great guide

i will use it as soon as i get time

Fenuxx, does the RyanVM integrator work fine with xp media center edition?

Yep.

@ Fenuxx:

I followed your steps through Vista-installation installation and used the drivers you quoted.

But there is still one big, big problem I have: The screen randomly starts flickering after installation of the GPU-driver. I first tried the Dell 167.45, then , having this damn flickering, replaced it by using Mobileforce 169.04. Same problem here. Flickering lasts about 15 seconds, vanishes, reappears upon simple actions like starting Dell Quick Set.

The Dell 98.09 works but, come on, it`s from January 2007 and I do need up to date drivers for Bioshock, COD4, and so on.

1st tried installation via vLite, then even did the full install. Damn, so much time...

U have an idea??? Thanks in advance.

Yep. You need to grab Nibitor, save your card's BIOS, up the 2D memory clock to 150MHz, and reflash the card.

It's a memory bandwidth bug, which shows itself at the 1920x1200 resolution, and you can thank Dell for putting such low memory clocks on the card. I experienced the same issue, looked and looked and looked for a solution, then ran across that, did it, and it worked beautifully. Haven't had the issue since.

Thank for the advice. Followed it - but did not help.

Raised the 2D-memory-clock from 100 to 150 first. Same flickering. Then even increased it to 200MHz. Didn`t work either :-(

In my desperation I ran Dell diagnostics, the whole bunch. No errors here.

Damn, I don`t wanna have to stick to ancient Dell Drivers!!! Have to find a way...

Hey, great guide, it all went off like you said it would. I have had two minor problems though, wondering if anyone could help.

1) My touchpad no longer scrolls. I've read this is because Dell mistakenly distributes the Synaptics driver with their xp bundle even though the pad is actually an ALPS. But I tried the ALPS driver, and couldn't force xp to adopt it.

2) I noticed a drop-off in graphics performance. Not sure if I need to recalibrate something, or if this is because I've gone from DX10 to DX9. For now I just dropped my gaming resolution. I'm using NVIDIA 6.14.11.5683 for the driver.

I have no idea what your system is, but I'm guessing XPS M1730 or Inspiron 1720.

1) Try the drivers that I pointed out in this thread on the first page for your touchpad drivers. They should be the same. If you do have an M1730 or Inspiron 1720, then it is a Synaptics touchpad. If all else fails, it's probably a setting in the driver that's not right, so check your touchpad configuration.

2) You need a different driver. Try 169.04 or 169.09. Either grab them from LaptopVideo2Go or from HERE. Make sure you properly uninstall your driver before installing the new one, as outlined HERE.

Thank you very much sir. I'll give it a shot.

Hey, sorry about providing no system data; I do have an Inspiron 1720. I tried your Synaptics driver again, to no avail. (the video works great though, thank you) The specific problem I get is, when I run Dell Touchpad Settings, I get a window with four clickable icons: Device Select, Scrolling Settings, Touchpad Settings, and External Mouse Settings. When I click on a button that works, I get a submenu. When I click on Touchpad Settings or Scrolling Settings, nothing happens. The system acknowledges the click, but no submenu opens.

This leads me to believe that I'm still running the basic XP PS/2 driver, somehow.

Thanks very much for all your help.

Hello,

I am new to this forum and this is my first post.

I have a 9300 and thanks to Tony, my Go 6800 went up about 25% in 3Dmark06. I'm not a HUGE performance junkie, but I needed more than the factory settings provided and the 8.3.9.0 pushed Civ IV over the edge into complete smoothness at 1920 x 1200 which made my gaming life much better. Thanks for that; you do great work.

My current question is whether this sweet reinstall guide also applies to the 9300. I presume that you word your posts carefully, and my dinosaur of a laptop was conspicuously absent...

Also, how much of a difference would just installing the Windows XP SP2 disc that came with my computer and then letting it update rather than creating this new disc that you talk about? I've never done anything like that before, and although I'm willing to learn, I'm not going to blow several hours for what may be a marginal increase in performance?

Any comments would be helpful, and thanks again for that 8.3.9.0 driver. At risk of really sounding like I don't know what I'm doing, I'm reinstalling that one when I wipe my system (Not broken, don't fix... factory from Dell constitutes broken)

How do you install the raid drivers when reinstalling vista ultimate to get rid of the bloatware? I'm not going to do the slipstream method. Is there a guide for this?

yea

1. take drivers disc that came with system extract the intel matrix drivers from there
2. load the driver on cd-r or usb flash driver
3. reboot
4. start vista install
5. when it get to the part to choose your hdd select install driver and load the files from the media you put them on

thats it and vista will install if you have raid or not you HAVE to do this to get Vista to properly install. Hope you still needed this info if not oh well some have asked, as did I, so I figured I would reply.

Hi there,

Can I slipstream Ryan's pack onti my Dell XP Pro sp2 FRENCH disk?
I want to replace Vista on my 1720 with XP pro and keep AHCI.

Thanks

-- EDIT --

Well, it looks like there are French packs so I'll grab that instead.
Also, the link for the "Dell notebook system software" is dead, it has been replaced by "R171889.EXE"

x86_December.7z and Vista_CustomPack_Dec.7z

do not seem to be available.

edit: I guess they're working with SP1