Thinkpad W500 ATI Card Failing to Start on Windows 7 64-Bit

Here's my setup:

  • Thinkpad W500
  • ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 Running the latest Win7 drivers from ATI v 8.632.1.2000 (Aug. 17th!)
  • Windows 7 Ultimate Edition Clean install.

In the device manager I'm seeing "The device cannot start. (Code 10)."


Solution 1:

UPDATE: Lenovo has finally released the updated Win 7 drivers to get switchable graphics back: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-73641 Bon apetit!

Here's the deal:

Yes, I had switchable graphics and even with the latest version from Lenovo, they don't work. They'll probably release another version in time for the official Win7 release. I had to go into the BIOS setup and disable integrated graphics and set the primary grpahics adapter to Discrete. The other options were Integrated and Switchable. It was defaulting to Switchable.

So, I can switch the graphics adapters through the BIOS in the meantime. Bit of a hassle but good to know there's a workaround.