XPS 1530 I've kind of lost hope..

Hello,

I've had my 1530 since january 2008. I quickly replaced Vista by XP using a driver pack I found here, and it didn't work so bad, but not so well either..

A few months ago I had to format the hdd, I reinstalled Win XP (SP3) and the problems started. The system was quite unstable, I had some drivers issues (even with using globally the same drivers pack as before), the sound would only come out on the left channel (I tested my speakers with an other PC, they work well), etc.

I thought "this laptop was made for Vista, let's give Win7 a try as it's supposed to be compatible". So I installed Windows 7, it's quite nice, I used the Vista drivers and something from laptopvideo2go for the graphics, it's working actually quite well.. except for the freezes/blue screens I get quite regularly (I'd say at least 5 times a week). So far, I've had the pleasure to meet the "BAD_POOL_CALLER", "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" and [no message] blue screens..

SO, the point is: what can I do? Is there really a way to make XP or 7 work on this laptop? I suspect there might be some hardware problem because quite a lot of times, when I left my laptop switched on with XP, I came back and found an error screen.. But I can't really say where the problem is, and I don't know if Dell support will take a look at it (especially if I say that I'm using XP or 7) in this situation..

Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks

 

for window 7 go in your bios change your HDD To ATA as same as XP. I will fix blue screen. I have XP for almost a year no problem. I think you have to do more research on XP if not, I guess your only choice is put vista back . Hope this helps.

 

Heaps of people are running Win 7 on M1530's with no problems (there's a big thread on it here). I'd suspect a hardware issue that's maybe slowly getting worse. Some bad RAM used to give me DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors on my Desktop, at random times. If you've got two sticks of RAM, try taking one out and see if it still crashes. Then try the other one on its own, in the other slot.

 

Thank you for your answers, I'll try that and see what happens..

 

Any reason why you don't just use Vista?

 

Well.. I guess I was just really disappointed when I tried it (right after it was released), and I decided to "skip" that one and wait for 7..

 

yea why not just use vista? vista runs great on the 1340 and ran good on my 1330 when i had one

 

Vista has run flawlessly on my 1530 for over a year.

 

I had Windows 7 running perfectly on my M1530, if I recall every driver I needed was installed automatically from the disc or windows update. You definitely don't need to change to ATA in the bios.

If you have gotten a video driver off laptopvideo2go, that is possibly your problem. Just stick with the Nvidia official Win7 beta driver and it'll be fine.

Personally, ive used XP a little on my M1530, and also experimented with Win 7, but at the end of the day, Vista is what I use 99% of the time. It is a great OS, and fully supported for the M1530. If you are having a lot of problem it would just be much simpler to stick to the OS that shipped with your laptop.

 

i second this, winxp is NOT recommended for the m1530, and it shouldnt, vista runs perfectly on it, dont like it? maybe try windows 7, its much faster than vista, other alternatives are linux or OSX, but neither have the same functionality of good ol' windows

 

Ok, well I'll put the official Nvidia Win7 driver and see if it solves the problems, and test my RAM sticks if it doesn't..

(And if it still doesn't work, I might think of the possibility of maybe going with Vista, maybe it's not so bad with SP1..)

I'll get back to you in a few days, when I see if the blue screens have stopped

Thank you everybody

Edit: in case someone encounters the same problem.. after almost one month with official Win7 Nvidia driver, only 1 BSOD, probably just the hazard of running a beta OS.. Thank you for your advice!