Dell Vostro 1500

[C0RR0SIVE]

Sweet we got the same lappys!!! But yea, there isn't really much on there other than the dell drivers, btw, if your gonna put xp on there, tell me how you did it because I can't get xp pro sp2 to see that it has a hard drive... Also, if your screen starts to come loose then look at that little how to that I made the other night, mine came loose and it was because they didn't put anything on the screws to keep them from coming loose...

 

[Schecters]

That problem, from what I've read, is because the vostro ships with a sata drive, and you're xp disc does not have sata drivers on it. You can slipstream it with the sata drivers, or you can have them on a floppy/cd and put them in when it blue screens you. I don't think I'll have this problem, because my oem cd installed fine on both of my other sata drives.

But if I do run into problems, I'll let you know how I did it. Oh and when I get home tonight I'll put up a link on here going into greater detail about what you do with the sata drivers.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I tried one of the cds that came with the vocational schools newer dell computers, and it didn't recognize it.... So... This is gonna be fun...

 

[ricanflow]

I dont see why you guys have this problem cause dell sells the vostro online with xp pro.

 

[Schecters]

I dont see why you guys have this problem cause dell sells the vostro online with xp pro.

Yeah and pay an extra $100. Or, I could take the xp home edition for free, and then use my own oem cd with the dell key and have a clean slate.

 

[Difolo]

You should run games smoothly at 800x600 or 1024x768. I was looking at this lappy too, i just wish they offered a more powerful option for graphics, like an 8800 card.

Alienware offers a 8800 Mobile chip, but they charge way too much for it. Seeing as dell is sliping the Penryn into most of their machines, I would have waited to purchase a laptop. It will run you quite a bit more in price for one, but the CPU is everything. Several years from now you can replace almost every component of that laptop with ease, except the CPU.

 

[Schecters]

To Charles_Scott,

My initial install went off without a hitch. I'm about to run autopatcher. But I'll give you a link that I think will help you with your install.

Go here, hopefully this helps

Check out post #'s 8, 9 and 10.

Basically you need to get the sata drivers from dell or the actual hdd manufacturer, and then load them in when you get that first blue screen that asks if you want to use third party drivers. I hope you can figure your problem out!

 

[ricanflow]

Yeah and pay an extra $100. Or, I could take the xp home edition for free, and then use my own oem cd with the dell key and have a clean slate.

Funny, when i went to configure the system it was included in the price, and xp pro not home.

 

[Schecters]

Yeah, they seemed to have changed what they offer for which size laptop. I'm definitely liking this laptop.

The only gripes I really have are that

a) the 8600m GT is not supported under nvidia's newest release of drivers. You can manually apply the drivers through device manager, but it shows up as just a regular 8600 gt. It was kind of weird when I did that so I just got the newest drivers from dell

b) the touchpad is really small. I am constantly scrolling over instead of moving the mouse, and it ****es me off. haha.

But this laptop is definitely pretty sweet. I have xp and ubuntu running on it right now. Tweaking stuff when I get the chance.