E1705 and Vista Ultimate

Question

I received my new Inspiron E1705 yesterday and within one hour MCE2005 was gone and Vista Ultimate was on the box.  I have installed and run several copies of Ultimate on Virtual machines and a Dimension 8300 and it went okay.   I was quite thrilled with the install experience on this new laptop.  The first pass found all but one driver and this box is loaded to the max so I think it is safe to say that Vista is viable for the newer equipment with not much to worry about.   Specs:   Core 2 Duo T7200 nVidia GeForce 7900 (256 RAM) 2 Gigs RAM etc, etc, etc......   The display is outstanding and once all of the MCE startup junk was removed, it literally powers up in less than 30 seconds.  Christmas has come early!

wildj · Answer

Thanks for the update!   I hope my experience in doing a clean install of Vista Home Premium on my XPS 410 next year goes just as smoothly.

jmwills · Answer

I forgot to add this was the 32 bit version.  The 64 bit version is coming down the wire right now so that is next to try.

fudgieguys · Answer

The only issue we have with our Enterprise is the licensing issue. So contacted Microsoft and disable checking with the licensing and so far it had installed without any real hickups. Minor issues, but nothing that can not be fixed.   We are running Optiplex 280's and 620's.

jtzako · Answer

I also installed Vista Ultimate on my E1705 and it was very smooth. I've been using it for a few weeks now and no trouble at all.

jmstacey2005 · Answer

I installed the x64 version of RC1 sometime back and it worked just as well as the x86 is currently with the exception of missing drivers for the ricoh card reader. I also got most of my x86 programs to install and run properly surpisingly but x64 drivers were still a must.

jmwills: Have you noticed stuttering/jitter if you restore a window that is maximized with the nvidia card? There are also black and white lines (like I'm changing channels on an old tv) when loading a picture from the slide show gadget.

Just curious because my friend has the ATI card and doesn't have the same issue.

Edit: There does seem to be a small problem with the Sigmatel audio card and vista (x86). If you change the power plan to save the maximum battery life, audio playback stutters every few seconds whether or not your doing anything else (and cpu usage is negligible according to task manager).

wma lossless tracks also stuttered consistently about 20 seconds from the end of the song. After installing the new drivers from dell and then reverting back to the default this problem was fixed by disabling the "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device."

(Stuttering if not set to max performance still occurs however)

Message Edited by jmstacey2005 on 12-14-200612:14 PM

Message Edited by jmstacey2005 on 12-14-200612:17 PM

jmwills · Answer

So that;s what that one driver is!!!  I forgot it even had a card driver to tell you the truth.  I have seen ZERO issues with the video other than it is hard getting used to looking at this transparent screen.   I use XP all day and I just might revert back to that scheme.  I have an external USB tuner and will try that out soon.

jtzako · Answer

Ive seen all kinds of oddities with nvidia drivers in Vista. The Default MS ones are stable but not great performing in games. The "modified" ones you can get from laptopvideo2go.com have more significant issues. (glitches when restoring minimized windows is one of them)

Hopefully Dell or some other Laptop mfg will put out some legitimate Nvidia GO drivers soon that have good stability and good performance.

jmstacey2005 · Answer

Oddities indeed. I was just playing around with media center and got it setup for ouput to my tv (through rca cables), and after getting tired and reactivating my lcd the stutter problems have dissapeared...   I'll have to see if they come back after restarting though...

tlp123 · Answer

I'm running Vista Ultimate 64bit on my 2.16ghx core duo 2 e1705 as well without any major issues.  I have one device in my device manager that is not recogized and I don't know what it is.  I have separate drivers installed for the touchpad and audio driver and they are fine.  Any ideas?

kokobucks · Answer

Good to hear that Vista seems to work fine with the E1705/9400.

About a month ago, I purchased one. I like the laptop quite a bit.

Now I'm thinking about putting Vista ultimate on, though I have two questions.

1. Does the Draft-N wireless card work fine with Vista?

2. This is more of a general question on how to install vista. Currently I divided my 100GB HD into three partitions. C: = 10GB, D: = 20GB and E: - 70GB.

I know Vista requires at least 15 GB of free space so I can repartition my C drive, but is it wise to set the C: partition to a larger value then say 20GB? 40GB? Or just leave it as one big 100GB drive.

Any thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

jmwills · Answer

Hard Drive partitioning, or at least this is how I have it setup:   30/60/30  (System/Data/Specials)  Never leave the root as one big partition.   I would not touch any of the Draft N cards.  Pre-N was better but someone stirred the pot too long on Draft.  I went with the Intel card and it works great.   I just hope that nVidia can finalize the 7900 driver as I think the graphics can be a little better.

kokobucks · Answer

Thanks.

I figured one partition is a bad idea, but I wanted to see if Vista had changed the desire for such a configuration.

I'll probably do a 25GB - System 20GB - Programs and 55GB - Data,

Did people install the Dell MediaDirect with Vista?

Also for the people that installed Vista, did you do the 32-Bit or the 64-bit version?

jmwills · Answer

I dumped the Media Direct thing, and I have installed both versions and the 64 bit is a little faster.

kokobucks · Answer

Yeah, I don't use the mediadirect thing, so I guess I could dump it. Is there a way to map that key to do something else?

So all the drivers worked fine for the 64bit version I assume.

Thanks for the help, BTW.

jmwills · Answer

All but the card reader driver.  I reinstalled the 32 bit version today becasue HP will no release a driver fro my 1012 printer and a couple of other programs were non accessable also.   Will have to check on remapping that key.

Windows General

E1705 and Vista Ultimate

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