Bought Studio Desktop 540 - need XP drivers

Thanks very much for this, Darrell. Worked a treat. So nice to see no yellow question marks in Device Manager at last! (and it also told me about a few other possible updates). Great to know about it.

You're welcome, Glad to be of service. :emotion-15:

Did You ever find a driver for Dell 1505 WLAN PCIe card (Sahara) - carrier with11n (Caesars) mini-Card and external antenna?

I looked Everywhere for it but it just doesent seem to work with windows xp pro sp3? Any help would be greatly appreicated!

I'm not sure which LAN card I have (my PC is a Dell Studio 540 bought a couple of weeks ago in UK) but the driver that worked for me was PCIE_Install_5708_1222, downloaded from the Realtek website in Taiwan. This is a zipped folder containing a setup.exe file. It took a while to find (I found the Realtek website difficult to navigate and cripplingly slow for downloads) but I eventually found it by searching for RTL8168. I believe it is a generic driver for the whole RTL81XX series. Once your PC is on line, you might like to try the Windows update 'custom' button (as recommended by someone else in this thread) to find all the other missing drivers for your PC. Worked well for me. Good luck! John

XP drivers?? Since the Studio desktop never shipped with XP, why would Dell provide drivers for XP?

I think it's more like why wouldn't they provide XP drivers. Manufactuers of other computers do as well as manufactuers of Mice, Keyboards, Monitors, Motherboards etc. Windows XP is far from dead, and it's still the most used OS out there today. I happen to love Vista, and no issues with it, but you can also add the fact that a lot of people are still hesitant to upgrade based on things they have heard in the past whether they are true or not is besides the point. After SP1 was released for Vista, any issues that remain are largely due to driver issues from other manufactuers and not the OS itself. Dell is in the market of knowing where the state of the public is on these issues. I have a home recording studio, and have always used 32 bit drivers. Now I have 64 bit Vista Home Premium, and Dell realizes that there are a lot of vendors out there that can't get their acts together and get 64 bit drivers released. If Dell expects customers to buy their products then they have to do their part in making sure that those of us who like to dual boot have drivers. Now...more often then not vendors release drivers for XP, Vista, Linux and even Mac in some cases. Since XP is still the most used OS, and Microsoft still supports it...all vendors should still be releasing drivers for it at this point and time.

I'be been following this thread for a while, and I'm wondering if there are any more updates to the situation.

I'm going back to XP Pro too. Unfortunately, Vista 64 is not compatible with lots of stuff and I don't want to replace all my NAS drives (can be read, but not controlled), some software that hasn't been updated, etc. It's back to XP Pro for me, but I want to make sure I can use everything.

If anyone has found new updates, I'd appreciate the links and I'll whatever I find if it's new.

I think for many of us we're going to be on XP for 1-2 years as Vista heads off into the sunset and 7 rears its potentially ugly head. As positive as the reports are, as with every MS OS ever released it might be wise to wait until SP1 comes out....:emotion-5:

All,

Even though XP is not supported by Dell on this model, I would still like you to send me in a private message the links to the XP drivers you are using.

We needed a PC fast at work so we went to Sam's and they had one of these (display model) for sale really cheap.  We snagged it up expecting to have XP compatibility.  I was really dissappointed to see no drivers, but even more worried that I wouldn't be able to get it to work so my boss would be ticked at me.  After spending some serious time Googling I stumbled on this thread and between here and a couple of other places I have confirmed working drivers for network, audio, and video.  My 540s has the ATI card in it.

Anyway, I've compiled these 3 drivers into a zip file and hosted it on my personal website for the good of mankind (since Dell is apparently too lazy to do so).

http://www.M450N.com/Downloads/Drivers/dell_studio_540s-drivers.zip

By the way, Vista doesn't like our accounting software, and the fact that it has home premium which doesn't work for businesses rendered it useless.  We had some extra XPs that we decided to use, since that's what 90% of our computers here are anyway.  Just another person saying that XP drivers should be included for all hardware until Windows 7 or something comes along to save us from this foul beast known as Vista.

Oh, another by the way, my website has limited bandwidth, so if a crapton of people download this then the bandwidth will run out and nobody else will get to download it.  So, if any of you guys have a file server setup, please do me and everyone else and mirror this bad boy!

47_MasoN_47 out

I've compiled these 3 drivers into a zip file and hosted it on my personal website for the good of mankind (since Dell is apparently too lazy to do so).

It's nothing at all to do with being "lazy".  They've simply made the decision not to offer support/drivers for Windows XP.

And it's not Dell's fault that you assumed you'd be able to find XP drivers for all the hardware in it?

Those who have XP installed on it, who are still looking for drivers, might want to consider downloading/installing DriverMax :emotion-55:

It's a FREE program, which will check the drivers currently installed, and check to see if there are any updated drivers available.

If it finds any, it provides links to them, and they can subsequently be downloaded/installed from within the program.

Once all the drivers have been updated, you can then use the program to backup all the installed drivers to a location of your choice, and use the file to reinstall them (through the program) if needs be.

I'd just like to thank everyone who contributed to this thread for saving me an awful lot of time and hassle!

Vista's been scrubbed, and XP is flying on this machine thanks to the links and drivers you've given me.

I've been trying to locate Windows XP drivers for the Studio 540 which I bought at Best Buy.  This PC came with a Conexant D850 PCI V.92 modem.  Obviously, a driver for it is critical to getting the computer online.  I thought I was all set when I found that the Dell Inspiron 530 can be bought with XP and the same modem board I have.  So, I downloaded the modem driver for the Inspiron, but when I tried to install it, I discovered that the computer didn't recognize that a modem is present. 

The modem works with Vista which is on the computer's original SATA drive.  However, I've installed a 2nd SATA drive in my Studio 540 for Windows XP, but that's where I have a problem.  I wonder if the hardware is too new to be recognized by the early version of XP Pro which I have.  I'm willing to buy a more recent copy of XP, but I'd like to be sure I'm not wasting $200.  I'd appreciate advice on what will be needed to have the modem recognized by XP.  Thanks for any help.

I found out elsewhere about "chipset" drivers.  Installing some of them, along with the modem driver, has allowed me to get the modem working.  Now that the modem is working, I believe I'll solve any other outstanding driver issues.

chairollin1,

I could successfully install a Broadcom wireless driver (for XP) on Studio Desktop 540 with the Dell 1505 WLAN PCIe card that I found on HP's web site and by following these steps:

1) Download sp41680.exe
2) Extract sp41680.exe using Winzip, 7zip, or some other utility that can extract it to a folder without running the embedded setup.
3) Open Device Manager.
4) Right click on the Broadcom card under Network adpaters and choose Update Driver.
5) In the Hardware Update Wizard, choose:
"No, not this time" -> "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" -> "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install." -> "Have Disk"
6) Browse to the folder of the extracted driver and choose bcmwl5.inf.
7) Choose Broadcom 4321AG 802.11a/b/g/draft-n Wi-Fi Adapter.
8) If you get the warning message, choose Yes to install the driver anyways.

BTW, you can get "sp41680.exe" from here:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=US&swItem=ob-66462-1&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=447687

I tested it on a 802.11g network and works reliably!

Hope that helps!

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone posting in this thread!!!

Cheers!

   Aueua!

Aueua

I, too, would like to thank you and everyone else who has posted here.  Although your response doesn't directly apply in my situation (because I'm not in a wireless environment), other comments from the Dell Community have been very helpful.  I did learn enough to find and install everything needed to get all components, including the modem, working.

I also managed to upgrade XP Pro.  And, it cost me only $10 to buy SP3 directly from a Microsoft website.  The only complication was that I had to download SP1 from Microsoft before I could load SP3.  Unfortunately I didn't know where to buy SP1 on a CD.  I'd prefer that in case I would need to reinstall XP for any reason, since downloading via dialup is a real drag.

Anyway, I think this ordeal is almost over.  Thanks to all.  :emotion-11: