Rebuilding Latitude D810 - Which Drivers should I install

Ok, can I begin by asking... have you been told lately that you're the BEST!!!!! :emotion-1: 

Your explanations and instructions are truely on point and I could not have come this far without you and them!

Now, for where I'm at... I unclicked the 'Effects' box, installed .NET 4 and then installed the X300/600 Driver - I realised when I downloaded it that on the first install I downloaded the wrong one, so this time I got it right!

Unfortunately after the first restart of the laptop I went to change the screen resolution and got a blue screen with the following technical info:

*** STOP: 0X000000EA (0X893A1DA8, 0X8A53B750, 0XB9D40CB4, 0X00000001)

 ati2dvag

Beginning dump of physical memory

I shutdown, left for 5 minutes and restarted the laptop.  On the second attempt I was able to change the screen resolution with no blue screen.  Do you think all is OK or do I need to do anything else to stabilise the system?

Oh, also just realised that the text for icons on my desktop is appearing with a blue box behind them - can I remove the blue or is this normal?

Thanks again!

I've now loaded .NET 2.0, .NET 2.0 SP2 and .NET 3.5 SP1 and the laptop is slower than before! 

Prior to reading your reply above I installed the following:

1. Office 2003 with Business Contact Manager
2. InterVideo WinDVD
3. Power DVD
4. Sonic RecordNow
5. (I uninstalled Firefox as it was not responding at all)
6. Adobe Reader
7. (Adobe Flash Player did not install)
8. Adobe Air
9. Adobe Shockwave Player
10. Epson Print and Scan Drivers
11. Java

I then installed .NET 2.0, .NET 2.0 SP2 and .NET 3.5 SP1.  In the 'ATI Options' tab there is a check box for 'WMV Acceleration', the only mention of the hardware acceleration was on the 'Troubleshooting' tab and it simply has a moving scale from 'None' - 'Full' and is currently on 'Full'.  I didn't make any changes there yet.

It takes up to 7 minutes for the laptop to start up - this is from the time I power on to all the icons on the desktop and task bar loading.  I'm not crazy in thinking this is way too long?  I rebuilt a PC last year and it starts up in less than a minute with ESet Security installed (ESet is also installed on the laptop).  Internet Explorer is not responding, when it does it's extremely slow - slower than prior to installing .NET 2.0 and above.

Windows Update and Microsoft update are not showing any additional updates when I carry out a check.

What to do next is the question?  Also, once everything is ok how do I create an image of the system?

Ok, so I've now installed a total of 60 High Priority Microsoft Updates and the system and Internet Explorer are still slow.  It's still taking 5-7 minutes for the laptop to start up and desktop to fully load.

I still can't install Adobe Flash Player and I gave up on reinstalling Firefox as it was taking too long to extract the files during the initial stage of setup.

What else can I do?

Thanks!

Ok, let me begin by saying I think I overworked the laptop with all of the updates and additional software... is that possible!??!?!!!

Today, after two days of rest (!), I have a laptop that is in good working order... finally!!!!!!

The laptop has 2GB of RAM and has the following installed:

 

Adobe Air

Adobe flash Player 10 ActiveX

Adobe Reader X

Adobe shockwave Player 11.5

ALPS Touch Pad Driver

ATI Control Panel

ATI display Driver

Bluetooth Stack for Windows by Toshiba

Bluetooth HID Switch Service

Broadcom Gigabit Intergrated Controller

C-Major-Audio

Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system

Conexant D110 MDC V.9x Modem

Epson Printer Software

Epson Scan

ESet Smart Security

Hotfix 2055 for SQL Server 2000 ENU (KB9600852

Intel(R) PROSet/Wireless Software

InterVideo WinDVD

Java ™ 6 Update 24

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 2

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 P1

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Extended

Microsoft Compression Client Pack 1.0 for Windows XP

Microsoft Office Live Add-in 1.3

Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector

Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003

Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MICROSOFTSMLBIZ)

Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime Native v1.0 (x86)

Microsoft Sync Framework Services Native v1.0 (x86)

Microsoft User-Mode Driver Framework Feature Pack 1.0

Mozilla Firefox (3.6.13)

PowerDVD 5.1

Quickset

Sonic DLA

Sonic RecordNow! Plus

Sonic Update Manager

Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515/xx12 drivers

WD Align – Powered by Acronis

Windows Internet Explorer 8

Windows Live Essentials

 

As you can see from the list above, the 'program spec' has grown since the last list I posted!  I also managed to install Flash (I averted the Adobe Download Manager which seemed to be the problem and used the .exe installer!) and Firefox.

 

Now the only thing left to do is create an image of the system... and you guessed it... hopefully my final question - how do I do that? :emotion-1:

SQL Server?  You're running SQL Server?  That will consume all available memory.  Once it grabs memory, it doesn't let go.  That will really slow down your system.

What you need to do is load the management tools and restrict how much memory SQL can grab.  Open the Management Studio, right-click on the server and click on Properties.  Poke around the tabs and look for something that says "Use all available memory".  Turn that down to only use a part of memory.  Not knowing what you're doing with it, I can't suggest how much memory to allocate.

You're PC is maxed out at 2Gb of memory.  That's all the D-810 will handle.  It's enough to run Microsoft Office but loading up the server software will slow down the machine.  If you have to do it, you'll need to make sure you tune the software settings to keep things from gobbling up the machine.  If you don't need SQL, stop the service.

To make an image, download a copy of Hiren's boot CD here, burn it as an image file and use one of the image backup tools on the CD.  What you use depends on where you can backup the machine.  If you have a backup disk, put it there.  If there's another machine on the network with lots of free storage, backup to a shared folder on that machine.

I didn't deliberately install SQL Server, it must have installed as one of the Windows Updates or programs I installed. 

Can I get rid of it altogether or do you think something like the Outlook Business Contact Manager requires it - I don't need to use this?  When I looked at the list of installed programs I created before the rebuild, SQL Server was on there too.  When you say "stop the service" do you mean I should 'uninstall' from the 'Add or Rremove Programs' list or is there something else I need to do?  Should I go to the 'Add or Remove Programs' list to open the Management Studio?

The laptop is pretty much used for day-to-day office functions within an independent music company.  I do have to run a couple of databases for music royalty purposes but I'm not sure if I need the SQL Server for these - I previously installed the organisations software and that was it.  I do also send multiple emails with music files that can be up to 10MB.

Thanks for the Hiren's boot CD for creating an image of the system - should I do this before restoring all of my backed up data to the laptop (My Documents etc.)?

OK, I thought you were doing some kind of development with SQL server.  Since you're not, I'd agree it got installed with something else you installed.  In that case, don't touch it.  Don't worry about stopping the service or the management studio either.

If you can keep your documents and files separate from your operating system and installed programs, make an image of the system without those files.  It will be smaller.  If you want to backup everything on one backup, restore the files and then create the image.  It will be big but you'll only have to restore one thing.