My ThinkPad has become very slow, so I'm planning to either reinstall the OS (Vista Business) or install Windows 7 on it, since I've already tried the other fixes, rather unsuccessfully. Can someone please explain the requisite procedure, step by step, so that the default Lenovo software (drivers?) remain intact? (My Q: drive contains 4+ gigs of Lenovo's preloaded factory software, so should I just format my main drive and re/install the OS?)
Anon
Favorite Answer
You can't save the drivers after a reinstall. The driver is part of the operating system so therefore if you upgraded to Win 7 you would most likely use a different driver perhaps (vista and win7 are both based on the same kernel and are compatible). Besides if you need drivers you can generally get them from online. Or lacking that install them from an USB flash drive. Now here is what I would suggest. Partition the hard drive and get everything you want to keep on a separate partition. Then put everything you want to keep later on in the partition also put another copy on a USB drive just in case. You can probably get all the programs you want to keep from the programs files in your drive. Just copy and paste it to your new partition and flash drive. Then finally install windows 7 on the first larger partition. Finally merge the two partitions.
Anonymous
You should use windows' guide that they have on their website.