Installing Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 to the Lenovo ThinkPad T410

A friend of mine was having some issues with his R2 install.  He was trying to get the Ethernet and wireless drivers to work on the Lenovo ThinkPad T410.  The T410 and W510 are pretty similar so I dropped a test hard drive into my T410 and ran some tests.

First things first.  Make sure you’ve updated your BIOS to v1.35.  This bios is located at https://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-74268.  You’ll notice I’m pointing you to the article for the Windows installer.  It appears Lenovo has finally nailed down how to update the BIOS correctly from a x64 version of Windows.  I have updated my W510, T410 and T410s using the various installers as opposed to downloading the .ISO images they supply and booting from a burned CD.

Next, take a look at the Core Driver Installs section of my blog post at https://blogs.technet.com/b/keithcombs/archive/2011/02/21/installing-windows-server-2008-r2-sp1-on-a-thinkpad-w510.aspx.  I just did some quick testing so I have not tested the NVIDIA video driver yet.  The wired and wireless cards are working per the instructions there.  Follow them pretty precisely and you shouldn’t have any issues.  I will do more testing this week on the T410 and if I spot any deviations from the W510, I will come back and mention them here.  Enjoy.