It’s only been a few days since I’ve installed Windows 7 on my Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet, but so far it’s been GREAT! The version I had installed was the beta (build 7000).
I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Windows 7, and it’s not like I didn’t want to install Windows 7, but things had been working fine for now, and I saw no reason to chance destabilizing any of my critical machines. However, I had Vista SP1 running on my Thinkpad and generally it does okay, but once in awhile, after I haven’t rebooted the laptop for a few days, I get into a state where the laptop just becomes unresponsive and slow and has problems connecting to the wireless network.
Jan Lyk had shown me Windows 7 running on his Dell mini laptop and I decided I’d give it a shot. It was pretty much an impulse decision. The same day after I saw Jan Lyk’s laptop, I grabbed the beta, and installed it that night. I decided to do an upgrade instead of fresh install since I didn’t want to bother reinstalling all the applications and backing up the data.
The upgrade actually went pretty well. It did take longer than I expected. In fact, there were certain points in time during the upgrade which I thought it was stuck, especially when it was migrating files, settings, and programs.
The “fun” part came when it prompted me to log in. I swiped my finger and it logged me in.
I started typing on the keyboard. No response. I started moving the mouse. No response. Thinking to myself, I’m !@#$%^. I could use the fingerprint scanner to login, but I needed some other way to actually install drivers if they’re missing. Suddenly I remembered I still had a tablet pen to try out. Amazing, the tablet pen WORKED! Typing using the tablet pen wasn’t that fun though, but I managed to get to the device manager and noticed that the keyboard and trackpoint devices had the little yellow alert sign. I opened both of them and told it to automatically update the driver and amazingly, it found the driver and I was able to use the keyboard. The trackpoint/mouse actually needed a reboot before it started working.
The only other issue was I also needed to update the GEM smartcard reader driver (which was also done automatically). Things were starting to look good.
Moving on, it complained that my antivirus software was not turned on. I use AVG 8.0 and it was turned on from what I could tell. Someone on the AVG forums mentioned that if you disable resident shield and re-enabled it, Windows 7 would stop warning you about it. I tried that, but didn’t seem to work. I thought I’d try reinstalling, but in the end, decided to just switch back to eTrust, since AVG doesn’t officially support Windows 7 yet. This thing also warned me that Windows Defender was turned off, but I think that’s because it was set to delayed start, and the warning would disappear after awhile.
I love the fact that the tablet feature and fingerprint scanner just worked out of the box. It definitely boots up a lot faster than Windows Vista and definitely more responsive. I haven’t had much time to tinker or play around with it much, but it looks like most of the Lenovo applications also work out of the box.
The pinned programs on the task bar is like a merge of quick launch + task bar, which is pretty neat. Usually I have a vertical task bar, because when horizontally, the names of the tasks just take up too much space. Now that they’ve gotten rid of the name and only show an icon, I no longer really need to have a vertical task bar. However, I still dislike the fact that they group same tasks together. There’s probably a way to disable it, or make it more responsive so the moment I hover over the icon, the windows thumbnails would appear immediately instead of waiting a few seconds.
Another cool thing I noticed is that they have a dim screen feature. Usually you have 2 options for your screen: On or Off. I usually set mine to turn off after 5 minutes of idleness, but now there’s an intermediate step where it dims it after 2 minutes of idleness and turns it off after 5 minutes.
I’m going to enjoy playing with Windows 7 on my laptop.
Sounds great, I will try to install build 7048. What version you istalled? 64 or 32 bit?
I installed 32-bit since my laptop came with Vista 32-bit and I only did an upgrade. 🙂
Well, I did an upgrade too. Almost everything works. Exept trackpoint. Udating the driver did not help. Did you have this problem?
After telling Win7 to go find drivers and update, I had to reboot the machine before the trackpoint started to work. I assume you’ve already done that.
Does your keyboard or pen work?
Just noticed you asked me which version I had installed. I had installed the beta (version 7000).
Well, after rebooting several times nad reinstalling drivers, trackpoint began to work. I expected the system will be faster, but it is not. Battery time is the same. Boot time – the same. Some programs does not work…
I’m surprised you’re not noticing any speed increase. Things responded and loaded quite a bit faster for me. I haven’t really compared battery life, but would’ve expected the settings that are enabled by default (i.e. dim screen after 2 mins of idleness) to help.
What’s your system score? My limiting factor was my hdd which scored a 1.9 for being too slow.
Well, i was not satisfied with the speed, so I did fresh install. And now I can tell, the system is very fast. Startup very fast. Programs start very fast too. Just not all thinkvantage programs works. Intel turbo memory drivers not compatible. build 7057. I am very pleased wit this. Vista was big pain… Battery time with all aero effects on – similar as before.
Great to hear. 🙂
I’m really surprised with Windows 7; Microsoft is on track to deliver a great OS. Currently using Windows 7 (build 7000, 64bit) and it’s been really really great.
For a beta, this runs extremely well (compared to the sluggish Vista). Programs boot up very fast, and overall, the whole OS feels smoother.
AVG seems to work fine for me, though. I didn’t have any problems installing it, and Windows 7 seems to recognize it fine.
Nice work!
I have installed Win7 on 4 laptops so far, (including an Acer One Netbook) and have not come across any problems, other than win7 had the wireless drivers to only 2 of these lappys. That is sorted if you DL the vista drivers, transfer them across with a thumbdrive and use them in compatibility mode (only needed sometimes). Windows update usually takes care of the rest.
I am thinking of buying a second hand X61 Tablet myself. Are they really that good?? (And do they really use them in space?)
Have fun all,
Brian 🙂
The X61T Tablet is sorta an older generation now. You might consider looking into the X300 Tablet. Of course the X61T Tablet is still awesome and might save you quite some change, since it’s an older model.
As for the space thing, I don’t really know. But Lenovo Thinkpads (previously IBM Thinkpads) are the most sturdiest/reliable laptops around and most enterprise/businesses love using them.
I’m going for the X61 precisely because I don’t have the money for the newer gen models 😉
I just got out bid anyway 🙁
Have fun all,
Brian 🙂
Hi Krunk.
I have a X61Tablet (and a x40 and a T43). I am considering to install W7 on my old X40 for evaluation and, if the things are OK, maybe I will migrate with the X61T. The table
t is my primary PC for business and I do not intend to alter the software that is already installed (nor the documents!).
I downgraded from VISTA to XP Tablet because the hibernation and suspend was totally useless under VISTA.
Another point of interest is, that MS will support a VISTA upgrade to 7 in the future so I am considering this…
My questions are:
Did you upgraded from the DVD image downloaded from Microsoft ?
After upgrading, what kind of applications stops working?
regards,
Adrian
Sorry for the delayed reply, been busy at work.
Since my X61T doesn’t have an external dvd drive, I had copied all the data from the DVD image to a folder on my laptop’s hard drive and ran setup and upgraded from there. If you have an external DVD drive connected to your X61T, I don’t think it’d make any difference.
As for applications that stopped working, nothing that I could think of. Office 2007 worked fine. Firefox worked fine. Pidgin worked fine. Though to be honest, I don’t really have too many applications installed on my laptop. The installed Lenovo/Thinkpad applications worked fine, though I did noticed that it now saw like 20+ battery power profiles and there wasn’t a way to delete them.
I have since then formatted the computer and installed the RC build and this time didn’t even have any driver issues. I did have to install several Lenovo applications so that my tablet buttons would work again, but since you’re only upgrading and not doing a complete new install, I don’t think this would apply to you.
If you have any more questions, feel free to reply.
Hey, i installed Windows 7 64 bit on my X61 Tablet and i love it too, works great EXCEPT, i have no sound….and i can’t find a driver or anything that will work…i went to the lenovo website and got all the drivers and the wacom website to get the drivers for the pen to work, but no matter what i try i can’t get sound…and i do have the speakers plugged in (tried on the docking station and the tablet) the mute is OFF and the speakers are powered….thats for the external speakers….the ones on the laptop itself don’t work either….i even went to device manager and checked to see if there was a driver update and there was not…if anything could help i would greatly appreciate it, thanks
Have you tried to hit the volume up/down button on your Lenovo keyboard? When I was using the RC, I noticed that even if I hit the mute button, it mutes the volume, but doesn’t show up as mute on the volume control. To unmute, I had to hit it again, or press the volume up/down button.
Hey hey, I’m having the same issue with the audio driver on my x61t.
The Lenovo drivers won’t install (hardware doesn’t match drivers) and the icon on my taskbar appears with a red ‘x’ on it.
Any ideas what can be tried to make it work? It’s the only thing keeping me from fully enjoying Windows 7.
I presume you’ve tried installing this already: Audio driver for Windows Vista – ThinkPad R61, R61i, T61, T61p, X61, X61s, X61 Tablet, Reserve Edition
Hey, i tried just pushing the up volume button over and over and it started working…some kind of syncing problem when you load the OS and just manually turning up the volume fixes it…worked great on mine, no problems now…wish every problem was fixed by just turning up the volume…
Thank Krunk for the audio button on the keyboard tip. I have spent 3+ hours trying different drivers and all I needed to do was turn up the volume on the keyboard. There is something funky with the mute button. If you push the mute button, you need to turn up the volume all using the volume keys on the laptop keyboard. I’m really enjoying windows 7 now.
I am using windows 7 7600 Enterprise version on my x61 tablet. After installing the trackpoint driver, it worked great (I wanted it to be extra sensitive). But today strange things happened, I did nothing between two bootings and the trackpoint suddenly stopped working (I mean it wasn’t so sensitive any more) and when I went to device manager try to reconfigure the trackpoint, there was no way to configure the sensitivity any more.
Just a few comments on a clean installation:
1. By far the quickest clean installation I have done, and I have done many clean installations in my life.
2. I don’t know about U, but my computer is MUCH MUCH faster. Start up and shut down times are fast, nothing like vista. I don’t know if it was vista or IBM junk that made the computer slow, but now it purrs. I use my x61t for teaching, so I only have Windows 7, Office 2007 and Camtasia, nothing else (don’t need anything else). So, it was great to do a clean install.
3. It goes to sleep and comes out of sleep very quickly. No more waiting.
4. I love the INK in windows 7, much better than anything before. Also, since I teach math, I especially love the math input panel (a new program) in windows 7.
5. Multi-touch works much better. It is very responsive and accurate.
6. There are still a few things from vista that have carried over that I don’t like – the whole vista like interface, but on the whole this is a great OS. I am old school, I like the clean windows xp interface – don’t care for themes, aero, etc.
7. I do have issues with the finger print scanner, it doesn’t seem very accurate. I have to scan my print a few times before it will get recognized. i didn’t have this problem when I waas using lenovo fingerprint driver in vista. Currently i am using the driver windows 7 installed.
Anyone using vista on x61t, should switch to Windows 7 ASAP. Trust me, U will not regret the change.
Thanks for the great advices everybody.
Ashish, what do you mean exactly by talking about “clean installation”? Is it not clean if I download Win 7 from MSDNAA (I am a student), then select update and just run it over my vista? I am also using a thinkpad x61t, and I use it primarily for my studies (math and economics).
And if I run an update, will all the lenovo tools remain on the harddrive and are they still usable?
Thanks for advice,
best regards
old Jam
@old Jam: By clean installation, I’m pretty sure Ashish meant he formatted his harddrive and then installed the OS instead of doing an upgrade/overwriting an existing Windows partition. If you select upgrade, that’s not considered a clean installation.
Most of the Lenovo tools remained usable when I did my upgrade to Beta 2, but since then I’ve done a clean install of Win7 RTM. However you should be able to download the same tools off Lenovo’s website.
alright, krunk, thank you. so within the next few days I’ll just do a backup of my harddrive and then I’m going to install the win 7 RC from msdnaa ultimate 😀
i am looking much forward to this as vista really is annoying to me…
have a good day!
many thanks, next week I’ll start the experiment after backing up my data…
I also installed windows 7 on my x61 tablet. Everything works great, until today I noticed my left hand side USB port stopped working. The right hand side ones works perfect. Don’t know why.
Hi,
So far Windows 7 has worked just like you said it would and I am happy I installed it (over Vista). The volume buttons are querky. Took me a while to figure out that the up and down volume buttons were working because there is no on screen indicator.
But the Mute button doesn’t work. Any ideas on how to get it to work too? I tried the link above that you gave — no go. Any idea as to the problem?
@Stephanie:
Are you sure the mute button doesn’t work. For me, it works, but it’s just not indicated on the screen. In fact, that was one of the reasons I had thought my audio wasn’t working because it was muted but there wasn’t a way for me to tell it was muted.
As for the on screen indicator for volume, I installed this Volume Gadget, so when I hit WIN+G, I can see what level the volume go up/down.
All buttons works well, all on screen indicators will be present when you install needed drivers from lenovo website support, it just takes time to install one at a time. I’v tried win7 x64 and x86…
I installed the drivers from Lenovo. when I open up the mixer controls I can see the slider moving up and down with the buttons, but no mute.
Very strange.
Do you know which driver controls those buttons? I have done the hotkeys and keyboard drivers several times.
Thanks.
@Stephanie:
Personally I haven’t gotten the mute to have any on screen indication, but it does work. I haven’t checked for new drivers for awhile, but according to Irmantas, there appears to be Win7 drivers now that you may want to try.
Krunk thanx alot, helped 🙂 silly problem though 😛
Hello to all, just wanted to leave a note. I hade to reinstall my win7, because of numerous problems I had with x86 version. I installed clean x64 version and it works great. I used vista drivers, for onscreen display of brightness and sound. Teres is mute signt as well. I dont know why some have problem with this.
After Installing the ThinkVantage System Update 4.0 and running an update, I finally got the OSD (on-screen display) volume control and mute to show up.
Looking through the list of updates that were installed, it must be the Lenovo System Interface Driver
Other stuff included in the update were:
* ThinkPad Power Manager
* ThinkPad Power Management Driver
* Fix for Issue of HDD with HDP Detection for Windows Vista/7
* ThinkVantage Active Protection System (64bit)
* Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver for Windows 64bit
* ThinkVantage Fingerprint Software 5.9.2 for Windows 7 64bit
* ThinkPad Tablet Shortcut Menu
this is the link to buttons and OSD your like was a bit off.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-74261
the only problem im having after installing windows 7 professional on X61 tablet is that my volume buttons do not work, Does anybody know how to resolve this, i have done the steps discussed on this forum.
Thanks!
here install this and it will take cars of the audio buttons, including the mute button. also will give you OSD (On Screen Display) of audio status when button are pressed.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-74261
Hey,I have the Thimkpad X61 not tablet and I would like to ask if anyone install windows 7 in thinkpad x61 not tablet?
Hi, I had the same problem with sound where reinstalling the drivers, setting the system sound levels didn’t work but hitting the up volume button next to the ThinkVantage blue button on the X61s worked! Thank you
hoya bro,s and galz. Installed W7 pro on me x61. WICKED STUFF. Everything is faster. My machinez overal score is 3.1! Not bad for a 32bit hey?1 prob though.i had xp on previously.now when i start up,it askz me if i wana us WINDOWS,XP or WINDOWS 7. How can i make it just startup with W7?
I’m having problem with the bluetooth device on my x61t after installed W7.
the device is known as unknown device on my device manager. The Lenovo drivers won’t install (hardware doesn’t match drivers).
Any ideas what can be tried to make it work? It’s the only thing keeping me from fully enjoying Windows 7.
@dino Hmmmm, I don’t remember having to install my bluetooth drivers separately. Did you make sure to try the correct drivers (x86 vs amd64)?
I just picked up an NIB X61s with Vista basic on it. The Windows 7 Pro Upgrade I bought from the Ultimate Steal by Microsoft (student promotion, hologram disc) won’t upgrade; it wants to do a Custom install, which, I assume, doesn’t keep the Thinkpad tools. There are no other applications.
Is this what others expect?
-Ted
Well, you can get everything you need from lenovo download.
I did a clean Windows 7 Pro install. After dwonloading Update manager 4.0 it found a whole bunch of drivers it needed to install I installed them ad rebooted it.The Pen still does not work even though there were some tablet specific drivers it installed such as Tablet Button driver the pen still does not work. Any ideas?
Have you tried installing the pen/tablet drivers manually instead of going through the Update manager?
Hello guys,
How does finger-touch work on compatible X61 tablets with Windows 7 Pro?
Is pinch zooming, finger scrolling, Two-finger touch work ?
Please share your comments on these, if you could.
Thanks,
MK.
The X61 tablet uses a tablet pen and not fingers, so the multi-touch features you mentioned (e.g. pinch zoom) won’t work. You can still use the tablet pen for scrolling and moving stuff around, but that’s basically the extent of it.
Some models have multi touch screen. Lower resolution thou.
Ah, you are correct. I did recall seeing a multitouch screen as an option. Sorry, but I don’t know much about it.
slt content e vos commentaire sur la Win 7, kan à moi j’ai le problème après avoir installé Windows 7 pro, sur mon THINKPAD X 61 TABLET tout fonctionne sauf l’Ecran tactile et le Stylet!! avez vous une réponse à cela?
Have you tried installing the drivers from Lenovo’s website?
I am currently installing Windows 7 SP1 Integrated 64 bit.
Facing some issues. Also, driver packages have changed on Lenovo IBM site, bunch of other drivers are combined.
A bit confused between your guide sequence and the updated one Lenovo has outlined.
Unfortunately I no longer own my X61 Tablet, but I would presume that if certain hardware isn’t working, you would just try the most up-to-date drivers on Lenovo’s website.
Actually the current state of the art on Windows 7 and the X61 Tablet is to install windows 7, then install the lenovo system updater, let it grind away, then do the same with windows update. If windows update asks to install a multitouch driver, don’t do it, and don’t let it install later. Never let windows update do any tablet drivers, and everything else is fine. The lenovo system updater is quite impressive, even though it keeps on installing newer versions of software that are just the updating for new computers.
i just upgrade my flate screen ibm lenova think center,which was design for windows xp .thus ,when i upgrade it ,sound driver was ok but no sound came …………..hence ,could u help me rectify the problem?
I have very little to no data on your problem. Your best bet is to contact Lenovo directly.