Dell Software on 1520 with XP?

Question

New Inspiron 1520 (July 2007), came only with Vista Home at that time. Deleted partitions and did clean install of XP Pro, SP2, all Win Updates. Then successfully installed compatible XP drivers available at the time (September; BIOS A03, Intel Mobile Chipset, nVidia graphics, Broadcom controller, Sigmatel Audio, Conexant modem, Intek Wireless Link, Ricoh memory card, TouchPad). Did NOT install various Dell utilities (in order to minimize overhead and memory usage).

QUESTION: Is there any benefit in installing the following software from Dell, and are the XP versions compatible with my XP user installation (now that new 1520's are available with XP)?:
1. Notebook System Software (NSS)
2. SATA Intel Matrix Storage Manager
3. Dell Support Center 2.0

The machine is functioning pretty well without these, except that I did not prepare the hardware for the MediaDirect software (I am afraid to hit the MD button after what happened last time when I had to reinstall XP again). Any tips or advice welcome.

Svenfran

RoHe · Answer

The Notebook System Software (NSS) that's available for this system says it's for Vista 32-bit. Since you now have XP, it probably doesn't apply. That said, Dell uses NSS to fix problems after a system is released. So unless Dell sells XP installed on this model, they may not provide any XP fixes via NSS.

Dell Support Center v2 has been quite buggy so I'd avoid it, for now. Though many say it's not useful,

Ron

Svenfran · Answer

Thanks, Ron. I found the NSS software for XP under the Drivers and Downloads section for the 1520. I guess NSS is available for XP now because they started selling the 1520 with XP (wish they had done that back in July; would have saved me a lot of grief installing my own XP and trying to find drivers!).

That said, I appreciated your words about NSS and Dell Support Center. Think I'll just leave well enough alone and avoid both. Maybe one day I will get ambitious and try to get MediaDirect working, but in the meantime, I think I'll just avoid that button altogether. I did quite a bit of surfing regarding MD, and it requires reformatting of the hard drive to make it work. Right now, I don' think its functionality is worth the trouble.

Thanks again,

Svenfran

RoHe · Answer

If there's a version of NSS for XP, then I'd install it. It probably fixes something that you may need. Many times Dell fixes USB problems with NSS. Ron

Windows General

Dell Software on 1520 with XP?

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