Windows 7 on Dell Inspiron 6400 / E1505

djgriff,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.

Try using the vista driver or go take a look on ati's website for a win7 driver.

djgriff,

Thank you for contacting the Dell Community Forums.  It appears that Microsoft has a Windows 7 driver for the ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 on their Update Catalog.  That driver hasn't been validated by Dell, but it's probably worth trying in your case.  You may also want to try installing Vista drivers for the card, if available--many times, Vista drivers work in Windows 7 when actual Win7 drivers are unavailable.

I didn't install the driver last night because I wasn't sure which file to use.  If you look at the update catalog there are two files listed for Windows 7.  One is twice as large as the other.  Being a guy, I naturally lean toward the larger one, but I'm thinking that is for 64 bit, am I correct?  I need the 32 bit.

Large file I think is 64 bit:

AMD64-en-20232705_b299be053602a3a96100a459c22cb3c6c8c6472d.cab

Smaller file that I'm thinking is 32 bit.

X86-en-20232704_380dc4176ea98c2c99990f478ad55e0d9a0b3852.cab

Thanks for the help!

djgriff

Haven't heard of that site before,  perfect ---thank you for the help!

Since you are using an ATI update using this,  http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php  .This will also update and install the current CCC (which is usually a problem updating),and windows 7 was added to the driver updater.

I simply went to Windows update in control panel and ran windows update and it updated the correct driver itself. I am now running an ATI x1400 driver.

Wow, that sounds way too easy and the other option sounds too hard, kind of feel like Goldilocks.  I don't mind modifying my computer and testing things out but when I'm working on my wives computer I'm a little hesitant and that last option sounded like it gave me too many possibilities of screwing it up.  I was going to get someone more geeky than myself to install the correct video driver.

Now I'm not sure if I will need to or not.  Things seem to be working fine on her laptop and there is always the thought of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.  But I can't let this go thinking that there may be display issues that will come up or that she won't get all the features of the Windows 7 video driver.  Then yesterday she was telling me that her Windows 7 downloaded several updates.  Now after your post, I'm wondering if one of those updates installed the windows 7 ATI video driver for her Inspiron 6400.  How do I find out if she is running the correct window 7 video driver?

Go to start Control Panel select view by large icons on top right. Dbl click on Device Manager. Click on the arrow next to Display and if you loaded the correct driver it should say ATI Mobility Radeon x1400.

Thanks for all the info guys,

djgriff, How was the upgrade to windows 7 ? cause I'm considering the upgrade and I have the same exact model :)

which version of win 7 are you using?

Thanks for the help.  So,,,,I don't remember what the driver was called when we installed Windows 7 but I know we installed a Vista driver.  I would have thought since the video card is a ATI Mobility Radeon x1400 it would have been listed as such.  I don't remember exactly but maybe we just loaded a generic vista driver.  I'll look at this tonight when I get home.  So, if the driver is listed as ATI Mobility Radeon x1400 then it's a Windows 7 not a vista driver?  Thanks again for the help.

This was the easiest install I've ever experienced, my son-in-law was the one who came over and installed it.  The whole process lasted over a couple of evenings.  We backed up a bunch of files to an external hard drive and then made an image of the file so my wife could go back to Vista if she didn't like Windows 7.  We actually did a clean install so we would hopefully avoid some upgrade issues.  Seems to have worked, it is running smooth and fast.  We have the Home Premium upgrade.  I have been loading all her software back on and so far it's been great.  I like the way it works so well, I'm going to upgrade my laptop from XP professional.

thanks for your quick reply, sir

Enjoy 7 :)

Glad I found this thread. I had no idea there were so many upgrade possibilities for the Inspiron E1505/6400. Looks like Windows 7 is very doable on our machines. Awesome!

The only thing that did not load was the ricoh card reader which I loaded from here.