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Can Windows 7 64-bit be installed on a Dell XPS 420?
Our XPS 420 is running Vista Home Premium 32-bit and we would like to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit in anticipation of coming Adobe software releases. I understand that I will have to obtain the Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Edition for XP or Vista users and then do a clean install (custom installation).
I have seen conflicting contributions in this forum regarding the Windows 7 compatibility of the XPS 420 and it is not listed as being compatible with Windows 7 on the Dell Support website (how come?). I get the impression that the critical component in my 1 ½ half year old Dell-UK XPS 420, may be the Serial ATA C-drive (Intel Matrix Storage Manager v7.6.1.1001 ICH9R, one RAID Volume RAID0(Stripe) with two physical disks). The XPS 420 with BIOS Revision A07 installed.
What problems am I likely to encounter when doing a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit?
Any step-by-step guidelines to follow?
Would a Windows 7 installation affect my XPS Premium Warranty Support?
mombodog
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February 1st, 2010 12:00
You need to remove your service tag from your post, it is a violation of the Terms Of Use on the forums.
It will not affect the hardware warranty, but you will no longer get warranty support for the new OS.
I would run the W7 upgrade advisor, see what it turns up
http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx
If Dell does not support it on that hardware, you are on your own, sorry, I did not find any guides searching these forums, sorry.
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JensD
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February 2nd, 2010 12:00
Thank you for replying to my confusing post. First of all, sorry for mentioning the tag and I have removed it now. I also removed the garbage information in the beginning. Being new to this forum I didn’t realise then that I could edit an entry after posting it so I therefore posted the questions once more. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to merge the two entries.
I understand from your kind reply and from the reply I got for my other posting that the hardware warranty still would be valid after upgrading to W7. However, as W7 is not supported on the XPS 420 I would be on my own with any software question. The XPS 430 is in Dell’s Tested for Windows 7 Functionality list but that doesn't help me.
Running the W7 upgrade advisor on my XPS 420 only shows a few ‘problems’ easy to resolve.
Q1: Except for software applications that I would need to reinstall anyhow, does the W7 upgrade advisor list contain all software/devices that I need to worry about?
Q2: If so, I guess I should obtain W7 64-bit versions for all entries in the list before embarking on the upgrade. Would anybody have made such a collection already?
mombodog
12.7K Posts
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February 2nd, 2010 13:00
1. Only those present in the system at the time the Upgrade advisor was run, also it does not foresee all potential problems.
2. W7 will most likely have all the drivers for hardware, you can check after it is installed by going to device manager, to see if any drivers are missing.
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JensD
11 Posts
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February 5th, 2010 12:00
Thank you. I have now ordered the W7 upgrade and will see how it goes over the coming weeks. When completed I will post what I learned.
JensD
11 Posts
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February 24th, 2010 03:00
The customer upgrade of my XPS 420 to Windows 7 Professional 64-bit took less than an hour and the Device Manager reported no problems. Later I spotted that the Dell driver for CAB-200 64-bit had not been installed and it used a generic Microsoft driver. I downloaded and installed the Dell Vista 64-bit version. I have now upgraded to 8GB memory and the system is running very well. Thanks again for all the good advice.