HELP! did clean vista install on t61 now nothings there!

After posting that my t61 was running incredibly slowly, I decided to take the advice of some of these people and did a clean install. Now there are 38 processes running (as opposed to around 100), and internet explorer loads up much quicker than before.

Problem: I think i erased all previously installed USEFUL stuff too...like i press the thinkvantage button and nothing works. My graphics driver is the vga one, even though I have NVDIA quatro card...i don't think I see turbo memory being recognized either. Also, my scrolling with the trackpoint doesn't work anymore...
I think I erased everything but donno what to do now...

please post in step by step manner what I should do. My situation is i just reinstalled windows and have nothing and donno what to intsall first/ update/ etc. i didn't make any recovery discs or whatever...but can connect to inernet. thanks.

 

Did you also erase the recovery partition? If it's still there, you should be able to restore your computer back to the factory preset state.

Or, you can download all the drivers and the Thinkvantage software suite from the Lenovo website and just reinstall them, that should give you back the most if not all of the functionalities that originally came with the Thinkpad.

 

what exaclty do i need from the lenovo website furrycute?

 

I don't really know, because I don't have a Thinkpad with me.

In the old days, every manufacturer gave you a copy of clean OEM Windows OS CD and a drivers CD. That OS CD is for you to do a clean install of the Windows OS. The Drivers CD is for you to install all the drivers necessary for the hardware components of your computer to function properly. Nowadays the contents of the drivers CD are all on the respective manufacturer's website. Just go to their support/download section and take a look.

 

If you can... try and decipher the Lenovo Matrix

 

there's so many things to install...are they all/mostly necessary? also, when i click the blue thinkvantage button, nothing happens.

 

mliu: "system update 3" should find the available programs for your model. You should be able to get all the proggies you need.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=TVSU-UPDATE
readme: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/thinkvantage_en/systemupdate3-2007-2-12.txt

 

thx alot buddy.

 

so did the system update fix ur problem?.. i seem to be having the same problem

 

no my thinkvantage button and volume buttons still don't work...i don't have all the "thinkvantage" things...:S

 

i pretty much have the same situation as u.... none of my buttons work after clean install... wireless doesn't work...video card shows up as the vga thing instead of the nvidia now...

after all this frustration, I think the only way is to fork over the 90 dollars for the recovery cd from lenovo.... which is bs

 

I did a clean installation of Vista Home Premium on my T60. I do not see any problem at all!

As pointed out by other posters, you need to download those drivers from Lenovo's website, and install them one by one. Or, download and install System Update 3 first, and let it find and install all other drivers for you. I personally downloaded those drivers, read the readme files, and installed the drivers one by one. It is tedious, but it is nothing that difficult. One only needs some patience and self-learning capability to do that.

 

What you need to do before installing your wireless driver is to install chipset driver for your motherboard, and then install wireless driver. it's a fact of life on any computer after you clean install Windows, you need to install the drivers too to get the full functionalities of your hardware.

 

Other ways to do is go to device manager (is there such thing in vista?) and see which hardware is not identified, then click on it properties and install driver. Or do a hardware search?

 

things are fine...other than the fact that teh blue thinkvantage button or volume buttons on my thinkpad aren't working!!! even after installing almost every driver on lenovo site.

 

Not yet in *.ISO on the web?

 

still can't get those buttons to work...real irritating..i'm thinking of refunding coz i can't get the main buttons - volume and thinkvantage to work. help?

 

try another clean install, and follow what the other posters said about the driver installation process

 

i did exactly what was said...my volume and thinkvantage buttons just don't work...there's no point in reinstalling windows that's just a waste of my time because i'd be repeating the same processes. perhaps there is an exact driver that someone could show me or link up that would enable my buttons to work...?

 

My old HP has a row of touch sensitive buttons just above the keyboard area. Getting those buttons to work after a clean Windows install is a real pain the behind. HP puts the software that controls these buttons in a small hidden partition. So after a clean reinstall of Windows, you have create that hidden partition and install the specific software/drivers onto that partition, which is a real pain in the behind.

Thinkpads might have something similar, but I have never played around with reinstalling Windows on Thinkpads before.

 

No, Thinkpads did not had hidden partition for this purpose.

Maybe your hardware is marked as "unknown" and windows is not searching drivers for these devices?. Try to "uninstall" all devices with question marks and exclamation marks in the device manager. Then do a search for plug and play hardware.

For video card. Select the video card and the select update driver option. Then let windows to search for a driver. Maybe this will help.

 

in my few years experience of clean installing windows xp for several dozens of clients, those extra buttons never show up in the device manager as a missing device, i just needed to install the correct "hotkey" software to place functionalities on the buttons. that being said, the original poster has already tried that and it still doesn't work....

 

Have you tried calling support maybe they could point you to the sofware you need?