Today I installed Windows 7 on my Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC and here is how it went:
First of all, this PC didn't have a CD drive and my external CD drive was not working. So I decided to create a bootable USB drive to install Windows 7, thanks to the innumerable and affordable 8GB USB pen drives available now:-). I created the bootable drive as per the instructions listed in http://www.bwana.org/2009/01/11/how-to-install-windows-7-beta-from-a-usb-drive-to-an-hp-mini-1000-without-vista/. But whenever I booted my Thinkpad with the new USB drive, it said "Missing Operating System". After some hunting around, I found that the problem was due to a missing switch "/mbr" switch in invoking bootsect.exe. So I ran the following command:
bootsect.exe /nt60 G: /mbr
With this command, the USB was made bootable and the installation started. And guess what, the installation completed in just 20 minutes on my 40 GB 4200 RPM hard disk. Wow!! Too good, huh?
After the installation, I ran the Windows Update to update the drivers for network card, audio card etc. The display driver was still not installed, so I installed the XP-compatible driver from Intel support site. Now the system is up and running.
Yes, it was a pleasant experience.
