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Lenovo Thinkpad T400 Drivers & Installation Guide

Vista Clean Install Guide

1. Enter BIOS by pressing F1 during ThinkVantage bootup screen

• Set HDD to SATA/AHCI mode (Recommended)
  
• Enable Virtualization (If you want it)

2. Backup anything you want

• Burn recovery disks
• Backup drivers & applications (SWTools Directory)
• Backup Lenovo / IBM wallpapers

• Backup your activated copy of Windows using Orev's Activation Backup and Restore

3. Put a copy of the ethernet / wireless LAN driver and the activation file to a USB drive

4. Boot to Vista installation DVD (From Anytime Upgrade disc, retail disc, MSDN or any other source)

• Install the version of Vista your computer comes with (if you have backed-up the activation, simply select the corresponding version and don't enter a key yet)
  
• For the partitions, you might want to totally eradicate the recovery partition and set it up to what you like it to be
• Finish the installation after completing some other steps
  

5. First run of Windows

• Restore the activation if you had backed-up the activation
• Install Windows Vista SP1 (Required, it is required for the switchable graphics system to work and it also provide improved performance)

6. Install remaining drivers (note: You can install ThinkVantage System Update and automate most of such tasks)

• Intel Chipset Driver
  
• Intel Turbo Memory (systems with Turbo Memory) / Intel Matrix Storage (systems without Turbo Memory [Note: The two drivers are almost the same, in fact you can even run the turbo memory installation and get the matrix storage manager]
  
• ACPI Power Management driver
  
• System Interface driver
  
• ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
• Intel Wifi 5100AGN / 5300AGN driver / Thinkpad WLAN
  
• Intel Gigabit network adapter driver
  
• ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Switchable Graphics driver / Graphics driver
  
• Authentec Fingerprint software & driver
  
• Broadcom Bluetooth driver (Must turn on wireless switch and be detectable)
• Conexant Audio driver
  
• Conexant Modem driver
  
• Hotkey driver
  
• Intel AMT driver (for the Simple PCI Communications device)
  
• Ricoh 7-in-1 Card Reader driver
  
• Smartcard Reader driver
  
• Sonix Integrated Camera driver (you might be better of using the default windows software instead since the camera driver leaks a lot of handles)
• Synaptics UltraNav & Touchpad driver (for the special mouse functions, side scrolling, etc)
• Thinkpad Display (Just some ICC profiles and a name for your display)
  

7. Install ThinkVantage software (those in bold are highly recommended)

• Access Connections
  
• Access Help
  
• Active Protection System (Protects HDD from shock, highly recommended)
• Client Security Solution
  
• Easy Eject
  
• Help Center
  
• Keyboard Customizer
  
• Message Center
  
• Power Manager (Required for switchable graphics, highly recommended)
  
• Presentation Director
• Productivity Center
  
• System Update
  
• UltraNav utility

8. Install other patches

• Registry patches to enable some power-saving options
• Update your BIOS
  
• Patch to include custom functionality in Windows Mobilility Center
  

9. Install Rescue and Recovery

• Useful for some people

For more information, you might want to refer to the guide from NotebookReview.