Windows 7 clean install (micro guide)

[lenardg]

Last time I clean installed Windows 7 I decided I will write about the experience so that I might help others do the same. I have now edited this first post to include information from below. I will continue to do this as new things come up.

While I tried this on a T500, it should work with at least the T400 and possibly with other Lenovo ThinkPad systems as well.

Before we begin

I have used Windows 7 since it was available on MSDN in August. At that point some drivers were missing and all were still labeled "beta". Now that the OS is officially released and most of the Lenovo drivers are available for Windows 7, I thought it would be time to clean install the operating system (at the time of this writing the Ricoh Card Reader drivers are still in beta, all other necesarry drivers have been released by Lenovo).

I though I would share the order in which I installed the different drivers, because this seems to be the hardest part for those who are doing a clean install, and do not wish to use Lenovo System Update. There can also be problems with certain things not working at all or only working partially when not all necessary drivers are installed.

After this installation was completed, everything works for me, OSD items are displayed, switchable graphics is working, etc.

Install order of drivers

Most of the drivers wanted to reboot the system - based on previous experience I opted out in some of the cases. The list below will specify when exactly I did reboot.

1. Windows 7 installation (this included some reboots)
2. System Interface Driver
3. ThinkPad Power Management Driver
4. Hotkey driver
5. Intel Turbo Memory driver
6. --Reboot--
7. wait until the installation of hardware devices is complete
8. --Reboot--
9. Power Manager
10. --Reboot--
11. Ultranav Driver
12. Ultranav Utility
13. ThinkVantage Active Protection System
14. Monitor driver (use the that is for Vista, dated August 2009)
15. --Reboot--
16. Switchable graphics
17. Fingerprint software
18. --Reboot--
19. Ricoh card reader
20. WLAN drivers (only drivers, not the intel management software)
21. Windows Update

The last step was running Windows Update. There were some security updates but this also installed some drivers. The Audio driver was updated by Windows Update, for example.

At this point all drivers were from either Lenovo or the default ones from Microsoft.

The only one device that does not have a driver is the Intel AMT, which I never use. This shows up as a unknown communications device in device manager. As I have AMT disabled from the BIOS, I don't know why it shows up, but I never really bothered with this either (it was like this in Vista as well, and all pre-release versions of Windows 7). If you are using Intel AMT, you can install drivers for it either before or after you run Windows Update.

Missing a driver for Windows 7?

As ThinkPads come with many different hardware elements, you might still find some devices that lack a released Windows 7 driver. If you did not find a driver amongs the released drivers at the Lenovo site, nor did Windows Update help you, there are still ways to get a driver for your device.

1. Try the beta drivers at Lenovo. You will find them at http://www.lenovo.com/windows7beta
2. Install a driver that was released for Vista. You might need to start the installation in compatibility mode

System image

As a last step of the installation process I created an image of the system that can be used to restore the state I ended up with. I used the built in utilities of Windows 7. While I used this to save the clean installed state of the system, you can actually create a image at any later time, when you have installed all (or some) of the applications you use. The image will contain all of your applications in this case.

I am not sure which editions contain this feature, but I think Home Premium should have it (and everything higher than that, of course).

Type in Backup into the start menu, select Backup and Restore from the list that appears. From the Window that appears next, select Create a system image from the left side and follow the instructions.

If you are unsure what you are doing, either don't do it, or read the help :-) You can also find information about this around the internet, such as:

How to Create a System Image Backup in Windows 7
How to Create a System Image in Windows 7

There is also information on how to restore such a backup, should it become necessarry:

System Image Recovery

Because restoring overwrites your entire hard drive, please be sure to backup any data files (documents, images, music, etc) you might have on the drive you are restoring. If possible you should consider (from the very beginning) having a separate system and data partition (if you don't already have one). This way you can always safely restore the system partition without affecting your data. I cannot go into details on creating partitions here, but there should be other resources in this forum or over the internet.

Clean Install with an upgrade media

If you have received an upgrade media and still want to do a clean install of Windows 7, it is still possible. Please read the following article which tells about how it is possible, what problems might arise, and how you should solve them:

Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media

When you are done

When you are done, why not learn some cool new keyboard shortcuts for Windows 7, for example at Lifehacker - The Master List of New Windows 7 Shortcuts

[pandatic]

Thanks for posting this. Where did you get the monitor driver? I couldn't find the lcd/monitor driver in the driver download page for windows 7.

[MaX PL]

Thanks for posting this. Where did you get the monitor driver? I couldn't find the lcd/monitor driver in the driver download page for windows 7.

lol.

there's no such thing.

[pandatic]

It has it for vista.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...cid=MIGR-72858

lol.

there's no such thing.

[gavfung]

does your brightness control for the dedicated graphic card work?

[mikec]

Thanks for the mini guide. I did mine in a different order, but works okay now.

The "released" drivers for Windows 7 make a huge difference over the beta ones.

One thing you left out was the Intel Storage Manager driver; you should update that early in the process. It's not the normal install, so read the readme.txt on it.

[mikec]

does your brightness control for the dedicated graphic card work?

Mine does.

[lenardg]

I think the Turbo Memory driver updates the Intel Storage Manager. You should only install that separately if you don't have Turbo Memory.

If I would be wrong please correct me

[lenardg]

It has it for vista.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...cid=MIGR-72858

Yep, I did use the Monitor driver for Vista. I added this info to the first post.

It worked "out of the box", I did not need compatibility mode of anything.

[junkimchi]

does your brightness control for the dedicated graphic card work?

mine doesn't work until i switch graphic cards once. I don't get it....

*edit *
Version 8.641.1.1-090824a-089811C

* (Fix) Fixed an issue where the LCD brightness could not be changed when the graphics mode was set to high performance on starting the computer.


reinstalling it right now

*EDIT 2*

for people who can't control brightness if their T400 boots with SWITCHABLE in HIGH PERFORMANCE, just reinstall to the latest switchable graphics driver and it gets fixed. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...cid=MIGR-73641