On Wednesday, 4 March 2020 11:21:19 UTC, T i m wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2020 03:04:21 -0800 (PST), polygonum_on_google
wrote:

snip

A std W10 install disk would probably be fine on that and the W10
Media Creation Tool and a 4G USB stick is all you need.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/...allation-media

You can use the tool to create the image on another W7+ PC (you just
need to tell it that's what you are doing) and away you go.

snip

Having spoken with Lenovo support, they advise that at least on some models, you should not use the default Microsoft installer - but should download a version from Lenovo. I have no idea what specific differences there are - but they did say that installing standard and then applying Lenovo updates does NOT have the same effect. (Could have been utter BS. But they were adamant.)

If such a thing exists then I agree, it's probably worth going that
route.

That said, I've installed the std MS W10 on a few Thinkpads and they
have all worked fine. This makes sense in that most components and
parts in most laptops / PC's are fairly generic, apart from the BIOS
or when they have 'locked parts in' etc (like WiFi cards).

I wonder if it's because they want you to install their spyware. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

We did see some issues that seemed to resolve by rebuilding from their versions. (Sorry, can't remember the details.) On the basis that you probably install some Lenovo drivers anwyway, they could probably shove their spyware in at that stage!