M17x: 32-bit Windows 7 support?

Here's an interesting story. Many moons ago I had a Toshiba Tecra 8200 with Windows 2000. One day that Windows 2000 environment got inexplicably hosed, and after many weeks of trying to solve it, and not wanting to start from scratch again, I decided to try "upgrading" to Windows XP.

It worked. But in time that system got to be too slow for the things I needed to do, so many moons later my employer gave me an XPS M1710 system that he purchased for himself, but later decided he had no use for. So I took the hard drive out of the Tecra 8000 and put it into the XPS M1710 and booted up. Of course I ran into problems. But, with the help of the XP Recovery Install, I got it up and running again, and after about two weeks of futzing and fiddling everything was as it was before. But faster, and with a larger display.

I used this system for a couple of years by the time my employer told me to get a new system for myself on his dime. And, like most people who find themselves with an open check for a new computer system, I went bonkers and got the biggest and baddest I could find--a fully loaded XPS M1730.

Although the XP Recovery install worked for migrating my XPS M1710 environment over to the M1730, there were a handful of problems that proved too time-consuming to deal with. So, I decided to see if a Vista Upgrade (sort of like a Recovery Install to my thinking) of the XP environment would solve my problem. It did! And after another week or so of futzing and fiddling around, everything was as it was before. But faster still, and with a few cool games installed that I never considered playing before for lack of hardware support.

But, then that M1730 ran into problems. The NVidia GeForce 8800 duel SLI cards that came with it (the 9800s weren't on the market yet) eventually died a miserable death. In a few days Dell got a nice man to bring me a new graphics module, which he let me replace myself. Dell support for some reason thought the display needed to be replaced, too. And since there was one dead pixel toward the bottom left of the display, I decided to let the nice man watch me replace that, too. And we were back up and running again, after some futzing and fiddling because what Dell support didn't tell me was that they were replacing the GeForce 8800 with a GeForce 9800--so I could only get into Safe Mode until I got my hands on the proper drivers and installed them. Things were good again, and I enjoyed my M1730.

But, then, that video card fried about 5 months later, and rendered my system unbootable. After many talks with Dell Support they sent out a replacement motherboard. That's all they could do because the replacement GeForce 9800 modules were on back order--for well over a month. When that didn't work, the Dell Technician who replaced the motherboard called up Dell on my behalf (he has a strong sense of customer service which I share and so can appreciate), Dell decided that rather than make me wait for a month and possibly longer to receive a replacement video card that's on near-perpetual back order, they'd replace the entire computer.

What I didn't know is that the replacement would be an Alienware M17x with the twin GTX 280s inside PLUS a third graphics chip set (GeForce 9400) on the motherboard itself! I was ecstatic about this last bit of information because it means that if the GTX 280s go down, the computer won't be disabled as a platform for development, school, and productivity. Like the M1730 it has 4GB ram and the BluRay combo drive, but unlike the old system, it has 640MB drive space.

Well I managed to get the Vista 32 environment running on the M17x without need of a recovery install. However, the system does run a bit slower than I'd expect (much slower and less responsive than the M1730 was) and because bluetooth adapters will not recognize anything on this system, I'm thinking it's time to either start from scratch, or take one last stab at doing a "repair install" by upgrading the Vista 32 environment to Windows 7.

But. And a big But. I don't see any 32 bit Windows 7 support drivers on Dell's website. Does Dell plan to support 32 bit Windows 7 on the M17x or is this just never going to happen? Is it finally time to really truly start over from scratch in the 64 bit world? It would mean well over a month's time reacquiring software and licenses that I haven't had to think about for many years, and which I've lost track of, plus setting up all my development environments, which I've also not had to think about the details of which for years. But if 32 bit Windows 7 won't be supported on the M17x, then I don't see what else I can do.

Any thoughts?

 

Have you read up on the Virtualization mode in Win7 (Pro and Ultimate versions). I had some old 32 bit VPN software I needed to log into on antiquated network that wouldn't run in 64 bit Windows, but works like a charm in XP mode on Windows 7.

You have to enable virtualization for your processor in BIOS first.

May not be your answer, but it is a good thing to know about either way.