Question about the Intel driver for the IDE controller

Question

Greetings to all:
Lenovo has recently published another driver for the IDE controller and I wonder how many of you that have a T60, T60p, T61 and T61p have been able to actually install it.
My controller device is:
Intel(R) 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller - 27C4,
both in XP-SP3 as in Vista SP1, 32bits versions ( see bellow details of my T60p, which has 2 hard drives)
Interestingly enough the driver on each is v:7.0.0.1020 (2005/05/23) for XP and v:6.0.6001.1800 (2006/06/21) for Vista-B. They are working well as far as I see, but now and several times before, I have tried to update them but they do not install. The message is that I have already the  best driver. I noticed that the label of the controller is not quite exactly spell out in the instruction text file or the .inf, and the one that comes close, is that of the so call ICH7-M family.
Why is this? There are at least 7 versions discussed in the history.  It it perhaps because the one for the ICH7-M family is always the same? System update does not install them either.
Forgive my curiosity but why bother publishing if they can not be installed? Or perhaps somebody has. This is not logical.
Cheers.
Rolando E Creagh, MD. FACS. USA. T61p, 64608WU, Dual Core Centrino 2.6 GHz, T9500, 8GB RAM, Intel TurboMem 4GB (working). HDD 0: 1.0TB 7.4K rpm AF w/ W-7 Ultimate SP1 64b (2nd clean install). HDD 1: 0.5TB 10K rpm w/ W-7 Ultimate SP1 64b (cloned). HDD 2:1TB 7.4K rpm AF w/W-7 SP1 64b (1rst clean install). HDD 3:250GB, Vista-B-SP2 clean install, HDD 4:100GB, XP-SP3, factory install. HDD 5:1.5TB, 5K rpm, AF, DATA. 2504-10U Mini-Dock
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Answer 1

For those who think I can not follow directions.
First, the driver for the Intel IDE device in a T60p is obviously from Intel. But there are two ways to get it fulfilled.
Lenovo publish the Intel drivers with perhaps there own twists, refinements and in the absence of clear contrary information, that they are perhaps more fine tuned to the machine. It uses the following inf files to have them install: iaahci.inf and iastor.inf. They are revised whenever Lenovo fell is necessary and eventually published.
I must assume they are in use if you have a Vista system originally installed by Lenovo and that is why those inf are the ones you find in the updates.
Mi T60p was purchased 2 years ago with XP-Pro, just before the release of Vista, with the understanding of a free upgrade to Vista-B shall be send when finally released. An Indeed they keep their word and send me a Lenovo branded full version of MS Vista-Business, some 4 months latter (not an image). Rather than upgrade XP-Pro and to avoid the time in limbo and work interruption of the Vista less desirable over XP, I did a successful clean install into a new hard drive, followed by a Lenovo system update, which changed many drivers and installed programs, etc. But as you might imagine, the Intel IDE-SATA driver installed is the one provided by MS (v:6.0.6001.1800 of 2006/06/21), (which uses a different installation file mshdc.inf) and, until proven otherwise, I must assume more generic, since it is for any and all machines, following the standard of the hard drive SATA type.
Talking to Lenovo support for nearly 1 1/2 hours last week, was at least not good for my blood pressure, while attempting to explain the issue and refuting a collections of nonsense from the support tech. Eventually a supervisor assure me that the driver was the same and that it has not change for a long time, as it is the same even for XP. Well, why bother with updates if that is the case? But I see that there are others IDE drivers species for animals such as Dell, or HP, etc. Thus you must accept that there is a strong case for a Lenovo modified Intel driver and thus the updates. Tech support could not answer such question, nor they were able to install version 8.6.0.1007 (date 2008/12/04) of the driver.
I fell the machine is working well, but have nothing to compare with (MS Experience Index 4.3). And as usually happened, sometimes you do not appreciate how sick you are, until you get cure. The question remains about the driver been generic and sufficient or specific and optimal.
Cheers and happy holidays.
Rolando E Creagh, MD. FACS. USA. T61p, 64608WU, Dual Core Centrino 2.6 GHz, T9500, 8GB RAM, Intel TurboMem 4GB (working). HDD 0: 1.0TB 7.4K rpm AF w/ W-7 Ultimate SP1 64b (2nd clean install). HDD 1: 0.5TB 10K rpm w/ W-7 Ultimate SP1 64b (cloned). HDD 2:1TB 7.4K rpm AF w/W-7 SP1 64b (1rst clean install). HDD 3:250GB, Vista-B-SP2 clean install, HDD 4:100GB, XP-SP3, factory install. HDD 5:1.5TB, 5K rpm, AF, DATA. 2504-10U Mini-Dock