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Possible E510 and Windows 7 compatibility problem?
Hello,
I have a 2007 Dell E510, 4gb ram, 500w power supply, Two HD's [160gb with XP Pro, 500gb with Windows 7 Home Premium}. I've tried sooo long to get this W7 to be a reliable daily user but finally had to give up. The XP Pro drive will have to be my workhorse for as long as possible. With Firefox as it's browser, it's smooth, rocket fast, and flawless. I also have a 500gb Vista drive stored for this that seems to work fine.
Windows 7 goes into spasms whenever coming out sleep mode [fatal errors and all]. The only way to avoid this is to signal it once to awaken then walk away from it for 10 minutes. Any coaxing it before that by clicking on anything will invite the crash. I've reinstalled W7 three times from three different disc sources with the same results. So the OS software does not seem to be related to this issue. When I do a restart or cold boot everything is fine. But I can't be cold rebooting all day on a regular basis. Sleep mode is the only problem but it makes Windows 7 totally unreliable as a daily user. I've done lots of research on this, tried suggestions and checked with a few forums for, on and off, about 6-8 months. No positive results though. I've just gotten weary and given up on it for now.
Anyone else ever had this problem caused by hardware or settings?
Thanks friends for any suggestions.
T'care,
Mike
rdunnill
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May 15th, 2013 10:00
I will.
Regarding drivers, Intel's driver site is the place to look for the latest chipset drivers. I take it you don't have any third-party devices installed?
rdunnill
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June 2nd, 2013 15:00
I just finished updating the 5150 (same model as E510) I mentioned earlier, doubling the memory to 2gb, adding an SSD as a boot drive, upgrading the BIOS to the latest version and installing Windows 7 Professional x64. The relative, who bought the machine new back in 2006, is excited and says it's like having a new PC. It boots in seconds, pops in and out of sleep in seconds, and shuts down in seconds; the lags that plague it when booting XP from the 7200-RPM spindle drive are gone.
All the Windows 7 drivers apart from the old PCI modem, including Sigmatel onboard audio, installed automatically.
I'm not sure why your E510 isn't working properly, but it's not a flaw inherent to the machine or Windows 7. These machines will work very, very well with Windows 7 with the right mods. FYI the 120gb Samsung 840 SSD, Silverstone bracket and cables came to $129 with tax.
322buick
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June 9th, 2013 07:00
Rdunnill,
Thanks so much for reporting back and the wealth of info to think about. I recall mentioning on many posts back, that mine has this same sleep/resume problem with my Vista drive also. Well, I just hooked up my XP Pro drive to study it and guess what? It lags also when coming out of standby. So, it's definitely related to only MY E510. I've got an idea. I'll post back hopefully today or tomorrow. ASAP for sure.
T'care,
Mike
rdunnill
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June 9th, 2013 09:00
If you have any extra hardware, try removing it. It may be a device driver that's causing the lag.
322buick
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June 17th, 2013 07:00
Hi Rdunnill,
Well, I've been working away on this.
Every device plugged into this Desktop is now disconnected; even the speakers. I swiped my wife's wireless mouse from her laptop so I could still navigate. Even disconnected the keyboard after the password was in. That 3-5 minute sleep/resume lag was still there.
I read somewhere that memory modules that are even mildly incompatible could be a cause. So out came both of my one year old Kingston sticks 4gb [2x2gb]. Then I installed four brand new 1gb sticks [4x1gb "Hyundai Electronics" modules listed specifically for this machine]. Lucky m., Of course it still made no difference in the "lag" at all.
With either brand/set of modules, the BIOS showed all the sticks as up and working with 4gb installed." Computer properties" shows the same. They do however show only 3.25gb of available memory. This is with a 64 bit OS and 64 bit CPU. The BIOS has the latest flash of A07 and the latest intel chipset update has also been done. Maybe this is just normal.
One oddity though. I downloaded SIW, and in "memory summary" it shows two big, red, warning shields. One reads "Wrong/incomplete values reported by BIOS". The other reads "Maximum capacity 1024 Mbytes [Wrong Value]". "Available memory 3327 Mbytes DDR2 [PC2-5300] DIMM". I also always noticed this with my Kingston sticks in there. When I removed one Kingston stick, leaving it with 2gb, the warning still remained. So I've always just blown it off. It seems unlikely to be a cause of this "lag" anyway?
So that's all I got. Maybe I'm just
T'care,
Mike
322buick
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June 17th, 2013 16:00
SpeedStep,
Thank you!! It is fixed!!
It was the other HD. I removed the connectors from the Vista drive [I had just swapped it with the XP drive] and all is now well. I have been turning those HD's on and off at the BIOS all along; SATA 0 and SATA 1. When one was set to on, the other was set to off.. I assumed that if the BIOS was in fact turning the drive off, then it would be indeed be completely off. Surprise [:-(
Now looking back to a month or two ago, I should have put two and two together. I was wiping the Windows 7 drive "one more time" to start over clean again. I suddenly noticed after 1/2 hour or so, that it was also wiping my perfect XP drive at the same time. I got so mad about it, that my brain failed to connect the dots to my original "resume from sleep" problem.
Sure is nice to finally put this problem to bed.
Thank you soooo much.
T'care,
Mike
P.S. those Ram Modules are identical. Same lot and model numbers. The serial numbers practically match too [:-)
322buick
82 Posts
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June 21st, 2013 06:00
RDUNNILL & SpeedStep,
This E510 is really working great now. You were right. The E510/5150 with Windows 7 is a great combination together. Thanks for helping me through this. I would not have had ANY chance of fixing this without you guys!!
Very appreciatively,
Mike
322buick
82 Posts
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July 15th, 2014 07:00
LONG OVERDUE UPDATE - SORRY
The major culprit here was my having two HD's hooked up [one W-7 and one Vista] and using the BIOS to turn them on and off. The one turned off is still not totally turned off so they still "back-feed" some which caused a multitude of problems. Disconnecting the HD at the connectors was the only total fix.
The only incompatibility problem with using W-7 in an E510 is that you must use only the power button to bring it out of sleep mode. No matter how you have set your mouse and keyboard settings, if you use them to come out of sleep, all of your mouse functions will be wacky. Only rebooting or logging off will stop it.
So, with just a click of the power button, life is again good.
So I went from absolutely despising Windows 7 to totally loving it. No flaws and works perfectly.
Thank you for any and all help I receive from this great Dell community.
T'care,
Mike