Inspiron 1525 Windows XP Upgrade Instructions / Works for most Dell Products

Question

Procedure to upgrade Dell Inspiron 1525 to Windows XP. Materials Needed: Windows XP Install CD (Home, Professional, Media Center)   Drivers Downloaded from:   a) Dell Support Site: b) Device Driver Manufacturer's site (have to find each individual one).   Just download the drivers for the Inspiron 1520:   There are basically 2 ways to do this, the ‘easy way’ which is actually Dell’s way of doing it at the factory to configure machines as an Inspiron 1520 with XP, or the 'hard' way which gives you considerably better hard drive performance. Since I am using a 200gb 7,200 RPM drive, I went for the 'hard' way.   Easy Method: Use the SATA drive in 'compatibility' mode by switching it via BIOS.   1. Go into BIOS by holding down F2 immediately after turning the power on. 2. Scroll down to Onboard Devices, expand it, select SATA Drive 3. Change the SATA setting from what it is (AHCI to ATA), exit to BIOS main menu 4. Go to Boot Order and make sure CD-ROM is specified as a boot device 5. Esc, save BIOS settings. 6. Put Windows XP disk in CD ROM 7. Restart and hit key when it ask you to boot from CD-ROM 8. Install Windows XP normally, then add drivers (follow directions below).     Hard Method: Use SATA drive in AHCI mode.   Repeat above actions except select AHCI rather than ATA. On a separate machine, you have to follow these directions using nlite to create a Windows XP Boot disk with the AHCI drivers in it:   '2. Dowload all XP drivers from the Dell site by entering your product code or selecting the model. Save them on some external storage. Another roadblock, Inspiron has a SATA hdd and the XP setup will not recognize the hdd, there are two options: disable AHCI and Flash cache from BIOS and enable ATA mode, XP will now recognize the hdd but this will probably give lower performance and if you switch to AHCI in the future windows will crash. Better option is to slipstream AHCI drivers into XP setup, for this we will use a tool called nlite (nLite - Deployment Tool for the bootable Unattended Windows installation please chk here for detailed instructions and screenshots) and the intel matrix storage manager drivers from the dell site. a. copy all files from the xp cd to a folder on your computer, extract the intel sata drivers to another folderb. click next>next, task selection window will come up, choose integrate drivers and create a bootable iso (you may also want to customize and tweak the installation by enabling other buttons)c. click next, on the integrate drivers dialog select insert, give the location of the extracted ahci drivers, the selected drivers will be shown in the windowd. click next until you come to the create bootable iso window, it is recommended though not necessary to give the same label as your xp original cde. done. Test it out by booting off it and verifying whether it recognizes the hdd in ahci bios mode'   http://www.techenclave.com/laptops/clean-xp-install-on-dell-inspiron-106758.html   Sources for Drivers:   Basically, get the drivers from the Dell Support site for the Inspiron 1520:   http://www.notebooks-drivers.com/dell-laptop/how-to-install-windows-xp-on-dell-inspiron-1525-or-downgrading-vista.html   The trick is to install the wireless card utility from Dell, and from that point onwards, you can download the drivers straight to the new machine.   There are a few drivers which are on the website for the 1525 as Vista drivers but will work better than the 1520 drivers, notably the touchpad and the Dell QuickSet Utility.   If you know what you are doing, the elapsed time to do this upgrade is about 3 hours. Not bad, considering if Dell sent you an upgrade disk (which they wouldn’t), it still takes about 2 hours.   A bonus is you don't get any of the Dell installed software that you don't want, like their 'Dell Media Experience' Player or the nearly useless Symantec Antivirus that slows your machine down drastically.   I managed to get every one of my devices to work, except I do not have Dell Media Experience Installed.   Conceivably, I could have imaged my brand new drive from the Vista Backup CD, then put XP onto the drive and kludged it to work --- but why bother?   Media Player 11 plays DVDs and CDs just as well.          For those who care, do not expect Dell to support your XP machine.  If you think you have a hardware fault, you have to prove it with Vista on the machine.     The best way to get around this is to do the XP install on a brand new Hard Drive, and keep the old drive as an 'external' by buying a $15 casing to put it in.   That way, if you need Vista back, it can be done in 1 minute by just swapping drives.

viju85 · Answer

Hi,

I did the easy way as you mentioned to install XP onto my dell 1525 laptop. But i have just one issue. The video driver (chipset) is not installed properly or i really dont know what the issue is. When i play a song on my WMP, i see the visualization at a much slower frames per second. I installed the intel graphics card driver x3100 from the website you had mentioned. Everything else works great. But the display is not smooth. I am able to see that there is some video driver issue.

Please help me out in this as the laptop is brand new.

Thanks,

Vijay.C

Gear1 · Answer

OK, I do not know what your symptoms are, can you tell me exactly how you are playing the video (what player) what problems, etc.

Also give me the exact model number or the service tag or the exact configuration of your machine.

I am having a problem with a Kworld USB Hybrid TV card as well.

But that is the model VS ATSC 330U that is not certified for Vista and I suspect an incompatibility with the HDMI system and the drivers.

I did not install MediaDirect.

I installed a PowerDVD DVD Player that runs in XP and it works perfectly playing movies.

viju85 · Answer

Well, I am playing a song in the Windows Media Player and when i turn on the visualization effects. I see the visualization occuring at a lesser frames per second than it is supposed to.

My configuration is :

223-3379
1 Intel® Core 2 Duo T7250 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
313-5773
1 Jet Black
311-8081
1 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
320-6053
1 High Resolution, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch display (1440x900)
320-6059
1 Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
341-5457
1 Size: 320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
420-5769
420-5924
420-6436
420-6556
420-7580
420-7622
420-7905
463-2282
1 Genuine Windows Vista ® Home Premium Edition
430-2651
1 Integrated 10/100 Network Card
313-5793
1 Integrated Modem
420-7468
1 Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 8.1
313-5791
420-8183
1 CD / DVD Writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
313-4783
1 High Definition Audio 2.0
430-2652
1 Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini-Card
313-5785
412-0968
420-7778
1 Integrated 2.0M Pixel Webcam
420-8051
1 Microsoft Works
420-7702
1 Trend Micro Internet Security 15-months
312-0617
1 56Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
412-0360
950-3337
950-9797
960-2780
984-1930
989-3867
1 1Yr In-Home Service, Parts + Labor,24x7 Phone Support
412-0933
412-0934
412-0935
1 6 Months Risk-Free Trial AOL Advantage Internet Access
310-8319
1 Intel® Core 2 Duo Processor
310-8628
1 Windows Vista Premium
420-7091
420-7092
987-4817
988-0099
1 Included 3 GB DataSafe Online Backup for 1Yr

but instead of Vista, i installed Windows XP.

is the driver in the location:http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R173064&SystemID=INS_PNT_PM_1520&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=12618&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=2&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=6&fileid=235302

alright for windows xp for dell 1525 inspiron?

Thanks,

Vijay.C

Gear1 · Answer

There is nothing unusual about your hardware.

Now go to System / Hardware / Device Drivers and tell me if there is any devices not working properly?

If not, try this trick:

delete a bunch of them, and let Windows automatically reinstall it... sometimes that clears it up.

Where did you get your drivers from?

Gear1 · Answer

Problem with Kworld VS ATSC 330U Hybrid HDTV Analog TV USB adaptor card running Totalmedia Software.

If anyone managed to get this to work, please let me know.

I installed the latest KWorld drivers from their website, but the pictures show up as 3 separate pictures overlaid as if there is a problem with the horizontal sync.

My installation will play DVDs fine with the PowerDVD player (not the MediaDirect Dell /Cybermedia player).

I tested the KWorld TV adaptor on another Desktop and it works fine.

Is there something in the HDMI driver or subsystem that interferes with this?

There is a later version of this product out that is Vista Compatible... is that what I need?

Gear1 · Answer

DanApril 24th, 2008 01:09     And for those who are having problems with wireless, you need to make sure you get the correct drivers. There is the Dell card and the Intel card. Get the correct drivers.     Also, I was fairly easily able to use the standard XP SP2 CD along with a USB floppy drive and the Intel SATA drivers. Just press F6 (or is it F2, can’t remember) when prompted, just after the blue screen appears. Then select the non-RAID driver for the ICH8.     Oh, and if you want Media Direct, INSTALL IT FIRST with the disc that came with the 1525!!! I read somewhere that if you do not do this, you might screw up your boot sector if you accidentally press the little house button when the computer is powered up. It will try to launch the Media Direct app and fail, sometimes with disaterous results, according to reports. It’s only 3GB, and might be useful, so you may as well do it.     One last thing. Once you install an OS from a CD or DVD as opposed to the built-in hard drive recovery partition, you will never be able to use that partition again, so you may as well delete it when installing the OS. You wil regain 10GB of HD space and the 1525 ships with a Vista recovery DVD, although you need to reinstall all the drivers from the drivers disc that also came with the 1525. Probably a cleaner way of doing it anyway since you don’t have to reinstall all the MichaelDellware that Dell loads up.     Good luck. It isn’t *that* easy to do this, but if you follow the instructions on this page (with my and others’ caveats) you should be OK.

Gear1 · Answer

As of July 8, 2008,

Dell has put on its site Windows XP drivers for Inspiron 1525 on the support page.

Use this link:

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?os=WW1&osl=EN&catid=-1&impid=-1&servicetag=&SystemID=INS_PNT_PM_1525&hidos=BIOSA&hidlang=en

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