Moving from e6500 to m4500

Hello everyone,

I'm thinking about upgrading my old e6500 to a not-quite-as-old m4500. What I'm wondering: Is there any chance I can take my Windows 10 HD from an e6500 and simply stick it into the m4500, or is the hardware too different? Licensing issues asside, I would hope that the hardware is similar enough that it'll at least boot up and then install the drivers for the changed components automatically. Is that hope in vain?

Thanks a lot!

 

Generally speaking, you'll get a BSOD more often than not. But it doesn't hurt to try.

 

Running Win10, there is a more than fair chance that after a couple of reboots (and a manual install of a driver or two) it will work.

But...

This is worse than cloning a drive to an SSD.

Do it right; download the Win10 ISO you have and perform a clean install and w/proper drivers instead.

 

Agreed, do a clean install and you'll get better performance and less issues..

 

This, Windows is likely to try and use the wrong drivers for some components. It's always better to do a clean install., there will be a lot of hardware changes including components such as the chipset which is basically responsible for everything communicating with the CPU. The M4500 is actually first gen core i and there were some fundamental changed in the chipset architecture between the core 2 and core i architectures. The memory controller was integrated directly onto the CPU, you stopped having a southbridge and northbridge configuration and only got a single chip that manages everything the CPU doesn't (the PCH). I'd expect Windows to freak out a bit when it's expecting multiple chips where there is actually one and the CPU in now handling things it didn't on the previous machine. You're asking for trouble if you try swapping the hard drives directly.

It is possible Windows will recognize the hardware change, but then again it's possible it will not.

 

IIRC, the only meaningful difference between the M4500 and the E6400 was the inclusion of Nvidia graphics, and a relatively minor up-notch of the chipset. Also a few configuration options relating to the LCD. It is very likely that if you just swap the HDDs (upgrade that to a SSD ASAP!), you will be dumped into VGA mode and will have to install the Nvidia driver.

The odds are quite in favour of you. Especially with Windows 10 which handles everything more gracefully than ever before.

 

FRESH INSTALL.. FRESH INSTALL..

 

Nah. The whole point of these machines, and Dell providing a relatively stable environment without a lot of changes and a lot of driver commonality, is that companies can deploy the same image to a large fleet of laptops within an overall family without spinning a new image.

I once worked for a multinational that had a single image that could be successfully applied to the D600/D800, D610/D620, D630, D80 laptops. Windows had to perform a little bit of magic when it was applied, but it worked and tens of thousands of computers ran the same original image.

 

pitz, no doubt it will work (I already stated as much, above).

But how well vs. a clean install? That is the question.

If the system is to be depended on for the next few months (~18+) or years... a clean install is an investment of avoiding possibly hundreds of little gremlins over the lifecycle of the system.

I've even booted up an Win7 image on different hardware in the distant past. Sure, everything worked for the short time I tested it before a clean install was performed a few days later. But the most obvious glitch on that particular system? Using it with a heavy workload seemed to 'prove' there were no issues. However, leaving it idle for too long (variable... from about 40 minutes to 3 hours) would lock it up.

As expected, no issues after a clean install. And the fan ran slower/quieter, the battery life (idle) was a little longer and the system was as stable as it can be.

A 'stable' environment provided by Dell or any other single pc manufacturer is so 2009 these days... Win10 changes almost with every cumulative update that is offered, ime. That 'stable' environment provided by the manufacturer soon becomes obsolete in my view (unless you've started with a clean, Win10x64Pro install).

 

Thanks for all the replies! Since I also ended up migrating from a regular HD to an SSD, I decided to do a fresh install. However, I still collected a couple of issues on the way, which I decided to post in the m4500 owner's lounge:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-m4500-owners-lounge.472146/page-179#post-10246767

If someone can check it out, that would be really cool - hopefully I can get at least one or two of these sorted out. Thanks!