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10 Posts
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14596
May 18th, 2008 07:00
My 1530 Review and Problems.
First something about me.
I have been in the IT Game for the past 18 years.
Have worked for Tata Steel, with 80,000 Employees
Then with some of the bigest MNCs
Have allways sworn by two names IBM and Dell.
Prior to this laptop I owned a M90. Prior to that a Latitude.
Have allways recomended Dell in every organisation.
This is the first laptop I am buying with my own money. The earlier Laptops where purchased on company account.
So natrually it had to be a Dell. The M1530.
This laptop is nothing like any of my earlier Dells.
I regret returning my M90 to the company. And offering to buy my own.
This is something that looks Designed, made and assembled in China.
The weight of my wrist on the laptop as I type is enoughf to make the hard disk make funny sounds.
The first 8 weeks went in geting rid of Vista and installing XP.
THen the dreaded Keyboard delay croped up. And dell refused to provide suport as I was runing XP. So I reverted to Vista.
They still didnt help me figure out the issue. In the end it turned out to be a post on laptops2go that solved the probelm.
My latest problem is that the CD-Rom has vanished. In Bios all I see is Drive Bay CD-ROM
Boot options the CD/DVD drive shows up. But in the boot up diagnostics I see no CD/DVD
There are far too many gripes I have with this unit to list out.
But a really sad one is the fact that using my M90 in the same location never gave me any Wi/Fi issues.
Same room same desktop. Same router and my Wi/Fi refuses to work.
Trying to set transmit power to Max. Doesnt stick in device settings.
This is what Dell needs to do.
a. Make it easy for people to move to XP if they cant stand Vista
b. Sort out the build quality on the XPS range.
c. Sort out the Wi/Fi range issue on the XPS.
d. Improve the quality and dates of drivers offered for this laptop. (Common gripe on laptops2go and allmost any internet forum is Dell drivers are outdated).
Eusebio
26 Posts
0
May 18th, 2008 13:00
Dell is dropping XP availability soon . . .
: o
rdchinoy
10 Posts
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May 19th, 2008 06:00
That doesnt help me solve my DVD Drive issue
Today a new problem.
The Bios doesnt recognise the battrey as a Dell unit.
Its asking me to buy a new battrey from Dell.
All this on a laptop thats under 1 month old.
18186b12b7c044c
3 Posts
0
May 19th, 2008 16:00
Just throwing out a couple ideas...
You probably have the latest BIOS, A08, but if not, it may help with the battery issue. The A08 description doesn't mention it addresses anything with the battery, but maybe something was slipstreamed in under the vague classification of "The update contains changes to improve the reliability and availability of your Dell system".
I've run into situations in the past with disappearing optical drives, so I googled some of the things I remembered that were involved and got a pile of hits that looked promising. At least if the problem is with the OS (sounds like your HW sees the drive at certain points, so, maybe this will help...) The specific terms I used in google were:
vista cd-rom upper lower registry
So, you might check out those results (one of the first three referred to a MS KB article, "The CD drive or the DVD drive does not work as expected on a computer that you upgraded to Windows Vista", http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929461. But, they all, ultimately, refer to the same registry info.)
Good luck.
rdchinoy
10 Posts
0
May 19th, 2008 16:00
Bump If its any help. The DVD Drive vanished after I tried to follow the instruction on this forum to enable AHCI. i.e. it said get the drivers from some Chinese IBM site.
Download and extract the drivers.
Then go to Bios setup and Turn ATA to AHCI then reboot. Windows should find new hardware and it should ask for drivers you point it to the drivers and it will work.
Well it never worked for me. i.e. after I turned ATA to AHCI and tried to start XP. XP refused to start.
The only way I could get it to start was by going back to ATA in the Bios.
What I dont understand is why doesnt the DVD drive show up in Dell Diagnostics ? Or why cant I boot from the DVD Drive.
18186b12b7c044c
3 Posts
0
May 19th, 2008 16:00
Just saw your post about not being able to boot from the dvd. Hmm... I don't understand that either. Maybe it is more on the hw side?
oahawhool
13 Posts
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May 19th, 2008 20:00
Booting from the DVD drive has nothing to do with whether it's running xp or vista.
Booting from a dvd bypasses the os.
When you cant boot from a dvd, there's a couple very easy things to check.
First, make sure the dvd is not the problem, by trying to boot a different computer from that dvd.
If the other computer also wont boot from this dvd, then it may be a problem with the dvd.
LoneWolf3574
73 Posts
0
May 19th, 2008 23:00