Inspiron 6400 missing drivers

First, check out this page:  Restoring or Reinstalling Windows on a Dell.  A manual installation is covered in the fourth link, I believe, and you should pay special attention to the section on driver installation.

Second, the drivers are there, but if you search by service tag number the first thing that appears are the most recently updated files.  Look for a link to bring up All Drivers, or search by model number instead.  When you find them, download one at a time using your web browser into a folder having an appropriate name.  The driver file names are not descriptive and you might find having such things as the Audio driver in a folder named Audio to be helpful.

Yes follow my wiki A Clean Install of Windows XP. This is a system with Media Direct so pay attention to all the steps that mention Media DIrect. Following through with the wiki will lead to best results. You need the drivers from here:

R120775 Dell Notebook Software - Under Utility

R114079 Intel Chipset - Under Chipset

R141246 Ricoh Card Reader - Under Chipset

R15380 Intel Graphics or R128573 ATI Graphics or R126007 nVidea Graphics - Under Video (Your service tag will tell you what one)

R114200, R90851 Conexant Modem - Under Communication

R149798, R150593 Broadcom Ethernet - Under Network

Wireless Card - Under Network (there are several variants your Service Tag will list it)

R120179 Synaptics Touchpad - Under Input

R1171789 Sigmatel Audio - Under Audio

Bluetooth - Under Network (350 or 355 if you have it your Service Tag will list it)

R157261 Dell Quickset - Under Applications

Dell Support Centre

Installation Order is important.

Thanks for the lead on restoring Windows, my restoration disc may not even be the same one that came with the PC but it was the only one I had with the Windows keycode.  Anyway I appreciate your help.

You are very welcome, we are happy to have been of help.

Just a note on natakuc's remark with regard to Media Direct (which was an option on the Inspiron 6400 at the time of ordering):  If you did indeed purchase Media Direct with your Inspiron 6400, you should have received either two disks (one being Media Direct, the second being Windows XP Professional), or a single DVD having both Media Direct and Windows XP.  Media Direct requires a special partition of its own and a special Master Boot Record to enable the Media Direct buttons on the laptop.  Installation requires that you begin with the Media Direct disk (or Media Direct portion of the single DVD) to set up the necessary partitions.  When that has been done, Windows XP is installed into the C partition.  The Windows XP disk or portion of the DVD is followed by the Media Direct disk or portion of the DVD to set up the MBR needed for the Media Direct buttons and complete the installation of files peculiar to that application.

Given that you have already installed Windows XP with the disk available to you, it would be necessary to re-do the installation to get Media Direct running.

There are some links to buy Dell Media Direct and Dell XP installation discs on eBay if you can get them for cheap it will save wasting 2 XP licenses on one system. See here for example.

Hi Dave,

Welcome to Dell Community Forum

I believe you need to install the driver for Ethernet Controller and for Network Controller (Wireless) on Windows XP. Please find the below link which will help you to install the driver for Ethernet and network controller.

http://dell.to/IXiRjH

http://dell.to/KKB2Kt

http://dell.to/IOozsq

http://dell.to/IB9NCI

Hope this helps!

Vishal Singh

Dell | Social Media Outreach | Global Social Media & Community

Vishal,

I installed all 4 drivers you suggested and that fixed my Ethernet and Network Controllers.  However my PCI device is still not functional.  Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks for helping on the controllers,  Dave

Sort of reading these posts out-of-the order I received them (sorry!).  I got 2 of my controllers working based on the info I received in Vishal's post so I'm still hoping to get things up and running with doing another install of windows.  All I need is my PCI device functional and I should be good.  If not I'll certainly use your install advise.

Thanks- Dave

Did you install all the drivers mentioned? Again the install order is important especially on XP.

natakuc;

I believe he installed only those given in the links in the post by Dell_Vishal_Singh.

Dave trader;

A PCI device can be just about anything; the PCI is an information bus that conveys instructions and data between the processor and a device.  A commonly seen omission is the driver for the telephone modem.  The error would be for a PCI Simple Communications Device.  If that is your problem, this driver should clear the error:  Inspiron 6400 Conexant D110 Modem Driver.

If that isn't it you will need to see if you can find another hint.

Install the following:

Windows XP Standalone Service Pack 2

Windows XP Standalone Service Pack 3

Internet Explorer 8

Windows Media Player 11 

.Net Framework 2.0

R120775 Dell Notebook Software - Under Utility

R114079 Intel Chipset - Under Chipset

R141246 Ricoh Card Reader - Under Chipset

R153830 Intel Graphics or R128573 ATI Graphics or R126007 nVidea Graphics - Under Video (Your service tag will tell you what one)

R114200, R90851 Conexant Modem - Under Communication

R149798, R150593 Broadcom Ethernet - Under Network

R174291 Dell Wireless or R171131 Intel Wireless - Under Network (Your service tag will tell you what one)

R120179 Synaptics Touchpad - Under Input

R171789 Sigmatel Audio - Under Audio

R127314 Dell Bluetooth 355 and R159805 Dell Bluetooth 355 Patch or R117967 Dell Bluetooth 350 and R129472 Dell Bluetooth 350 Patch - Under Network (if you have it your Service Tag will tell you what one)

R157261 Dell Quickset - Under Applications

Dell Support Centre

Microsoft Security Essentials*

* Unless you have a preferred security program.

Installation Order is important, it might be fine to install all the above in order on your current installation. However for best results I would make a new installation as in my wiki A Clean Install of Windows XP. 

My reinstall came with Service Pack 2, will going to Service Pack 3 add to my hardware woes?  Just asking....

Yes, you're correct I've only installed the drivers Vishal mentioned.  I'm looking at natakuc's drivers now to see if that fixes the problem.  I'll also try the driver you just mentioned in your post.  

I don't know if this means anything but my Device Manager shows the disfunctional PCI device under the heading of "Other Devices".

Thanks- Dave