the windows 7 on a M4400 thread..

Since Windows 7 has been available since September at my university, (Yale) I ran it ever since my new M4400 arrived. I triple-boot with Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 9.04.

Windows 7 Driver Synopsis:
Sound: A+ and the best it's ever been, despite the hardware-centric small amount of noise on headphone output.

Trackpad: B+ with latest Toshiba ALPS drivers for Vista 64. The Windows 7 ones don't allow the trackpad to work at all. I dislike the Dell ones since the configuration is over-simplified and hides the ALPS native interface.

Fingerprint: A- I don't use any of the other security features, but functionality on this front seemed to require the whole security suite. Unlike with regular UPEK and Authentec strips, the driver takes a little while to load at the login screen.

Dell ControlPoint: B Thankfully there's no Connection Manager. I don't recommend getting the Broadcom WIFI drivers from anywhere except Windows Update at this point since the Dell installer adds the Cisco modules, which break compatibility with my school's WIFI certificate system. The worst part about DCP, other than having to install more modules than you need, is that when I unplug my AC adapter in "Balanced" mode, the Windows scheme reverts to Windows 7 Basic, and I have to restart the Dell CPSys Manager process to get my Aero theme back. I reset all the settings to defaults, and even tried repairing the installation, all to no avail.

Bluetooth: A+ This driver is designed for Windows 7.

Everything else: A+ Including GPU, chipset, Suspend/Hibernate/Resume, (except one time I couldn't resume with video) chipset, SATA drivers, NIC, etc.

 

how did you get bluetooth working on it? i downloaded the latest driver but its still not working on mine

 

hmm....I've not had a BT problem using the driver from the dell site. I've only used it to connect my mouse.

 

there is a bt driver for the dell mouse i think? i've tried connecting to my phone (which is the only bt device i use really) but no luck

 

Did you try installing the BT stuff from Dell by running it as adminstrator and in Vista compatibility mode? When i first installed the RC it wouldn't let me run the installer and without it my BT mouse wouldn't scroll, running it as mentioned above did the trick.

 

i didnt install the BT mouse driver. there dosent seem to be a driver listed under windows 7 for the bluetooth module.

 

No no, not a mouse driver...just the driver for the 370 BT card and it's right there in the network category

 

dell-application
applies to wireless 370 bluetooth minicard

this is what i installed, but it dosent seem to work. using 7 pro 64. should i do the run as administrator thing?

 

that's weird...worked fine for me and i didn't need to "run as admin". Out of ideas then

 

Guys,

when I connect my M4400 to my LCD TV (via Dell DisplayPort->HDMI converter) it is not sending an audio signal to the TV.
I didn't have this problem with WinXP Pro x86 and audio worked correctly. Now I have Win7 Pro x64 and audio doesn't work on TV (I can only hear movie sounds from laptop speakers or I can plug in external speakers via jack).
Maybe it is an audio driver issue but I tested it with both original Win7 driver and now IDT audio driver downloaded from Dell. Both without success.
I have installed all drivers from Dell (for Win7 x64) and have no device conflicts.

Does enybody have this problem too?