Windows 10 on W510: What works and what doesn't?

[Annorax]

Hi guys,

I might soon be purchasing a used W510 and am debating whether to freshly install Windows 7 on it or Windows 10 (I have licenses for both via MSDN). I know that Windows 7 is officially supported while Windows 10 is not.

Ideally I would like to install Windows 10 but if things like the Fn hotkeys, etc... won't work on it due to no drivers, I don't want to waste a license on it and would rather then just install Windows 7. Googling around and looking on this forum seems to give mixed results - some say it works great and some say nothing works without drivers.

Now that Windows 10 has been out for a while, can someone please share recent experiences with using Windows 10 on a W510? I would think things like Wifi and Bluetooth would work but the Fn hotkeys, volume buttons, and on screen display are important for me too.

[Thinkpad4by3]

I personally don't have a W510 but I can tell you that I have used w10 on an x61s and had absolutely no problems. If w10 supports an x61s, I don't see any reason your w510 would have any problem. Even spying works! Personally I would go for Windows 7 anyway.

Sent from my E6553 using Tapatalk

[w0qj]

We don't have the W510, but we do have a working unit of T410.

We did successfully upgrade T410 Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro to secure our future upgrade path.

Win10 Pro worked flawlessly with our T410, even works with our GPU with no problems.
(We expected GPU problems with Win10, but surprise! No problems!)

[bit_twiddler]

I have one (it is my Windows machine) and everything seems to work fine
with W10. The only problem is that W10 is not W7.

[MikalE]

I bought a T510 pre-loaded with Win 10 as a learning tool for my business. The only thing that wasn't working was the fingerprint reader.

The drivers were loaded for the device but there was no GUI or program to enter the prints. It took around a week for me to find the correct program to get this up and running.

The last post I made in the thread. Scroll to the bottom and follow the link.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=121708

[Annorax]

So I went ahead and installed Windows 10 on the W510 and everything works for the most part - except bluetooth. I can't pair any devices nor do I see any option to turn bluetooth on or off.

Any ideas? Seems like I'm missing a driver.

[TankPad]

So I went ahead and installed Windows 10 on the W510 and everything works for the most part - except bluetooth. I can't pair any devices nor do I see any option to turn bluetooth on or off.

Any ideas? Seems like I'm missing a driver.

Does Bluetooth show up in the Device Manager even?

[Annorax]

No, I can't see it in the device manager. I know this laptop has Bluetooth as when it was running Windows 7, I could use it just fine. I've been trying to find a Windows 10 driver but with no luck.

I've made sure that the Bluetooth service is enabled. When I run the Windows 10 troubleshooter, it tells me the device doesn't have Bluetooth, but I know that's not true.

[TankPad]

If you select "Show hidden devices" does it show then, or are there at least any unknown devices listed?

[Annorax]

No, it's not showing as a hidden device - nor do I see anything unknown in the list.

In Windows 7, I would press Fn+F5 to open the Wireless menu and I could enable and disable it there - but in Windows 10 I haven't been able to get the Fn keys to work so I can't bring that menu up.

I think I need a Lenovo specific driver (not sure why the Windows 10 one isn't working) but I can't find one for the W510 and Windows 10. Do you know where I might be able to find one?

[Annorax]

OK - so I've managed to solve the problem. Here is what I did:

The story with this computer is that it originally came with Windows 7. I purchased it from a company but had to provide my own Windows license. I chose Windows 10, swapped the hard drives, and did a fresh install. On Windows 7, everything worked, most importantly the Fn+F5 combination to enable/disable wifi and bluetooth. Bluetooth was originally disabled and when I went to Windows 10, the key combination to enable it doesn't work (despite me installing many drivers and such).

Apparently, that Fn+F5 combination disables Bluetooth at a hardware level and since the key combination doesn't work in Windows 10, I couldn't turn it back on. What I had to do was to swap the hard drive back to Windows 7, enable Bluetooth, then put the Windows 10 hard drive back in. With this done, Bluetooth is working fine now in Windows 10.

Would there have been a way to re-enable Bluetooth without that key combination? Without Windows 7, I'm not sure if that would have been possible. Just an FYI to anyone using these old laptops with Windows 10 - make sure all the wireless adapters are enabled before upgrading.

[TankPad]

lol, That does indeed seem a trivial one. I wonder could it be toggled from the windows notification pane maybe? There's gotta be a simpler way, eh.

[Annorax]

Trust me, I looked everywhere in Windows and even in the BIOS. There was nothing in the BIOS and it was as if to Windows 10 it did not exist. I installed multiple drivers for both Bluetooth and the Fn keys but nothing worked. The only option was to temporarily go back to Windows 7, which is a big overkill just to enable Bluetooth but unfortunately I couldn't find any other way.

[IrishMASMS]

Hello @Annorax - I see it has been a couple of years, but I posted about my experiences with Win10 & 11 on my W510: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=137065&p=881602#p881602

I have installed Win10 and 11 on a few ThinkPads, and getting drivers will be problematic. I have had good success with installing 64 bit drivers intended for older versions of Windows (say Win10 or even Win7) with success (though they may get flagged with the Windows Security memory protection). I have this issue with my T430s (which is working great as a daily driver on Win11 but has that memory protection flagged) and the W500 & T400's I was using on my workbench but are now posted for sale.

Do not bother using the Lenovo endpoint scanning tool to find drivers, it has rarely helped. Also the "similar" tool from Intel is even worse trash - if the device is EoL it will not find the driver. And if either tool detects you having a more recent operating system, the tool is not smart enough to reach pack and grab a driver that would work but intended for a older windows version.

If you are unable to find the drivers, hopefully you know the trick about searching with the "device instance path" in device manager to find suitable drivers; and getting them from legit sites. If questionable, upload the files to Virustotal to determine how safe they are.

Note with the memory protection issue(s), typically Intel is the culprit and they have been EoL everything they can so to no longer support. Few drivers for their video chips have updated drivers, and will fail the memory protection capability checks. Thankfully I have access to a decent endpoint protection capability to help negate this risk of not having memory protection in place - hopefully you have the same.

HTH!