Graphics/Touchpad Driver Problems

Richardc267 · 09 Nov 2017

Hello all again. Long time no see.

I have yet another stupid dilemma I have seem to find myself in.

Here's my story;

A couple months ago a friend gave me an old laptop; a Lenovo T61 (2007-2008) Thinkpad. After a while I seemed to notice a problem.

Now, whoever had this machine either messed something up inside it, or some piece of hardware is being glitchy. It's originally a Windows Vista Basic machine with the key still on the back (probably unusable), and it has Windows 7 Ultimate 32-Bit on the machine. Now onto the problem I face.

For some reason, every time I start up the machine, my graphics card drivers and my touchpad drivers seem to reset themselves and I am forced to re-install their drivers every time I turn off the machine. I have a few games on here and I am SICK of having to reinstall my stupid drivers every time. If it's the HDD, then fine, I can replace it with another one.

Secondly, this laptop was given to me, and my friend says he found it in the recycle bin.

This is getting incredibly annoying and I am absolutely fed up with having to reinstall the stupid drivers every time I start it up if I want to play certain games. I also have triangles next to a couple other ones (PCI Serial Port & PCI Simple Communications Controller). I also have 3 other laptops sitting in a suitcase. 1 is a little newer, a 2012, but it's a piece of crap and the port plug doesn't work right (It was the laptop I was using before this one, and it was incredibly annoying that I had to get creative in order to make it take a charge, and eventually the port plug stopped working). It still has 100% working functionality otherwise. The other 2 laptops might work, but since I have no chargers for them, I can't see if they work. The other 2 are older than my current T61 Thinkpad (2004 and 2005). One is an older Thinkpad, and the other is a Toshiba (both are missing batteries, and both still have their original HDD's & other parts). I need to find chargers for them to test them.

Originally, less than 2 weeks ago, I had to have the PC fix some bad sectors on the drive and it's not saying they're bad now on my T61 (as far as I know). If THAT is my driver problem, then I will have to get a hard drive out of one of my other laptops (I will probably take it out of the 2012). My 2012 laptop had Windows 10 on it, I used it since June until the end of September and I will never ever use Windows 10 ever again. I hate that POS system. I will use Windows 7 forever if I have to.

I have recently self-diagnosed myself as Bi-Polar Depressive (I never thought I was until just recently), and I have been living with depression since I was Jaded at 8 years old. I am also Autistic and have been a gamer/PC addict since I was 8. The only things I pretty much do is just web surf & play PC games all day for the last 20+ years due to social fear/anxiety and I am a loner (also very quiet and very introverted). I am going to be 35 in 6 months (Christ I feel old already!) in early May (Taurus) and I have to live with my problems because Autism just doesn't "go away as you age".

My laptop's specs:

CPU: Intel R 2 Duo CPU T7300 @ 2.0 GHz
3 Gigs of RAM
GPU: Mobile Intel R 965 Express Chipset Family
And my HDD is only 80 gigs

mrjimphelps · 09 Nov 2017

The computer might have been in the recycle bin because it had hardware problems. Is the case cracked anywhere? If so, then maybe it was dropped. It's probably a bad laptop, not worth fixing, unless you could find an identical laptop that you could use for parts.

Here are the specs on your computer:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd008989

Lenovo supported either XP or Vista on this machine. In other words, it is an old machine. That's not to say that it won't successfully run Windows 7; it probably will. But you may not be able to get Windows 7 drivers for it. However, the Vista drivers may work.

If your other Thinkpad uses the same power adapter and battery, you could take the power adapter and battery from the T61 and put it in the older Thinkpad.

Sounds like the one which won't take a charge has a short inside the laptop.

Good luck.

Richardc267 · 09 Nov 2017

mrjimphelps said:

The computer might have been in the recycle bin because it had hardware problems. Is the case cracked anywhere? If so, then maybe it was dropped. It's probably a bad laptop, not worth fixing, unless you could find an identical laptop that you could use for parts.

Here are the specs on your computer:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd008989

Lenovo supported either XP or Vista on this machine. In other words, it is an old machine. That's not to say that it won't successfully run Windows 7; it probably will. But you may not be able to get Windows 7 drivers for it. However, the Vista drivers may work.

If your other Thinkpad uses the same power adapter and battery, you could take the power adapter and battery from the T61 and put it in the older Thinkpad.

Sounds like the one which won't take a charge has a short inside the laptop.

Good luck.

No I cannot use the same adapter. The 2 laptops require 2 different voltages. One wants 15v, and the other wants 16v. My laptop requires a higher voltage, so no, I cannot.

As I said in the post, the machine EXPLICITLY (says under the keyboard) "Windows Vista Basic".

mrjimphelps · 10 Nov 2017

Richardc267 said:

As I said in the post, the machine EXPLICITLY (says under the keyboard) "Windows Vista Basic".

You can run any version of Vista on this machine, the only limitation being if the CPU is 32-bit, you will need to stay with 32-bit Vista. Also, if you can't install more than 2 GB of RAM, then you should stay with 32-bit. Since it came with 32-bit Vista, it seems clear that you should stay with 32-bit.

As far as Windows 7, chances are the only problem you will have running 32-bit Windows 7 is that you might not be able to find all of the drivers you need. This may explain why you have to keep reinstalling some drivers. But in my opinion, a more likely explanation is that there are hardware problems with this machine.

The reason it says "Windows Vista Basic" under the keyboard is because that is what the machine came with, not because that is all you can run on the machine.

Richardc267 · 10 Nov 2017

mrjimphelps said:

You can run any version of Vista on this machine, the only limitation being if the CPU is 32-bit, you will need to stay with 32-bit Vista. Also, if you can't install more than 2 GB of RAM, then you should stay with 32-bit. Since it came with 32-bit Vista, it seems clear that you should stay with 32-bit.

As far as Windows 7, chances are the only problem you will have running 32-bit Windows 7 is that you might not be able to find all of the drivers you need. This may explain why you have to keep reinstalling some drivers. But in my opinion, a more likely explanation is that there are hardware problems with this machine.

The reason it says "Windows Vista Basic" under the keyboard is because that is what the machine came with, not because that is all you can run on the machine.

No it wasn't dropped. It doesn't have any cracks or breaks.

As for the rest of your post...I already knew all that. I was just saying that it came with Vista Basic. If I were to reinstall Vista on it, I'd put Basic on it because that's what the CD-key on the back is for and I wouldn't be able to use it on other versions anyway, so it'd be useless to put Enterprise or Professional, whatever.

I pulled the drivers for the hardware from the Lenovo website for Windows 7. So I don't think it's the drivers either themselves.