Dell Inspiron 1501 Windows 8 Video Card Problems Please Help!

Hi Bear1501,

I had same problem when I instaled Win8 in my machine.

I solved it instaling a program called DriverMax. It lists all your devices and drivers situation. In my case, it indicated that my graphic card is ATI Express card (or something that. Sorry I'm using Linux at now) and way to download the apropriate driver.

Attention! The DiverMax in free version can downlod two drivers per day.

Thats all! Be happy!

Fábio

I had the same problem and found that I could not make Windows 8 - 64 bit work except with 256 bit color and a 1024x68 screen (which is unusable).  I solved the problem by installing Windows 8 - 32 bit and then downloaded the windows 7 - 32 bit video and display drivers from the dell inspiron 1501 website.  After installing those drivers Windows 8 - 32 bit worked fine and recognized the Radeon 1150 video card.  Hope this helps.  

As a follow-up I tried the 64 bit driver that natakuc4 described in the middle part of this thread and it worked great.  I am now back on Windows-8 64 bit. Thanks natakuc4.  

Hello Phil,

Would you mind telling me what hardware your 1501 has, I'm trying to see what the difference is in mine that it won't install Windows 8.

Thank you in advance.

I tried using this program and it didn't come up with the ATI Express Card, only the generic monitor driver it is already using.  Thanks for trying though.

Page 2, Second to last post there is a link to my 4Shared with my exact driver (might have to sign up for 4Shared).  But here is the link again www.4shared.com/.../10-02_legacy_vista32-64_dd_ccc.html.

Hi Xangel.  

Do you have a link to the exact driver you used for the 1501?  

I tried this method multiple times with different drivers for windows 7 and it would never apply.

I'm running windows 8 32 bit.

Thanks.

Hey bear1501,

From the last Picture step on Page 1

http://en.community.dell.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/3513/8712.Capturexxxxxxxx.PNG

Hit the "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer".  On the next screen, at the bottom you'll see "Have Disk" hit "Browse" and then navigate to the folder where you extracted the drivers.  You should be able to pick the INF for the driver and it should install and work.  

I had to do this with a different computer to get my wireless card to actually work properly.  At first it was doing the same thing that your video card is doing to you (saying it already had the best drivers).

Also, could everyone tell me what processor model they are running since I believe that should be the only thing different on mine that might cause me not to be able to install Windows 8 on my 1501.  I'm thinking if I can set mine up like someone who has successfully installed Win8 I might be able to as well.

Thanks in advance.

Right now I have a AMD Turion 64x2 TL-60 2.0ghz in it, it used to have a AMD Athlon64 x2 TK-53 1.7ghz.  Do you know your specific processor model?  

I have 2x2GB PC2-5300 ram in mine and a blank hard drive that I'm trying to do a fresh install on.

**Side note - as I am sitting here typing this, the installer USB actually started up properly (about dang time).  I'll post later if it actually installs all the way.**

My system is pretty much the standard one Dell shipped.  AMD Turion64x2 processor, 1.60 GHZ, DVD ROM.  I did recently change out one of the two 1Gig memory cards with a 4Gig card so I now have a total of 5Gig of RAM (200 Pin, DDR2, 667MHz, PC2 5300 cards).  I orderd another 4Gig card now that I know it works so I will end up with 8Gig when I am done.  

I used the exact same driver/installer that xangel9626 linked to above.  This is the driver with the "_ccc" in the name.  There are two drivers on the site and when I tried the one without the "_ccc" I could not get it to work.  Also,  I ran the ".exe" version of this driver from the website and installed it on my c: drive.  I had initially installed it on a USB drive but for some reason Windows could not find it even though I pointed it at the correct directory.  When I ran the "10-2_legacy_vista32-64_dd_ccc.exe" driver file it runs an install program.  I let the program run and when it was finished it said that it could not find any devices to install.  This was fine because the "C:\ATI\Support\10-02_legacy_vista32-64_dd_ccc" directory it made on my hard drive had the driver in it.  I used the procedure described above to go into the device manager and then "update" the driver for the video card under "Display Adaptors".  The windows 8 default video card was a 2006 driver for a generic video card.  Once I selected updated I clicked on the option to locate the driver on the hard drive and entered the following directory into the field "C:\ATI\Support\10-02_legacy_vista32-64_dd_ccc".  Windows searched this directory and then installed the working driver for the Radeon 150 graphics card.  The actual driver installed shows it as "ATI Radeon Xpress Series".  Once this installed I was able to go to the standard "Display" settings link in Windows and configure my laptop monitor resolution and size (it defaulted to maximum which is what I wanted).  While installing the drive above I also had another monitor plugged into the laptop VGA port so when I went to the windows "Display" settings screen I was able to extend the monitor (not duplicate it) so that each screen would work separately.  I now have full color and different resolutions on each monitor.

One note on the Windows 8 install. When I installed it I had Windows 8 format the drive (there is a selection for this).  I did not want it to upgrade my Vista settings to Windows 8.  Since I was going from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit Windows 8 the conversion cannot happen anyway without losing the data so I just went ahead and had Windows format the drive to make sure there was not some Vista software left over to mess up the install.

Everything has been working great since the video driver was updated.

My processor is a  AMD Turion 64x2 TL-50 1.60ghz.  Sounds like you have the more up to date processor so I would think yours would work.  Good luck with the retry.

Ok, so it seems my problem installing had to do with the battery being dead, I guess the battery drivers were getting a conflict because of it being dead. It is now working fine with the battery out of it.  As such, I have installed Windows 8 x64 and used the driver I linked and it worked with the same steps as Phil's picture tutorial shows, I didn't have to do any extra steps.

Xangel,

I downloaded from the link posted.  Thanks for that.

When I open up the folder do I then go double click "setup"?  This is what I did and it started the catalyst install manager.  I picked express installation.  It installed but also said "warnings occurred during installation".  I click on the view log and it says:

Catalyst® Install Manager

Installation Report

01/09/13 14:35:42

Hardware information

Name ATI Radeon Xpress Series

Manufacturer ATI Technologies Inc

Device ID 0x5975

Vendor ID 0x1002

Class Code 0x030000

Revision ID 0x00

Subsystem ID 0x01f5

Subsystem vendor ID 0x1028

Other hardware

Existing packages

Packages for install

CCC Help Dutch

Final Status:

Version of Item: 2010.0210.2338.42455

Size: 1 Mbytes

Other detected devices

ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 Series

Manufacturer ATI Technologies Inc

Device ID 0x5950

Vendor ID 0x1002

Class Code 0x060000

Revision ID 0x10

Subsystem ID 0x01f5

Subsystem vendor ID 0x1028

ATI Integrated SATA Support

Manufacturer ATI Technologies Inc

Device ID 0x4380

Vendor ID 0x1002

Class Code 0x01018f

Revision ID 0x00

Subsystem ID 0x01f5

Subsystem vendor ID 0x1028

ATI Integrated SMBus Support

Manufacturer ATI Technologies Inc

Device ID 0x4385

Vendor ID 0x1002

Class Code 0x0c0500

Revision ID 0x13

Subsystem ID 0x01f5

Subsystem vendor ID 0x1028

ATI Integrated SATA Support

Manufacturer ATI Technologies Inc

Device ID 0x438c

Vendor ID 0x1002

Class Code 0x01018a

Revision ID 0x00

Subsystem ID 0x01f5

Subsystem vendor ID 0x1028

ATI Integrated Azalia Support

Manufacturer ATI Technologies Inc

Device ID 0x4383

Vendor ID 0x1002

Class Code 0x040300

Revision ID 0x00

Subsystem ID 0x01f5

Subsystem vendor ID 0x1028

Error messages

There was nothing after the error messages mention...

I then put in the search for driver software in the location Phil M. mentioned below and it said it wasn't there.  Is there a step I am missing?

Thanks.

Nevermind my last question.

A BIG THANK YOU to xangel and phil and everyone that helped.  

I'm sorry it took me so long to catch on to what I needed to do.  The computer is now working with 1280x800.

Thank you!!!