I made to prevent system access to certain services such as Windows Update when I wanted it to leave me alone. I don't even remember what solution I found to stop this process, I remember roaming through Task Scheduler and Services and disabling a lot of stuff.

That's aggravating indeed. Thing is - on other Win10 PCs (I have a laptop and a desktop updated to 22H2) I don't experience this "runaway WU" process. I wonder if it may be a bug of 1909, or maybe something particularly broken in my installation (most likely), or maybe something with the T430s generation (doubtful).

So I guess the question is whether there are any particular problems with 22H2 on the Ivy Bridge generation. I conclude that it's probably okay, since you have that X230.

I am so aggrieved by how out-of-control I feel using Windows 10 that I am accepting whatever associated risks there are of getting pwned and have returned to installing NT 6.1 versions of Windows on my personal devices.

The risks are naturally exaggerated; it's the convenience of running contemporary software and whatever features of Win10 you might enjoy (if such exist).

Eventually I'll investigate if purchasing a license to a contemporary version of Windows Server will yield me a better experience

If it does, chances are you can get the Win10 client SKU to behave exactly the same way. It's the same code after all, and most things are compatible between WinServer and WinClient Professional/Enterprise editions, unless you actually care for the server stuff.

I'll conclude with that since you've already resigned yourself to sticking with Windows 10 anyway in spite of it going "out of support", I'd say stick with 1909, hunt down a solution for that particular runaway Windows Update process, and don't try to fix whatever else that isn't broken. Microsoft and Lenovo have already moved on from the ThinkPad T430s, now it's up to you to do what's best for an otherwise still entirely fully functional classic ThinkPad.

That might be what I'll do, at least for the time being.

[TPFanatic]

On my P71 in particular with a Thunderbolt dock and RTX 3060 egpu “it just works” most conveniently with 10, so that’s what it’s got for now.

I have no problems running client versions of 10 without a license which is the case on my X230 and R61i, aside from the watermark and locked down customization toggles, everything I want to do works. So maybe I don’t even need to purchase a license to be productive with modern versions of Server or LTSC or whatever it’s called.

[ZaZ]

You could give it a whirl and see what happens. Roll it back if it does not pan out. My desktop PC got very lethargic after a Windows 10 update last year, not sure if it was 22H2, but I was able to recover it to a version before the update using True Image, which solved the problem.

[dr_st]

You could give it a whirl and see what happens.

I did just that, and so far it seems pretty happy with 22H2. Windows Update no longer seems to get into that loop of hogging the CPU. I've had to disable CompatTelRunner, which was the second grievance, and now idle CPU usage stays low and the temperatures as well.