Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

Yes, all video cards after and including the X3100 will run Aero and play videos smoothly on even high screen resolution. I said about video card upgrades, because some companies put REALLY old Intel video cards for the business platform back in the old days (2002-2006). Today, virtually anything will do perfectly even on a multi-display configuration.

 

so the dell OEM cd's are just drivers listed on a cd and you selectively install them from the cd? what is the point of doing that versus doing it at dell.com/support? and advantages/disadvantages or reasons not to do it or to do it that way? thanks for clearing up my confusion!

 

The disk is there in case you REALLY need drivers and don't have access to the internet. For example: your laptop is the only computer you have and the Ethernet and Wireless drivers are busted. Also, give you easy access to the original drivers of your system which worked great together with the other drivers. Online, you get the latest driver. Latest drivers offers you bug fixes, speed improvement, and sometimes added features (like the sound card which now has SRS and provide you with options to help increase the sound quality).

The disk is just there for emergency purposes.

 

Well, the drivers you download from the dell site will be much more up to date...

 

Don't bother with restore DVD. I just reinstalled Vista after having some repetitive problems that a restore from a drive image didn't solve. That image was made when Windows was installed the last time with all the updates, patches, drivers and software.

Set aside a couple of hours to install Vista from scratch. This includes the time to install other programs such as Office, etc. and the time between numerous reboots. Vista installs in less than a half hour. The rest of the time is needed to install the rest, download updates, etc.

My suggested install procedure:

- Download all the drivers and software you intend to install. Don't forget an antivirus and firewall. I use Avira Free antivirus and Comodo Internet Security. Make sure all the files you'll need to install are on a different partition from the intended OS partition or even a different hard disk.
- Backup all your files.

- Once you are sure you've all that you need, start installing Vista. Use it's built-in disc partion tool if required. Format the OS partion being careful not to format or overwrite the partition you have all your files on.

-Once the install is complete, follow the Dell driver installation order (look on the downloads and drivers page). Start with the system software - it's a bunch of windows updates (patches) that must be installed first.

- Reboot after each step in the installation list.

- Install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager AFTER the chipset software but BEFORE the video adapter driver. Proceed thereafter as per the list until you've installed all the drivers, the antivirus and firewall.

- Connect to the internet and update Vista.

- Restore your personal files from the backup you've made previously.


Goodbytes is correct about Vista, except that it is initially slow not because of indexation (file indexing is slowed or paused when user activity is detected) but due to Vista having to "learn" your usage pattern. Lookup Superfetch in Vista to understand how it works. Once your usage patterns are "learnt" by Vista, it becomes much more responsive.

Goodbytes is also right about everything being automatic in Vista. Don't bother fiddling around with services or the registry as in XP; a lot of things are self-optimising.

Since you are new to Vista, use the built-in Windows Search feature whenever you feel lost. One of the Windows updates to install is Windows Search 4.0. It works very well.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

 

thank you! for taking the tie out to respond to my original post, this answers the questions i had!

 

so what if this is my only laptop? by installing windows and not the drivers yet, i won't have access to the internet? so installing windows just does the OS im assuming and in order to log on to the net i need to install the drivers from the cd right? or at least just the wifi driver and then go on dells support site for the rest of the stuff?

man this seems cumbersome/time consuming to have to reinstall everything manually as far as drivers go. why don't they include a dvd or cd that has the OS along with all the minimum factory drivers u need to get going? previously, with all my other laptops it would take me less than an hour to reinstall to factory settings and be back up and running, im assuming this step by step way will take 3+ hours?

 

I agree that it's cumbersome to reinstall everthing manually but the last time I restored the OS partiton with a driver image (just like a restore CD), the problems I had before didn't go away completely. So I reinstalled everything from scratch 2 days ago. It took me approx. 2 hours in all.

The drivers CD contains old drivers so I don't see the point of using it if you can download the latest ones.

The simplest way of doing that is to download the latest drivers now and save it on your D: partition, for example. When you install Vista on C:, the contents of D: aren't touched, assuming you don't format D:, too.

A restore DVD with Vista and all the required drivers isn't the best idea since Dell computers can be configured differently by each customer and the OS, hardware and driver combinations may not be correct with one restore disc. There's no "one size fits all" solution.

Installing all the old drivers from the CD and later updating each one of them by downloading them manually is even more cumbersome and time consuming than starting off with the latest ones. Since you have XP working now, I suggest you download everything you need before you install Vista.

 

Yea and no.
If you did not touch any configuration on your laptop,since you have it. You have Drive D... you can put the downloaded drivers there. or burn them on a disk. Vista disk that you get comes clean. The reason for that, is if Dell installs a bad drivers that gives you BSOD's... then what do you do? You are pretty much screwed. So a clean Vista disk is always welcome.

Here is a scenario of where this driver disk comes useful. You update your wireless and wired Ethernet card drivers and some kind went wrong... these new drivers don't work for etv reason for you. What do you do. Now you don't have the internet and your laptop is the only machine you have access.
The disk is here to have access to the original shipped drivers with your system.

Not really. XP will take you about 2 days. With the several GB updates, and all the optimizing that needs to be done. If you have Vista Buisness, you can do Complete PC backup... which basically mean Windows will do an image of your computer that can be automatically stored for you on virtually any device (USB/Firewire/eSATA external HDD, several USB sticks, several DVD, several CD's and even network drive). That is what I did on my eSATA HDD after I installed everything. If I need to re-install.. I boot on Vista disk, and select repair (or wtv it is called) > Complete PC Restore, set my external HDD.. Vista will find my system image and restore my computer of teh image state And voila! Easy and fast (thanks to SATA and eSATA support)!

Unlike on what was suggested. You don't need a firewall software under Vista. Vista already offers a DAM GOOD firewall with complete control over inbound/outbound per application or port, and set network profiles. Like "When I am connected on the wireless at school, I don't want this certain application to access the internet". The firewall is just as good as the one that was suggested and other ones like Zone Alarm.

PERSONALLY, I don't even have an Anti-virus since I run Vista on all my system. Well for one, I am carfull what I download and install, and use my Virtual PC on suspicious files. If I run a simple program and is need Admin rights, UAC will prompt me to continue or cancel. Now I can hit on cancel, because I know something is wrong. And just delete the file and prevent an infection. Another example, this one happen to me... My friend attach his USB stick which had a virus that run at Autorun. He did not know that he had this... I knew because the USB stick required a program called "picture.exe" wanted Admin rights. This saved me from an infection.

So yea, forgot to mention.. UAC mean User Account Control... that is this message box that loads from a secure desktop to grant an application real administrator rights (like Linux, no one is the real administrator). This may be annoying for you when you install all the drivers and application, clean up the start menu and access the control Panel. But you won't do that for ever. It's just until you finish configuring and setting up the system. Once done, it should not disturb you on normal day to day usage of your system. As you saw on what experience, UAC is VERY useful.

PLEASE NOTE: When I said I don't have anti-virus I lied. I do have one.. but I don't run it in the background..I just run it when I need to (I use AVG free edition). I scan my system about once every 2 month or on suspicious files.

BTW, if you have XP and Vista disk... you probably have Vista 32-bit. Again, you contact Dell for the 64-bit is you insist lot (they might say that Vista 64-bit won't work with this system...(as it was reported by someone here) but that's a lie because well when you customize the laptop, you can pick Vista 64-bit and must select it if you choose 8GB of RAM option.

 

both windows vista and 7 have generics and will identify your wifi and/or NIC (ethernet) card. you may want to grab some stuff before you start, but you'll have internet access guaranteed.