Further to my post on upgrading a Dell XPS M1710 to Windows 7.
My old XP based Dell 8250 desktop (1GB RAM) crashed recently and became unusable. Luckily backups were all in place (although I still had access to the hard drives anyway) so rather than simply put XP back on it, I decided to go for Windows 7 Ultimate. The machine had got slower and slower anyway due to all the usual nonsense you install over time, so I thought this was an opportunity to freshen the OS and test whether Win 7 would run ok on old hardware. One of those Sunday eve type jobs…
I first repartitioned and formatted the main drive (I was unhappy with the current partition set up and wanted a truly fresh start anyway). I then booted from the Windows 7 DVD. After a long wait (be patient on an Dell 8250, the initial “windows starting” then “blank screen with mouse cursor” took over 10mins to come to life; it was much faster on my M1710). I then went through the various steps as per the M1710 install except this time I selected Custom (advanced) at the appropriate point to get a full fresh install.
All seemed to go pretty smoothly. Ran some windows updates afterwards, again all went well. I then installed AVG free edition, no worries.
Then I realised I’d got no sound (how many times have you had this happen…). Hmm. I’ve got an old Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 card and a quick look in device manager confirmed that this had not been recognised. A search for an official Windows 7 or Vista driver on the Net was to no avail, so I took a long shot and downloaded the old XP driver off Dell support (R69382.exe) from 2003!.
I then tried running the driver install… it started to run and then started to extract the files and then… it auto-closed! No wizard no nothing. I tried again this time right clicking and running “as administrator” to be sure. Same again.
Not giving up, this time I right clicked the almighty R69382.exe again and selected “troubleshoot compatibility”. It recommended using Windows XP SP2 mode. I went for the recommendation (this is on the installer remember) and hey presto it all ran a treat. The driver is now installed correctly and sound and microphone are back in action.
So how is the PC generally? Well I’ve not installed ‘all’ my regular apps yet, but so far the machine is ticking along nicely and certainly faster than when I had the, albeit fully bloated, XP on it.
DC.
5 comments:
Are you able to play a Movie on DVD and get sound? Using your approach I only get a weird crackling sound and nothing else. I have the Creative Sound Blaster 5.1.
In XP one had to (1) Install Windows (2) Install Chipset Drivers (3) Install Device Drivers such as sound, video, etc). When I installed, I did not explicitly installed the chipset drivers and assumed the Windows 7 installation took care of it properly. Is that assumption correct? Do I need to follow a particular sequence? How?
Any help you can provide would be breatly appreciated
ABZ
ABZ... my blog entry discusses everyting I did. I don't use this machine for playing DVDs, but just tried it for you and mine does the same (!), plays video fine but only get clicking sound. Ummm... need to take a look if I get 5, but as I say I don't use this machine for DVDs so not a priority for me. Would be nice to get it working though just in case. If you have any joy let me know. Cheers Dave
Hi ABZ
re: clicking sound when playing back a DVD. I've found a fix that worked for me. In advanced properties for Creative SB Live disable "allow applications to take exclusive control of this device". Full details on this can be found here: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/10/01/windows-7-conexant-ac97-dvd-audio-fix.aspx
Cheers
Dave
Dave,
Thanks! Works for me too.
Pax et Bonum
ABZ
I'm surprised how few issues you had, because I've been hunting down the NIC driver for the Dell Dimention 8250 for Windows Server 2008 without any luck. Only Windows XP seems supported!
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