Category: Blog

I toyed with the idea of using the SSD for my main drive, but I’d really like to get the VMs running quicker and in the end decided to use that as my secondary, as the location for the VHD and VDI files.

As a result, my Windows Experience Index is only 5.9, as shown below:

The reason? The disk transfer rate from my primary drive is the lowest score. If I had used the SSD, I’m sure I’d have a 6.4 score or better. I’m not 100% positive I have the best driver for video on my machine, but since I don’t game, and primarily write here, I won’t worry about it. The CPU and memory scores are pretty good.

I downloaded Geekbench as well, and ran that.

As a note, this is a Lenovo W510 that is about a year old. I upgraded to 16GB of RAM recently, but here are the specs I note:

• Core i7 CPU Q720, 1.6GHz
• 16GB RAM
• 500GB SATA 5400rpm drive
• 80GB Intel SSD

Not done yet, but I have been slowly patching and installing software over the last few evenings, stuck at my desk most days. It’s amazing how little software I have on DVD, and how little I need. Once I got Win 7 installed, I needed to grab the wireless driver from Lenovo, and since then I have been installing from the HDD.

I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I didn’t like Office 2010, and was going to go with 2007 again, but I then realized that I should install SQL 2008 R2 since I’ll demo stuff. Then I realized that I need Office 2010 for Powerpivot.

@##@$%$%$@#@

It’s mostly Outlook, and I should blog about that separately.

In any case, most of the software I need is back on the machine. I did decide to try Chrome (haven’t installed FF at all). However I have my Edit Plus, Password Safe, and Live Mesh working.

Once SQL finishes installing, I should be good to go.

I backed up my machine, copied a bunch of data to both a thumb drive as well as the second hard drive on my W510, and get ready to install Windows 7 x64.

First I had to add memory. I had put 8GB in the bottom slot, but to replace the 4GB with 8GB in the top slots, I had to remove the keyboard. It’s actually easy, unscrew two screws (all the way out), pop out the keyboard, and then replace memory. The underneath slot is hard to reach, but it only took me about 5 minutes to upgrade to 16GB.

Now time for Windows. Nervously I put the x64 image in the DVD drive (replacing it in the 2nd bay) and booting. Windows setup loaded and started and….

Stopped. No DVD driver found. Slightly amusing to me since I had booted from the DVD drive. I tried again, and then went downstairs to search the ‘net. I found a few references but no drivers. The drivers on the Lenovo site were an install, which won’t work during setup. I downloaded Intel drivers, but those didn’t work. To top it off, my laptop was now not booting into the old Windows, saying I needed to run repair. I suspect setup has some boot files there, but now I was really nervous.

I read on a Lenovo forum that someone had a similar issue and fixed it with a new .iso download. So I burned a new Windows x64 DVD from MSDN and tried that. Success!!

Now the install is running and my fingers are crossed. We’ll see how well this works.