Inspiron 9300 users running Win 7? Problems!

I totally wiped out my drive and started anew on my 9300. Most of my hardware drivers were accounted for. But, I'm missing sound, wireless, Fn+ X keyboard shortcuts, and (most importantly) my ATI X300, which may as well not exist because Windows sure isn't recognizing it. I haven't been able to get online with it yet, so I'm not sure how many of these problems I can clear up by searching with 7's troubleshooting tools.

Of course, ATI doesn't have official Vista drivers for the X300. Has anyone worked around Dell's OEM drivers, or have those been fine for you? I really wanted to make it a nice cable/OTA HD Media Center, but I especially need my video card up and running for that.

 

You uh... you're going to need to install drivers. I would try installing Vista drivers, they should be compatible for the most part.
Using a tool like Unknown Devices ( http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3908.html) should help you pull hardware IDs on the hardware missing drivers, then you can search the internet for Vista drivers. I say this because Dell does not offer Vista drivers for the Inspiron 9300 AFAIK.
As for the X300, you might want to look into Omega drivers ( http://www.omegadrivers.net/).
Though I personally think a better course of action would be to just install XP again and set it up as a media center to suit your needs.

 

If they did, I wouldn't be on here! I would have used my newer HP and my USB stick to transfer the drivers over to the Inspiron, like I did for a few of the working devices.

 

You may need to extract the drivers from their package using WinRAR or another archiving tool, then install manually with a .inf file.
What wireless card do you have?
What audio?
Give me some hardware IDs.
I would not expect great hardware support though. Getting even a fully released product like Vista to run on older hardware can be a challenge, and since Win 7 is only in BETA, it's not a surprise in the least that much older hardware is not supported yet, if ever.

 

I had regular AC '97 audio onboard, but it was from SigmaTel (now defunct), so it was hard to find their drivers.

However...I forgot I had a drivers and utilities CD! The audio was installed, but the Intel drivers and ATI driver check for the OS version. I tried editing a "Version" file in the Intel files, and I tried to add "Windows 7 Ultimate" to a string containing supported OSes. It wouldn't let me save these changes, though.

 

Everything's cleared up, but I always assumed that the X300 had enough oomph to run Aero, which is so much better in 7. It's running the basic shell, which is disappointing. Considering the age of the driver on my restore disc, however, it probably doesn't support Vista officially.