If you decide to flatten your Lenovo ThinkPad T400 or W500 and install another operating system, the good news is that all of the core drivers are on the Lenovo Support Downloads and Drivers area.  I installed two different operating systems to check this out.  Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64 and Windows Vista Enterprise x64. 

I did not install each and every software component you would normally see from Lenovo if you bought directly from them.  For instance, I do not install the Keyboard customizer or the Productivity Center.

Usually for the server installs, I am perfectly happy installing the Ethernet driver, wireless, video drivers and a few other things and moving on.  Demonstrating Hyper-V doesn’t require all the fancy custom software.  However, the T400 and W500 require a little more work than my ThinkPad T61p.

Why?

The ThinkPad T400 and W500 can be ordered with “switchable” graphics.  The only way to make the switch is to install the Power Management Utility.  Since this utility uses the .NET frameworks, care must be taken to install the Lenovo drivers and software in the correct order, or at least you need to make sure all of the prerequisites are installed unless you want to see the Power Management utility appcrash.  Since Windows Server 2008 does not have those prereqs installed by default, you will need to do that.  It’s covered in a couple of minutes in the instructions below.

Instructions for Installation

1. Download all of the drivers and software from the Lenovo Downloads and Drivers area for the T400 and Windows Vista to a USB stick or external drive.  I make it a practice to add a little name to the beginning of each driver package name since they are so cryptic.  See the screenshot below.  Keep in mind these are current as of 10/17/2008 but will obviously change as updates are published.
2. Install Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008.  You will of course need the media for this and I used the x64 version of the Enterprise VL media on both installs. 
3. Install the Intel chipset drivers and reboot.  Running oss803ww.exe actually unpacks the drivers under c:\DRIVERS so pay attention to the directory created.  All of the Lenovo drivers do this so installing the driver is a two phase process for each one.  In the case of the chipset drivers, run c:\drivers\win\intelinf\infinst_autol.exe.
4. The Intel ethernet driver does not install cleanly on Windows Server 2008 so the following is a workaround until Lenovo resolves this.  I hit the same issue on the ThinkPad W500. Run 7vrv15ww.exe to unpack the ethernet drivers to c:\drivers\vista\ethernet
5. Start Server Manager and go to Device Manager.
6. Right mouse click the banged out Ethernet Controller and click Update Driver Software
7. Click browse my computer
8. Click “Let me pick…”
9. Select Network Adaptors and click next
10. Click Have Disk
11. Click Browse
12. Go to c:\drivers\vista\ethernet\pro1000\winx64 and select e1y60x64.inf then click Open
13. Click OK.
14. Select Intel ® 82567LM-2 Gigabit Network Connection and click Next
15. Click Yes on the warning and let the driver install.  Keep in mind this seems to work well enough right now but Lenovo engineering has been informed we would like to see this corrected.  At this point you should have wired networking so you might want to double check your Windows Update settings and prevent any patches or updates until you finish installing some of the remaining drivers.
16. At this point I usually install the wireless driver.  On Windows Server 2008 you also need to install the feature that allows wireless networking.  We might as well install some other needed features while we are doing that so launch Server Manager again.
17. Click the Features node then click Add Features.
18. Add the .NET Framework 3.0, Desktop Experience, and Wireless LAN Service features.  The .NET framework is used by Lenovo Power Management and you’ll likely want the desktop experience if you plan to capture any demos with Techsmith Camtasia.
19. Install the Intel wireless drivers using 7vwv15ww.exe and the resulting directory under c:\drivers.
20. Install the Lenovo power management driver.
21. Install the Lenovo system interface driver.
22. Install the Lenovo power management utility.
23. Install the ATI video drivers.  After all of the reboots from this driver and the drivers above you should be at a point where you can test the switchable graphics.  This is accomplished by left clicking the battery monitor running on the taskbar and selecting Switchable Graphics, then Energy Saving.  That will flip to the Intel video chipset.  Repeat and select High Performance to switch back to the ATI chipset.
24. All of the drivers that remain are optional for Windows Server 2008.  I normally don’t install them because I have no need to.  I did try the Bluetooth drivers and could not get them to install so somebody else with have to figure out a workaround for that.  After installing the audio driver on Windows Server 2008, be sure to set the Windows Audio service to automatic and start it.

The Windows Vista Enterprise x64 driver installs were much more straightforward.  I installed all of the drivers including the built-in webcam drivers and tested that with Office Communicator 2007.

If you plan to use Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with the ThinkPad T400, be sure to download the RTW version then add the role.  I installed Hyper-V, created a 64bit Windows Server 2008 Enterprise virtual machine and tested external networking across the T400 Ethernet card.  I didn’t spot any problems.

The only driver I have not figured out on Windows Vista x64 is the “PCI Simple Communications Controller”.  I did a quick check on the internet and it appears I am not alone.  After digging around it appears to be resolved by installing the Intel AMT drivers.

The process of installing Windows Server 2008 on the Lenovo ThinkPad W500 should be nearly identical except for the drivers you download and install might be slightly different.  I will be running through the process again and will post any significant errata I spot.  I already know you need to do the same thing with the Ethernet drivers, power management, etc.

Next up, installing SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop…  wish me luck.  Grin.

[UPDATE for 10/19]  FYI, the SUSE install did not go well on the T400.  I had to switch the SATA chipset from AHCI to Compatibility for the install to use the DVD drive.  The install didn’t recognize the wired, wireless, or video chipsets.  I really don’t have time to track down the kernel patches.

Instead of spending time on Linux, I decided to spend the time to test the Verizon EVDO chipset and see if the cell connectivity works with both Windows Vista and Window Server 2008 Enterprise x64.  It does.  Make sure you run 7xwc16ww.exe and unpack everything to c:\drivers\C:\DRIVERS\WIN\WWANQL.  After that, be sure to run C:\DRIVERS\WIN\WWANQL\Driver\setup.exe and C:\DRIVERS\WIN\WWANQL\Firmware\setup.exe.  Once you have those drivers in place, you can download the Verizon VZAccess Manager from http://vzam.net and install it.

One other thing, for those of you wanting to install on a ThinkPad W500, the instructions above work.  The only driver difference I spotted was for the integrated webcam.