Warranty Repair / Driver questions.

Hello, My 1520 has started to run fairly hot. Dell wants me to send it in so they can give it a once over and find out what the problem is, but before i send it out, im backing up/reformatting (upgrading to a 320GB drive).

As for drivers, what's the best video drivers to use for my 8600? I think i upgraded the drivers once, but i know they're not the newest ones, what version do ya'll find to be the best?

Also, when im baking up, other than video/lan/usb, is there any drivers i may be forgetting? I always get all my drivers ready before i reformat.

Now, onto Warranty Repair. once i get my new drive setup, i will put the old drive back in for when i send it in. I have upgraded from 2GB's (2x1gb) to 4GB's (2x2GBs), when sending in for repair, should i put my default ram back in the system? Or would it be ok to leave my aftermarket ram in it?

I ask cause my old ram is now in my GF's laptop.

Any other warranty repair/driver/formatting advice/concerns would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

I'd remove the ram and reinstall the old one, If anything goes wrong in the land of dell, and they decide to send you a replacement, they'll only have records of 2G's of ram in your laptop, so you'll only get two G's put in to your new one, not the 4G's that you sent in.

 

You should keep your RAM so that it doesn't get 'misplaced'. You would also be fine keeping the hard drive when you return it. They might even suggest that you do since they won't be liable for any data loss. All the drivers you would need are on support.dell.com.

 

Thanks for the replies. Got a nice round of BSoD's when i formatted my new 320GB drive while installing windows updates. so im now on my secoond format/install, and it seems to be fine, so far. going to give it a week or so just to make sure it's all good before i wipe off my original drive.

Hopefully it all goes well. I got myself a list of things to install/replace. and my trustly external drive backup as well.

You mentioned having all the drivers on the dell website, but are the video card drivers on the dell's website the best choice? or should i just go to the nVidea website?