W510 Windows upgrades fail

[tpribors]

I'm trying to solve a problem in one of two ways. The issue is that I need to migrate a system from a W510 to a W520 to make use of the 520's memory. The Silverfast application simply locks up with only 8GB.

I've tried two things:

Swapping hard drives
--------------------------
The W520 (i7) system will boot and run on the W510 (i5). It updates some drivers and runs fine.

The W510 system drive on the W520 crashes with a BSOD 7B This says boot problem. At first I thought it was the HDD driver but something leads me to believe it may be the chipset software. The W520 has support for the i5 but the 510 doesn't know anything about the i7. I tried booting safe mode. No go. Then I tried booting on the 510 and installing the Intel Chipset Driver package. That didn't help - got the same BSOD.

I thought safe mode would always work because it only used basic cpu features. Doesn't seem to...

Any ideas on what might be missing?

I tried all sorts of methods of restoring the windows software using F8 and repair. No help...

I also tried to repair by installing Windows 7 from a real Windows 7 disc that I got to upgrade another machine years ago. I expect this disc also knows about the W520 chipset and wanted to find a way to install over a corrupted version, but you can't do that booting from the CD - only by running the update app under windows. Sigh...


Upgrade to Windows 10
----------------------------
So today I had another idea. If chipset support is the issue the Windows 10 should have them all. So I factory restored the 510 from the CD/DVD. Then ran the Windows 10 upgrade. The first time I used the Win10 IOS image that I "created" today because I infer that it is the very last with all the updates already installed.

The result was a Win10 system that on the 520 ran just fine. Except it wasn't "activated". I had done this before on the 520 using the same handling and the Windows 10 was activated. This was done when the upgrade from 7 to 10 was "free".

Win10 will not activate using the Win7 product key inside the battery compartment...

It asked for a horrendously long "instance ID" or something like that that also wouldn't work.

I thought it might work if I used the 2019 DVD but that also left Win10 "unactivated".

So Question #2: Is there a way to upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and have an activated windows? This used to work, in fact, many years after MS said they would. But by withdrawing it they are removing the ability to recover systems. I would hope that Microsoft wouldn't take it away from those of us that have used it in the past and are restoring a system from a crashed HDD.

I would much prefer the first alternative though: If I can get the 510 drive to run on the 520 with all my applications intact that is ideal.


If worse comes to worse I can just go back to the W520, factory restore it onto a new HDD and manually reinstall all the one-off software bits that I've accumulated over the years.

Thanks!

Still on the search for a new "every day machine" and can't find any with a SD card...

[dr_st]

The W510 system drive on the W520 crashes with a BSOD 7B This says boot problem.

Did you go into the BIOS and change the SATA configuration from whatever it is to the other one (AHCI/Compatibility)?

Win10 will not activate using the Win7 product key inside the battery compartment...

Yes, I think the option to activate Win10 with a Win7 key was finally retired (many years after the free upgrade offer ended).

Is there a way to upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and have an activated windows?

There are "extra-legal" means to safely and permanently activate any Windows 10/11 installation, regardless of whether it was an upgrade or not. Your choice on whether you want to use it or not.

[tpribors]

The W510 system drive on the W520 crashes with a BSOD 7B This says boot problem.

Did you go into the BIOS and change the SATA configuration from whatever it is to the other one (AHCI/Compatibility)?

Win10 will not activate using the Win7 product key inside the battery compartment...

Yes, I think the option to activate Win10 with a Win7 key was finally retired (many years after the free upgrade offer ended).

Is there a way to upgrade from Win7 to Win10 and have an activated windows?

There are "extra-legal" means to safely and permanently activate any Windows 10/11 installation, regardless of whether it was an upgrade or not. Your choice on whether you want to use it or not.

Yes, I tried swapping from AHCI to compatible mode, that didn't change anything. Note that it boots and starts spinning the Windows logo, then BSOD's, so the boot path is intact. The system boots on the W510 but crashes on the 520. I also went into the BIOS and disabled all extra devices on the W520 that I could. I was hoping the installing the chipset drivers would address any incompatible drivers.

I was hoping that since I had a W7->W10 upgrade previously that a new reinstall would somehow work. However, Microsoft has done away with all phone support and the licensing path solutions won't accomodate something I had but they took away.

[TPFanatic]

I had a painful time trying to install a generic (non-oem) image of Windows 7 on a T520. Wouldn’t surprise me if this generation is just weird like that. Once I did get W7 installed eventually it supports everything I’d want in a PC.

I think the closest thing to a W510 or W520 in a modern ThinkPad is the P16, P14 or P1 models. If the machines aren’t making money I don’t see a point in purchasing another tho. The old ones still work too good.

[dr_st]

Yes, I tried swapping from AHCI to compatible mode, that didn't change anything.

You may need to use the trick of editing your registry offline, as described here:
https://www.wintips.org/fix-inaccessibl ... top-error/
Make sure pciide and msahci are both enabled to auto-start (starttype=0). Not sure if you need iaStorV.
Maybe then it will succeed to boot in one of the configurations...

See also: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=124999

[tpribors]

I tried the registry edits but that didn't help. I just tried to boot though and didn't go to safe mode first...

But I did finally get it to work.

The problem was the i7 chipset doesn't work with the i5 chipset driver. Like I said I had installed the chipset drivers but it didn't automatically switch and would also fail in safe mode.

So, o n the original 510 platform and boot device I went to the device manager and changed the AHCI controller driver to the Windows Microsoft AHCI driver. This driver is a little goofy and I remember it from the early SATA days (I wrote much of the SATA spec) working with them - it exposes both legacy task file and AHCI paths and workes with either AHCI or legacy mode. It's also not CPU dependent. From there I moved the drive to the 520 and it booted and started updating drivers. Took about an hour to get most of the yellow bangs. After a few reboots the AHCI driver switched to the i7 chipset driver.

I've since restored almost all of my original content and have 16GB more memory to be delivered today.

[tpribors]

The AHCI drivers from the chipset driver package was 12.8.10.1005 and another one slightly later. These drivers boot and run OK but the "safely remove hardware" option for the device bay is disabled. The driver 11.2.0.1006 restores that feature in the system tray.

However, the system, I'm pretty sure, could initiate a removal either by selecting the device in the safely remove hardware system tray OR by activating the short switch on the bottom. By moving it the removal process would be started. I can no longer get the system to initiate removal that way.

Is there some switch driver?