Hi all! I just wanted to pass along my experience with installing Windows Vista (32 bit x86 Ultimate Edition) on my Alienware Area51m Model 766...
First, my system is a stock 766 with 1gb ram, 40A8 motherboard revision, and ATI Radeon Mobility 9700 128MB. I rescued it from the ebay parts bin a few weeks back, and it's a wonderful machine.
Recommendations:
1. Make sure you have a wired connection to the internet before you install Vista. Out of the box it won't recognize the Atheros wireless card. After running Windows Update for the first time, the appropriate drivers for the WLAN will be installed (sound too) and you won't need the cable anymore.
2. To get your modem working, download the latest 766 modem driver from the Alienware support site. You will use the XP drivers. Although a bit dated, they seem to work fine.
3. To get the PCMCIA/SD3 port working, download HP SoftPaq sp25081.exe from HP's website. I tried over 15 different driver sets and this is the ONLY one that worked for me. The softpaq doesn't contain anything HP/Compaq specific, it is just a repacked 02Micro InstallShield file that unzips the contents to a directory on C: rather than to a temp directory as most instalshield installers do. In my case, I ran this on my XP desktop machine first, let it unpack the files (to C:\swsetup) and clicked cancel when it started to install the files to my desktop machine. I then copied the C:\swsetup directory to my thumbdrive.
HERE WE GO...
Start by placing the Vista CD in your drive and boot up. When prompted, press a key to boot from the CD. This will start Vista's setup program.
I chose to delete my existing XP Pro partition (NTFS) to start with a perfectly clean Vista install. After Vista setup deleted my XP partition, I pressed NEXT and Vista setup copied files to the hard drive. I think it set up a partition and did a "quick" format behind the scenes. This took about 2 minutes. Complete installation took over 1/2 an hour but seemed to pass quickly. The machine rebooted twice, once to start Vista and a 2nd time after the base devices were installed. This appears to be normal. Just avoid pressing any keys during the reboots to avoid restarting the CD based setup program.
When setup finishes, you should run Windows Update manually to install the latest security updates. This will also install the wireless drivers for the Atheros WLAN a+b+g mini-pci card as well as the C-Media AC97 sound drivers.
Run Windows Update a 2nd time manually and manually select and install the updated drivers for the ATI graphics card and SIS AGP port.
Next install the drivers for the modem by selecting UPDATE DRIVER from device manager and pointing it at the unzipped modem driver directory (in my case on a USB thumb drive).
Next, install the PCMCIA/SD card reader driver by running the softpaq setup program. Don't rush things. Wait a good 5 minutes after you install this, then reboot your machine. After reboot it should eventually find the O2Micro hardware and install the appropriate drivers. After driver installation is complete, reboot one more time "just to make sure".
Next, go to device manager and right click on each of the PCMCIA ports and select update driver. Allow Vista to go online and look for updates. It will find the Microsoft provided drivers version 6.0.6006.16386 dated 6/21/2006 and automatically install them. The device name will change to "O2Micro OZ711M1/MC1 Memory Cardbus Controller". Do this for EACH of the controllers. The accellerator will continue to use the O2Micro driver version 1.0.4.701 dated 7/29/2003. I haven't fully tested everything, but it does work fine for reading/writing to my 1gb sd card and it recognized my Adaptec SlimSCSI 1460 PCMCIA card (I still need drivers for that though).
At this point you should have everything up and running with no unresolved hardware issues in device manager.
it wouldn't hurt to defrag the hard drive about now. Right click the Vista logo in the bottom left part of the screen and explore. Scroll down to your C: drive and right click to bring up the menu and then click properties and select the tools tab to get to the defrag program. Defrag seems to run in the background, and doesn't display any status. Just let it go.
Vista looks GREAT on the model 766! The Aero interface is cool! See-thru windows, that funky scrolling angled window thing, all look great. Smooth as silk too. I also like Media Center!
Here are the performance numbers for Vista on my 766:
Processors: Calculations per second 4.3
Memory (RAM): Memory operations per second 4.4
Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero 3.5
Gaming Graphics: 3D business and gaming graphics performance 3.5
Primary Hard drive: Disk data transfer rate 4.4
Base Score: 3.5
Based upon lowest subscore
The video is the weekest part of the system due to the 128MB memory limitation of my ATI card. Hard drive performance is for my Seagate 80GB 5400rpm drive. 7200 rpm drives will probably show even better numbers.
Hope this helps anyone else out there that have a 5500/766 and want to use Vista.
If you run into any problems, give me a shout and I'll try to help.
First, my system is a stock 766 with 1gb ram, 40A8 motherboard revision, and ATI Radeon Mobility 9700 128MB. I rescued it from the ebay parts bin a few weeks back, and it's a wonderful machine.
Recommendations:
1. Make sure you have a wired connection to the internet before you install Vista. Out of the box it won't recognize the Atheros wireless card. After running Windows Update for the first time, the appropriate drivers for the WLAN will be installed (sound too) and you won't need the cable anymore.
2. To get your modem working, download the latest 766 modem driver from the Alienware support site. You will use the XP drivers. Although a bit dated, they seem to work fine.
3. To get the PCMCIA/SD3 port working, download HP SoftPaq sp25081.exe from HP's website. I tried over 15 different driver sets and this is the ONLY one that worked for me. The softpaq doesn't contain anything HP/Compaq specific, it is just a repacked 02Micro InstallShield file that unzips the contents to a directory on C: rather than to a temp directory as most instalshield installers do. In my case, I ran this on my XP desktop machine first, let it unpack the files (to C:\swsetup) and clicked cancel when it started to install the files to my desktop machine. I then copied the C:\swsetup directory to my thumbdrive.
HERE WE GO...
Start by placing the Vista CD in your drive and boot up. When prompted, press a key to boot from the CD. This will start Vista's setup program.
I chose to delete my existing XP Pro partition (NTFS) to start with a perfectly clean Vista install. After Vista setup deleted my XP partition, I pressed NEXT and Vista setup copied files to the hard drive. I think it set up a partition and did a "quick" format behind the scenes. This took about 2 minutes. Complete installation took over 1/2 an hour but seemed to pass quickly. The machine rebooted twice, once to start Vista and a 2nd time after the base devices were installed. This appears to be normal. Just avoid pressing any keys during the reboots to avoid restarting the CD based setup program.
When setup finishes, you should run Windows Update manually to install the latest security updates. This will also install the wireless drivers for the Atheros WLAN a+b+g mini-pci card as well as the C-Media AC97 sound drivers.
Run Windows Update a 2nd time manually and manually select and install the updated drivers for the ATI graphics card and SIS AGP port.
Next install the drivers for the modem by selecting UPDATE DRIVER from device manager and pointing it at the unzipped modem driver directory (in my case on a USB thumb drive).
Next, install the PCMCIA/SD card reader driver by running the softpaq setup program. Don't rush things. Wait a good 5 minutes after you install this, then reboot your machine. After reboot it should eventually find the O2Micro hardware and install the appropriate drivers. After driver installation is complete, reboot one more time "just to make sure".
Next, go to device manager and right click on each of the PCMCIA ports and select update driver. Allow Vista to go online and look for updates. It will find the Microsoft provided drivers version 6.0.6006.16386 dated 6/21/2006 and automatically install them. The device name will change to "O2Micro OZ711M1/MC1 Memory Cardbus Controller". Do this for EACH of the controllers. The accellerator will continue to use the O2Micro driver version 1.0.4.701 dated 7/29/2003. I haven't fully tested everything, but it does work fine for reading/writing to my 1gb sd card and it recognized my Adaptec SlimSCSI 1460 PCMCIA card (I still need drivers for that though).
At this point you should have everything up and running with no unresolved hardware issues in device manager.
it wouldn't hurt to defrag the hard drive about now. Right click the Vista logo in the bottom left part of the screen and explore. Scroll down to your C: drive and right click to bring up the menu and then click properties and select the tools tab to get to the defrag program. Defrag seems to run in the background, and doesn't display any status. Just let it go.
Vista looks GREAT on the model 766! The Aero interface is cool! See-thru windows, that funky scrolling angled window thing, all look great. Smooth as silk too. I also like Media Center!
Here are the performance numbers for Vista on my 766:
Processors: Calculations per second 4.3
Memory (RAM): Memory operations per second 4.4
Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero 3.5
Gaming Graphics: 3D business and gaming graphics performance 3.5
Primary Hard drive: Disk data transfer rate 4.4
Base Score: 3.5
Based upon lowest subscore
The video is the weekest part of the system due to the 128MB memory limitation of my ATI card. Hard drive performance is for my Seagate 80GB 5400rpm drive. 7200 rpm drives will probably show even better numbers.
Hope this helps anyone else out there that have a 5500/766 and want to use Vista.
If you run into any problems, give me a shout and I'll try to help.
