T60 2008-HK4 upgrade to Win7 from XP

[helebor]

This T60 2008-HK4 has the T5600 Intel Core Duo and ATI Mobility Radeon X1300.  I have the Win7 Pro upgrade retail pack which says this upgrade has to be done as a clean install.  I've visited the Lenovo site and picked up as many drivers as were available but I don't see higher than a Vista one from 2007.  Similar story with the Ethernet driver.

Has anyone done this upgrade with this configuration?  Did you encounter any pitfalls related to these missing drivers or did the old Vista ones work OK?

I haven't made up my mind yet whether to go to 64-bit.  I do have 4 GB RAM aboard.  One counter-argument is my need to use Adobe Framemaker, which has a bad rap trying to work on 64-bit.  Other than software limitations, are there other pitfalls with 64-bit on this hardware?

TIA

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor · Accepted solution]

i have done this upgrade, and it works perfectly.

Windows 7 update will download most of the drivers, and those that are missing can be downloaded using the Thinkvantage System Update.

T60 will only recognise 3 gigs max even if you use 64 bit OS. So there won't be much point using 64 bit OS.

[helebor]

Thanks for the super-quick reply. Ake! Ake ! Ake! then.

[helebor]

It all went beautifully.

[helebor]

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lead_org wrote:
i have done this upgrade, and it works perfectly.

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Just another question re this upgrade: what did you do with the locked SERVICEV0001partition ? (FAT32, 4.5 GB). I installed the System Update tool, which went into Program Files.  If you kept your service partition, was it because you knew it was needed for something?

TIA

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

i deleted everything. From memory the service partition is your recovery partition.

[helebor]

OK, I had a peek at the files on SERVICEV001 Paragon PM v.11.  Nothing visible there was dated recently;  and I have a backup of the partition anyway.  I agonised a bit and then went ahead and deleted it.  Ouch!  Unbootable system!

Comments in this post are just for interest's sake, though I'd welcome any insight into the Ultrabay curiosity described in the latter part.

Background, at the same time as doing the Win 7 upgrade ( having the optical drive installed in the Ultrabay, which it's not, usually) I decided to do a clean-install update of my Ubuntu, too, as I wanted to replace it with Mint 11, and the Win 7 install had demolished my grub setup.  All good.  Mint, being "Debian for Dummies", even takes care of installing grub when it's installed on a box with another OS.  It was all working nicely...until I deleted the SERVICEV0001 partition!  Apparently either the Win 7 or the grub install had written to the MBR on *that* partition.  That was odd, given that the service partition was actually the second one on that disk..

It was all fixable, using bootrec.exe first to fix the mbr for Windows and then a Linux live disk to repair grub.

Something I'm curious about: why has the BIOS suddenly begun assigning the supplementary drive in the Ultrabay as Drive 0 (sda in Linux)?  I'm almost certain that, before I did this upgrade, the internal drive always remained as Drive 0.

Thanks, lead_org, for all your helpful comments during this upgrade.  My next task will be to install R&R for Win 7 and make a set of recovery disks.