Dell Latitude E4200 Info

Thanks. Just bought an E4200 from the outlet for my wife. I will put Windows 7 on it.

Do you have the 64 bit or 32 bit version, and which build? Is 2GB RAM good enough?

 

Running x86 7077. I have 3GB of RAM and it runs well.

 

anyone have xp pro and do a reinstall with a dell xp disc? I just want to know if the dell install disc has the SATA AHCI drivers.

 

I would guess that it does. Why not just try it? You don't make any changes to the system when the system boots with the CD. If it boots and can see the partitions on your SSD, you will know you have AHCI. If not, it will be halted.

 

i got a refurbed with vista only and was thinking about buying a xp cd on ebay.

 

Ok, get your floppy drive and a floppy with extracted driver on it ready.
And if its SP1, you might need to find your extracted motherboard PCI-E drivers witch also needs to fit on floppy (because XP setup only takes floppies).

If you must use a system unsupported OS (meaning XP doesn't like all your new technologies), contact Dell and Buy XP disk form them, at least they can give you an image disk, or a special disk with some of your laptop drivers in it, so that you don't need to get a floppy drive. Or you better get XP SP3 disk, or the latest build of XP SP2 disk.

Else, the OS might not install correctly, OR if the motherboard has it's component witch can perform a translation system to support old OS, then it will work just fine, however, you won't enjoy maximum performance. Unlike Vista/Win7, XP drivers are tied to the OS (that is why when one crash you get a BSOD, but in Vista/Win7, you get a a little balloon saying that a driver [it's names] crashed and was restarted successfully), SATA drivers can't be installed AFTER XP. When you update the SATA drivers all you do is update some PART of the driver but the hole thing, as you can't via Windows. So you must install the drivers before Windows XP setup starts (so you press press F6 when ask on that split second when the setup screen loads).

I would say this will be a good week-end project to get this XP up and running at maximum performance on a new system, like this, not to mention the several GB of updates that you will need to do.

Good Luck

 

Call Dell support first. They may be able to send you an XP Pro OS for free. On this particular model, the XP Pro downgrade with Vista Business is a free upgrade at time of order.

Having used all these OS, I find Windows 7 to be the best. But it is not for everyone, since it is a beta.

 

If Dell doesnt send you one for free I dont mind letting mine go for a little cash.

 

I am with GoodBytes, this can be a nice w/e project. If you have a XP license, it is very easy to slipstream in the AHCI drivers for XP using the Intel files. I think there are like six or seven files. I recall using nlite to slipstream them in. It was a piece of cake.

I would recommend the slipstreaming method to cut a new XP CD but if you don't want to bother with this, you can try this very nice guide here. Hopefully one of these will help you.

 

I love windows 7 but it didn't work with the Sprint Dell broadband card with it... is there a way around that?? Anybody know!!!!!?????