I always see many used T61 or T61p units for sale on eBay with Win7 installed, yet I know that Win7 from Lenovo was only first available on some very late Oct/Nov 2009 T500/W500 units (which came with Win7 Pro preloads, yet most on eBay are Win7 Ultimate).

Anyway, I found a T61p that I purchased at a decent price for the hardware only even though it came with Win7. My intent is to use it as a spare box for my other identical WinXP SP3 T61p so I can quickly swap-in my WinXP Pro HDD in an emergency, something that works just fine .... I'm actaully typing on the newly purchased unit using WinXP Pro SP3. The newly purchased unit still has the Lenovo original onsite warranty for another year, but as mentioned earlier, it came with what looks to be a Lenovo version of Win7 with all the Lenovo wallpapers, Enhanced Experience features, etc (even the hidden service partition is also Win7).

The unit had recent Lenovo Onsite warranty service (prior to my purchase) to replace the mainboard for the Nvidia GPU issue (MIGR-75087), plus a new LCD screen, KB and fan. A very nice hardware twin for my other T61p and it's working great.

Note that I only only experimented with Win7 for a short time without logging into any of my banking and other password websites and it seemed to work fine, including maintaining activation when I updated it to Win7 SP2 from Win7 SP1 and it reports the copy of Win7 to be legit (even using MGADiag.exe).

All this has me confused and I wonder about the Win7 install (like maybe the seller possibly used actual W500 Lenovo Win7 recovery discs to get the Lenovo stuff)? However, with a Vista Business COA sticker on the bottom, I know it is not legal or legitimate in the long run. I'm just curious how the seller could have made it look exactly like a Win7 factory pre-load on a T61p (including the hidden Win7 service partition, which really has my head scratching).

Anyway, I only used and tested it long enough with Win7 to determine that I still prefer my beloved WinXP Pro SP3, plus I did not feel comfortable about the Win7 install possibly having malware, even though I thorougly scanned it with 6 or 7 well regarded malware and virus detection programs (including all its files without regard to any file size limits, including root scans for rootkits). All scans came back clean, but I'm still not comfortable, plus I don't like Win7 anyway and thus not using it.

Once again, what I do not understand is how sellers can make Win7 installs on older thinkPads look exactly like they were preinstalled? Note that the W500 is nearly the same as the T61p except for the ATI graphics and the faster RAM speed. In fact, I've actually swapped my T61p WinXP HDD into a W500 after setting the graphics to standard VGA and later downloading the ATI drivers for the W500 from System Update ..... that is how close the T61p and W500 spec out (but not the W510 or W520).

Any thoughts about these Win7 machines on older ThinkPads would be appreciated .... thanks.

In a pinch, I have been able to use some factory restore disks on systems which they were not originally designed for, but are close enough in hardware. As you yourself have seen, moving a hard drive from one system to another very similar system can be done. Perhaps this is the case here with a W7 set for a recent system being used on the T61p.

My philosophy is never to keep an OS as received from eBay. I'll wipe it and (re)install the OS from a known, clean set and do all of the MS updates. That way I know for sure that there's no embedded keylogger or malware. Until I know the system is clean, I keep it off my network; wired or wireless. For example, I just received a wireless X22 for parts and it still has an operable WinXP installation, along with what appears to be personal files and photos. I'll be contacting the seller and asking if they want any of them before wiping the disk.

Thanks ..... I certainly agree about permanently quarantining any pre-loaded OS of a used system .... I only use one PC (behind a router) and thus had no network to contaminate so I had good hands-on opportunity to convinced myself that Win7 is not for me while comparing it on identical hardware .... I even got the same 3DMark06 benchmark scores with Win7 (32-bit) as my WinXP!

Microsoft offers free Win7 Ultimate to many university students. They can keep it after they graduate. 1 copy per student. I don't know if they can sell the PC with it under their agreement - probably not. I suspect that this is much of what you are seeing.

Times have sure changed ..... When I was getting my engineering degree, the university policy was slide rules only .... period. Only as a senior in 1973, did my school first allow the use of those new devices called hand calculators (like the vintage HP35 or HP45 at around $400 each in 1973 dollars .... that's about $2000.00 in today's dollars, so many of us still used slide rules as seniors).

Those devices did not come with a COA ..... just a warning label that too much use can lead to dependancy and possible "lame brain" symptom

No Win7 COA, not legal I'm afraid

(Unless the seller has put a retail version on an has included that with the sale)

Now window8 is available too, so be careful you don't have a keylogger on your computer before you start your work.

But would not an overnight thorough deep scan of all files regardless of size and type with a top-notch fully updated AV Spyware/Malware Suite plus additional deep scans using a couple of other highly rated separate Spyware/Malware detectors find most all keyloggers?