I know it has been awhile since I posted Part 2, but the reason I’ve held off on writing this part is because I was in the middle of returning my 120 GB Vertex 3 Max IOPS to OCZ. Unfortunately, their customer service is mind-bogglingly bad. The first rep I was in contact with about my initial RMA request was clearly contracted from Asia and wouldn’t address the questions in my ticket. After a week had gone by and I was getting nowhere, I PM’d one of the American reps on the OCZ forums for assistance, but the service was almost as bad. Every time I asked about something, he had to ask the West Coast office about it (he was a remote customer service rep). After five weeks of back-and-forth communications trying to find out whether or not OCZ had replacement cases ready for Lenovo notebooks, I’d had enough. I asked for a refund, and now am sporting an OWC 6G Extreme Pro 120GB drive instead. It is just as fast as my Vertex 3, and I won’t have to deal with OCZ ever again.

If you have a Vertex 3 and are considering returning it for 1/16 inch skinnier casing, I strongly urge you to reconsider. You will save yourself days of time & frustration accepting and dealing with the casing as-is.

This is the final part of a three-part guide I’ve created that is designed to help users get the best performance out of their ThinkPads using Solid State Drives.

Disclaimer: I am not liable for any damage or problems that come about as a result of following this guide. I highly doubt anything negative will result, but I like to have my legal bases covered.

Part 1: Preparation
Part 2: Hard Drive Swapping and Windows 7 Installation
Part 3: Windows 7 Configuration and SSD tweaks

SECTION A: Activating Windows

1. Navigate to the ABR folder you made in Part 2.
2. Make sure both “backup-cert” and “backup-key” files are in the same folder as the restore program.
3.  Run activataion_restore.exe.

SECTION B: Installing Drivers and Updates

1. Install the Chipset driver you downloaded onto a flash drive in Part 1 of the guide. In case you missed it, you can download this (on a computer with an internet connection) at the ThinkPad driver matrix under the heading “Windows Install Supplements.”
2. Install your wireless driver that we downloaded in Part 1. If you still see an Unknown Device named “Network Controller” in your Device Manager after installing it, you’ll need to install your wireless driver manually:
1. Right-click the Network Controller and choose “Update Driver Software…”
2. Click “Browse for driver software”
3. Navigate to the location on disk your wireless driver was installed to. For me, it was C:\DRIVERS\WIN\WLANRLTK\Win7\RTL_DRIVER\Win7X64
3. Install ThinkVantage System Update (TVSU) using the .exe you downloaded in Part I. Restart the computer after the installation finishes.
4. Run TVSU. It may appear to not be working, but give it a minute or two and it’ll come up.
5. Install any critical patches (if applicable) and reboot.
6. Download and install drivers through TVSU.
7. Run Windows Update. I’d recommend unchecking the Internet Explorer 9 update intially, because an install prompt halts the entire update process until you respond.

SECTION C: Lenovo Power Manager Settings

1. Click the green battery icon right next of your system tray to get to Power Manager.
2. Click the “Advanced” button in the top-right.
3. Click the  ”New” button right under the Power Plan tab to create a new power profile.
4. Here are my recommendations for each category (if a setting isn’t mentioned, choose whatever you’d like for it):

System Settings

• System Performance – If set to anything other than “Maximum Turbo”,  TurboBoost will not be enabled.
• CPU Deeper Sleep – Some users report hearing their cpu “whine” after enabling this mode.  From what I understand, it’s a faulty capacitor on the chip, so contact Lenovo Support if you encounter that with this mode enabled.
• Fan Control – More testing needed. I suspect that “Balance all parameters” is fine w/ TurboBoost, but do some testing of your own to make sure.

Idle Timers (will only kick in if you are idle for the amount of time specified)

• Lower display refresh rate – If you’re having problems with screen flicker when you return from being idle, change this to Never.
• Stop Hard Disk Rotation – NEVER. This is important for solid-state drives!
• Standby & Hibernation – Some SSDs have problems with hibernation.  I recommend putting Standby (a.k.a. Sleep) at a time of your choosing and changing hibernation to Never.

Events

• Choose according to your preference.

Alarms

• BATTERY NOTE: Choose settings in this section after reading this articleabout Lithium-Ion battery best-practices. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, here’s a quick summary:
  • Optimal life if kept above 20% remaining
  • Keep in low-temp environment
• Critical low batt alarm – If you have a SSD, I recommend changing the Action to Standby or Shut Down.

Advanced Settings

• Hybrid sleep – This writes memory data to disk AND keeps computer in low-power state. Disallow this feature.
• Link state power management – Set to “Off” to be safe.

SECTION D: Miscellaneous Extras

Better Sound on the W520

1. Go into the Control Panel
2. Click the category Hardware and Sound
3. Click SmartAudio
4. Click the icon that looks like an audio mixer
5. Click on the “Custom” icon to the far right of the equalizer presets
6. Change the sliders as recommended in this thread.

Windows 7 & SSD Helpful Links

• Quick tweaks – SSD Tweaker
• Windows 7 Ultimate Tweaks & Utilities
• OCZ’s ABC SSD Guide
• I’ll add more to this section as I find it

Disclaimer: I am not liable for any damage or problems that come about as a result of following this guide. I highly doubt anything negative will result, but I like to have my legal bases covered.

Part 1: Preparation
Part 2: Hard Drive Swapping and Windows 7 Installation
Part 3: Windows 7 Config and Power Settings

Abbreviation Guide:

• SSD = Solid-State Drive
• HDD = Hard Disk Drive
• OS = Operating System
• OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer

UPDATE (7/13/11) – Added more details about deleting ProgramData. Typo fixed in the command-line arguments to create a junction.

Your laptop has finally arrived! Here’s a rough outline of what I’ll be covering in this part of the guide:

SECTION A: Before Removal of Stock Hard Drive

SECTION B: Hard Drive Swapping

SECTION C: Windows 7 Installation

SECTION A: Before Removing Stock Hard Drive

Hardware Check

1. Boot the computer and run through the Windows 7 “first-time user” configuration that appears.
2. After getting to the desktop, open the Lenovo Toolbox by either pressing the blue ThinkVantage button or clicking the blue icon in the taskbar.
3. Go to the Diagnostics section and run a “Quick Hardware Check” in the System Tests sub-section. If anything fails, contact Lenovo support. Otherwise, continue with the guide.

Backup Activation

OEM installations are pre-activated. Fortunately, it is possible to transfer this activation certificate to a new installation of the same Windows 7 type, e.g. Windows 7 Pro 64-bit –> Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. This means you can activate your copy of Windows without being online or dealing with a call Microsoft. Here’s how to do it:

1. Visit ABR (Activation Backup and Restore) and download ABRbeta.exe from the page. This standalone program allows for a quick and easy way to backup/restore your Windows 7 product key and activation certificate.
2. Run activation_backup.exe. After it finishes, your backup certificate and your product key should show up in the same directory as the ABR program.
3. Copy the entire ABR folder to a flash drive or external hard drive.

Create a Recovery Disc [optional]

1. Open the Lenovo Toolbox.
2. Click on the System Health icon.
3. Choose an option under the “Enhanced Backup & Restore” heading and follow the prompts. A Rescue & Recovery disc will probably be the easiest to set up.

SECTION B: Hard Drive Swapping

Assemble Required Tools

• Philips head screwdriver (smallest one you have)
• The new SSD/HDD. The one I’m using in place of the stock HDD is a 120GB Vertex 3 Max IOPS.

Swap the hard drives

1. Remove the battery.
2. Unscrew the hard drive cover and remove it.
   
3. Take off the rubber side casings and put them aside.
4. Remove the hard drive caddy from the hard drive after unscrewing the screws on the bottom.
5. Put the caddy on the new SSD/HDD. NOTE: If using a Vertex 3, it might be the slightest bit bigger than the caddy. This is what mine looked like: 
   TweakTown reports that Vertex 3 owners will be able to send their current drive back to OCZ in exchange for one with a casing that will fit inside Lenovo notebooks. In light of this information, Vertex 3 owners might want to postpone their Windows 7 installation until the new drive casings are ready, since you’ll need a new drive entirely. Thanks go to Devhack for sharing this info on the Lenovo forums, and I’ll keep you posted when OCZ is ready with the new casings.
6. Screw the screws back on the caddy. NOTE: My current Vertex 3 won’t fit inside the case without warping the cover if I use the screws. You can omit the screws if you have a SSD, because there are no moving parts. My drive is so snug that it is very unlikely that the caddy will shake loose.
7. Put the drive in the notebook and carefully slide it towards the back until you feel the drive connectors are firmly in place.
8. Screw the cover back on. As you can see from the picture below, it is very possible to fit the Vertex 3 inside a Lenovo notebook.
9. Put the battery back into the laptop and flip the laptop over.

SECTION C: Windows 7 Installation

Prepare your Installation Media

1. If you have an installation disc already, go to the next sub-section. Otherwise, go to ThinkPads and SSDs Part 1 for ways to download a Windows 7 image/contact Lenovo for a recovery disc. I also go over burning a Windows 7 ISO image to DVD and creating a Bootable USB Flash Drive in Part 1.

Installation Process

If you are planning on having a secondary hard drive, I recommend putting your Users folder on that drive instead of your Boot drive. Solid-state drives have a set number of program-erase cycles before wear begins to deteriorate the integrity of the storage, and moving your Users folder to secondary storage removes potentially tens of thousands of writes over the course of the drive’s life. With this kind of a setup, the files that programs need in order to run will be installed to your fast SSD (by default), while the user files and settings will default to your secondary drive. NOTE: I would recommend going the USB installation route because it takes significantly less time than a DVD to install windows 7, and you may have to do it this way, if replacing your optical drive with a secondary hard drive. If you’re working from an ISO image, I recommend going this route because it’ll be faster.

Windows  7 Installation

1. Install the Intel Matrix Storage Technology driver to a separate flash drive. If you don’t have this driver, you probably won’t be able to install Windows. Here’s the link for the 64-bit RST drivers. If you have a USB 3.0 flash drive, install the USB 3.0 driver to your flash drive as well.
2. Put the flash drive into one of the USB 2.0 ports. For the Lenovo W520, there’s a USB 2/eSata combo port on the left side and a powered USB 2 port in the back. If using a USB 3.0 drive, put it in one of the blue USB 3.0 ports on the left side.
3. Start up your computer and hit F12 a few times to get to the Boot screen.
4. Select your DVD drive (for disc installation) or USB drive (for USB installation)  in the list using the arrow keys and press Enter to boot from it.
5. Go through the first couple screens of the Windows 7 setup until you get to this screen:
6. Click Load Driver and navigate to where you put the Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers:
7. Select the only entry that appears in the box and hit Next. You’ll get the following warning box:
   Disregard this error! For whatever reason, Lenovo forgot to sign their device drivers. Contrary to the ominous warning text, the disc does indeed use the Rapid Storage Technology drivers that you pointed to.
8. NOTE: This is the last step before the install begins. Click the drive you want to install Windows on and click Next.
9. After Windows finishes installing and restarts a couple times, you’ll get to the screen asking you to assign your computer a name. If you are not moving your Users folder as discussed above, complete installation by following the prompts and you’re finished with this section. Otherwise, continue on to step 10.
10. Follow steps 1-7 of the tutorial in the original post of this Windows Answers thread. I was able to move the Users folder to my secondary hard drive successfully by following that tutorial.
11. Delete the ProgramData folder by booting to a Linux distribution or another Operating System. Here’s the way I used:
1. Download UNetBootin and run it.
2. Select Parted Magic from the Distribution drop-down and select a FAT32 formatted flash drive to install it on and click “Ok”.
3. Restart the computer, booting from your flash drive. Hit ENTER when you get to the Parted Magic splash screen (default config).
4. Click the icon in the taskbar that says “Mount Devices” on mouseover.
5. Click your system hard drive in the left pane and delete the ProgramData folder.
6. Reboot into Windows!
12. Hit Start, type “cmd” and hit Enter to launch the Command Prompt.
13. Assuming D is your secondary storage drive, make junctions from the C drive to the D drive by typing the following:
    • mklink /J C:\Users D:\Users
    • mklink /J C:\ProgramData D:\ProgramData

    We do this so that any future program that installs user information to C:\Users or C:\ProgramData will automatically save it to D:\Users or D:\ProgramData instead.

Let me know if there’s anything I missed. Feedback is always appreciated!

Disclaimer: I am not liable for any damage or problems that come about as a result of following this guide. I highly doubt anything negative will result, but I like to have my legal bases covered.

The guide is split up into three parts. The first part is about all the stuff you can do before your laptop gets here, so that you can jump right in with more important things when it arrives. The second part is about Windows 7 Installation, and physically installing your SSD or replacement hard drive. Part three will be Windows 7 configuration and creating a profile for your SSD in the Lenovo Power Manager.

Part 1: Preparation
Part 2: Hard Drive Swapping and Windows 7 Installation
Part 3: Windows 7 Config and Power Settings

Abbreviation Guide:

• SSD = Solid-State Drive
• OS = Operating System

UPDATE (5/30/11) – Added a section for creating a Bootable USB Installation. I also added a link to Part 2, which is now available.

It’s time to prep for our new arrival!

Additional Accessories

1. Do you want to use the hard drive that comes with the ThinkPad, instead of a CD/DVD drive? If you do, you’re looking for an Ultrabay hard drive caddy.
2. Do you want to be able to view your laptop on an HDTV? ThinkPads don’t have HDMI ports, but they do have a DisplayPort port. If you have a tv with HDMI ports, you’re looking for a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter. You’ll also need an HDMI cable, as well.

Download a Legal Windows 7 Image

1. Download the appropriate version of Windows 7 from the links in this thread. As is mentioned in the thread, the source of the download is Digital River, a Microsoft distributor. If you would rather get recovery disks from Lenovo for a fee, go to this link.
2. [OPTIONAL] Before installing, I recommend that users installing Windows 7 onto a SSD slipstream Service Pack 1 into their installation. This will reduce the amount of writes going to your drive and cut down on the time you spend installing the OS. NOTE: If you are unable to access a 64-bit Operating System,  you won’t be able to slipstream Service Pack 1 into a 64-bit ISO, because of a requirement in the program. If you don’t want to slipstream SP1 into Windows 7, skip to the next section.
3. Follow the step-by-step instructions (with screenshots) in this tutorial: Slipstreaming SP1 into your Windows 7 ISO using RT Seven Lite.
4. If you have a USB flash drive greater than 4 GB, go to the “Bootable USB Flash Drive with Windows 7″ section. Otherwise, go to the “Burn Your Windows 7 ISO to DVD” section.

Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive with Windows 7

1. Follow the easy steps outlined in this tutorial and go to the “Verify your SSD Firmware is Current” section when finished. If you get “Invalid ISO File” errors in the USB Download Tool, use the fix outlined in this post.

Burn Your Windows 7 ISO to DVD

1. Download and install the freeware program ImgBurn.
2. Run the program and click the “Write Image file to disc” button.
3. Click the folder icon and navigate to where you downloaded your Windows 7 ISO.
4. Insert a blank disc into your DVD writer.
5. Make sure you’ve got the desired settings. I usually use max speed and tick the Verify checkbox. This gives you both speed and accuracy
6. Click the big “Write” button to start the burn

Verify your SSD Firmware is Current

1. Plug your SSD into a spare computer with a separate OS.
2. Start the computer and enter the BIOS (F12)
3. Change the SATA storage option to AHCI mode. If it’s already in AHCI, restart the computer and skip to step 8.
4. Restart the computer. If it boots into windows, skip to step 8.
5. If you get a “Windows failed to start” message citing File: \Boot\BCD, you need to do a repair installation to install the AHCI drivers for your hard drive.
6. Insert a Windows installation CD into your dvd drive and restart the computer. Make sure the dvd drive has a higher boot priority than your hard drive (usually set in the BIOS).
7. Proceed with the repair install as usual for your OS. Here’s a thorough guide on doing a repair install on Windows 7. After you’re done, restart the computer.
8. Log in to the OS, and search the internet for a firmware updater/utility for your brand of SSD. Manufacturers’ websites will almost always have this.
9. Download and run the utility as instructed.

Download Drivers to Flash Drive

1. Navigate to the ThinkPad device driver matrix and click the link that includes your ThinkPad model.
2. Download the following drivers and put them on a flash drive:
   

   • ThinkVantage System Update
   • The appropriate Wireless LAN driver
   • Storage Controller, a.k.a. Rapid Storage Technology driver. Here’s the link for the 64-bit RST drivers.
   • “Windows install supplements”–>Chipset driver (W520 is Intel 6-series)

Download Software Tools to Flash Drive

1. Check out ABR (Activation Backup and Restore). If downloading for Windows 7, choose ABRbeta.exe. This standalone program allows for a quick and easy way to backup/restore your Windows 7 product key and activation certificate. I’ll share more about how to use these programs in Part 2.
2. Download SSD Tweaker. This program is a quick way to optimize Windows 7 registry keys and settings for solid-state drives.

Well, I hope that was useful to you! Let me know if there’s anything I missed. Feedback is always appreciated!

You know how .GIF files can be animated so that it looks like the picture is moving? There’s a new format out called APNG (Animated PNG) that will retain the high quality of your images instead of reducing them to a crummy looking 256-color GIF file. Before you get too excited, just keep in mind that it doesn’t have a lot of Application support…yet. As far as Internet browsers are concerned, new versions of Opera and Firefox support it, but Internet Explorer doesn’t. Here’s a more comprehensive list of the applications you can use with APNGs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG#Application_support

You need not worry, however, because APNGs are backwards compatible. If animation is not supported, whatever is on the first frame of your animation will show up as a static PNG image.

What you will need:

1) Mozilla Firefox version 3.0 or higher. Latest version (Currently at version 3.5.2 ) can be found here

2) The APNG Edit addon for Firefox

The editor is a piece of cake to use, and it has all the basic functionality you need to make an APNG. Just add your images one at a time (starting at Frame 1). You can change the amount of time each image displays by clicking on the number near the hourglass at the bottom of each frame. The delay is measured in milliseconds, so a 3 second delay between pictures (i.e. to make a slideshow) would be 3000 milliseconds. Once you’ve finished you animation, click the “Save Animation” button in the top-right, and you’re all done!

Check out the APNG I used as a preview for my Better Kongregate Firefox Addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13677

This script for Kongregate was inspired by, and is based heavily on, arcaneCoder’s Forum Tools script which can be found here. It works a lot like the script’s “Forum Moderator” tag that people in the “Moderators” list are given.

This script is barbaric in comparison, and is simpler to understand than eating cereal with a spoon. To be honest, this is the product of being stuck in the car for 2 hours with no Internet.

Before you install this script, you need to be running Firefox and have the Greasemonkey add-on that can be found here: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/748

Without further ado, here’s the Kongregate Staff Identifier Script:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/55756

This will also be included in my next update of the Better Kongregate Firefox Add-on

Here’s the thread where you can find more discussion about this script: http://www.kongregate.com/forums/1/topics/53179
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