vortex_mak
Contributor
Hi Guys,
I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop a few weeks ago and just loved it :hap2: . I’ll be posting a review soon.
The things that I liked about Dell are their prompt customer service, high quality of products, customization and openness about the components. While other manufacturers may themselves not know which components went into their products, Dell gives full details and appropriate drivers. A boon for control obsessed geeks like me.:cool2:
Dell gave Vista installation, Media Direct (quick boot to play media), system driver DVDs with the laptop, that was also a plus point. All of the information given below applies to Inspiron 1520 but should also apply to other Dell systems with Vista. Please note that you should be well versed with computers before performing any of these steps, I cannot guarantee that everything will go as stated, please backup all your data, data loss is always a risk.
There were 4 partitions on the 160GB Disk
Utility Partition – bootable, hidden, 78MB, FAT, used for system diagnostics
Vista Partition – contains Vista and all software, NTFS, ~135GB
Recovery Partition – contains factory restore image in the Vista ImageX format, 10GB, NTFS
Media Direct Partition – 2.5 GB, contains Media Direct for quickly booting to media player
The system came ready for use, but I had to customize it my way with separate partitions for data and install XP in a dual boot config. This is very easy on an assembled system, because you know what hardware is in the system and what it should do, you have to start from scratch but on a laptop this does not apply. I used the system for two weeks just to make sure how everything worked in the default config so I could make it better and not lose any functionality in the process.
Even with 2 GB RAM, and 2GHz proccy Vista does go like an overloaded donkey, mostly because it’s bloated with useless eye-candy and partly because we are not very familiar with tweaking it, like we do with XP.
I had the following objectives:
1. Try to save the utility partition and recovery information (though I may never need it)
2. Preparation and Clean drive
3. Repartition and Install XP with room for Vista
1. I tried to shrink the Vista partition using the disk management console (shrink and merge, new features), I was only able to recover 60 GB of 135 because of some unmovable files (had already disabled page file, restore, and hibernation and done defrag), then I realized there were already four primary partitions and I could not add another. Now cleaning everything was the only option.
The first priority was to save the recovery partition; I copied the recovery partitions files to a folder on my external hard disk and tried the following:
a. Tried to run the dell recovery app directly from the portable, though I knew it wouldn’t work
b. Tried to boot from Vista DVD, use the repair option and point it to the portable hdd, didn’t work
c. Googling for this came up with instructions to image the recovery partition and restore the image later; I have always been prejudiced against disk images. (seems like reheating frozen food on an dirty pan)
d. Tried something new, booted into Vista Recovery DVD repair option, and on the command line –
format c:
ImageX <location of image> <image no.> <restore location>
the dell image was in the folder dell\image\factory.wim
eg. Imagex f:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:\
this restored the factory default installation back to c drive, an interesting thing was if I didn’t format c:, it merged the factory default image with the existing installation (i.e. data will be saved).
e. Mission accomplished :clap: , note that I only formatted the vista partition this may or may not work if the whole disk is formatted, also note this procedure is only applicable to Vista, on XP dell uses another method (see gooddells.net). More info on imagx can be found at MS Technet
2. Dowload all XP drivers from the Dell site by entering your product code or selecting the model. Save them on some external storage.
Another roadblock, Inspiron has a SATA hdd and the XP setup will not recognize the hdd, there are two options: disable AHCI and Flash cache from BIOS and enable ATA mode, XP will now recognize the hdd but this will probably give lower performance and if you switch to AHCI in the future windows will crash.
Better option is to slipstream AHCI drivers into XP setup, for this we will use a tool called nlite (nLite - Deployment Tool for the bootable Unattended Windows installation please chk here for detailed instructions and screenshots) and the intel matrix storage manager drivers from the dell site.
a. copy all files from the xp cd to a folder on your computer, extract the intel sata drivers to another folder
b. click next>next, task selection window will come up, choose integrate drivers and create a bootable iso (you may also want to customize and tweak the installation by enabling other buttons)
c. click next, on the integrate drivers dialog select insert, give the location of the extracted ahci drivers, the selected drivers will be shown in the window
d. click next until you come to the create bootable iso window, it is recommended though not necessary to give the same label as your xp original cd
e. done. Test it out by booting off it and verifying whether it recognizes the hdd in ahci bios mode :cool2:
3. Time to reformat, double check you have backed up everything you need.
Boot the XP cd (press f12 at the BIOS screen and from the menu select cd/dvd). The setup should correctly recognize the hdd, there will be four partitions as given above.
Since, the BIOS itself provides the option booting the utility partition (partition code 0xDE), I figured, that the utility partition is not dependant on the MBR and should survive as long as I left the utility partition intact.
So now, delete all partition except the utility partition (it will not have any label and will be 78Mb in size)
Another roadblock, two un-partitioned segments were being shown 149 gb (from recovery and os) and one 2.5gb (from media direct), since the partitions were already deleted I didn’t know why two free space segments were there and setup was not allowing to delete them. I next inserted the Vista dvd and tried the Vista GUI partition manger, same result, I fired up the command line and started diskpart command (type help to get disk part help). Diskpart works like this, select a disk using select command, then select a partition using select command, now you can operate on this partitions, I deleted both the un-partitioned segments and tried creating new ones, since I was using diskpart the first time and had no manual, it didn’t work correctly.
Booted off the XP cd again, now there was one un-partitioned segment, I created a 15 GB NTFS partitioned on it and installed XP; the installation went smoothly (Hooray! Mission accomplished :clap: )
Install chipset driver, nvidia driver, network driver, wifi driver, audio driver, another roadblock, the driver didn’t work and neither did the modem one.
Googled around found another driver (can’t remember the link now, tried a combination of driver from windows update, this hotfix Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) High Definition Audio class driver version 1.0a available for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 and new driver), I don’t know what worked but it finally did.
Now only the Bluetooth driver is left which I will tackle today as when I start the setup it asks to switch on the Bluetooth device:huh: , but I don’t know how , will post the results tomorrow
Whew, that was a long article, if you know other simpler methods for doing the above tasks please do post and was anyone able to install the Bluetooth driver? It will save me a lot of trouble tonight.
Thanks
I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop a few weeks ago and just loved it :hap2: . I’ll be posting a review soon.
The things that I liked about Dell are their prompt customer service, high quality of products, customization and openness about the components. While other manufacturers may themselves not know which components went into their products, Dell gives full details and appropriate drivers. A boon for control obsessed geeks like me.:cool2:
Dell gave Vista installation, Media Direct (quick boot to play media), system driver DVDs with the laptop, that was also a plus point. All of the information given below applies to Inspiron 1520 but should also apply to other Dell systems with Vista. Please note that you should be well versed with computers before performing any of these steps, I cannot guarantee that everything will go as stated, please backup all your data, data loss is always a risk.
There were 4 partitions on the 160GB Disk
Utility Partition – bootable, hidden, 78MB, FAT, used for system diagnostics
Vista Partition – contains Vista and all software, NTFS, ~135GB
Recovery Partition – contains factory restore image in the Vista ImageX format, 10GB, NTFS
Media Direct Partition – 2.5 GB, contains Media Direct for quickly booting to media player
The system came ready for use, but I had to customize it my way with separate partitions for data and install XP in a dual boot config. This is very easy on an assembled system, because you know what hardware is in the system and what it should do, you have to start from scratch but on a laptop this does not apply. I used the system for two weeks just to make sure how everything worked in the default config so I could make it better and not lose any functionality in the process.
Even with 2 GB RAM, and 2GHz proccy Vista does go like an overloaded donkey, mostly because it’s bloated with useless eye-candy and partly because we are not very familiar with tweaking it, like we do with XP.
I had the following objectives:
1. Try to save the utility partition and recovery information (though I may never need it)
2. Preparation and Clean drive
3. Repartition and Install XP with room for Vista
1. I tried to shrink the Vista partition using the disk management console (shrink and merge, new features), I was only able to recover 60 GB of 135 because of some unmovable files (had already disabled page file, restore, and hibernation and done defrag), then I realized there were already four primary partitions and I could not add another. Now cleaning everything was the only option.
The first priority was to save the recovery partition; I copied the recovery partitions files to a folder on my external hard disk and tried the following:
a. Tried to run the dell recovery app directly from the portable, though I knew it wouldn’t work
b. Tried to boot from Vista DVD, use the repair option and point it to the portable hdd, didn’t work
c. Googling for this came up with instructions to image the recovery partition and restore the image later; I have always been prejudiced against disk images. (seems like reheating frozen food on an dirty pan)
d. Tried something new, booted into Vista Recovery DVD repair option, and on the command line –
format c:
ImageX <location of image> <image no.> <restore location>
the dell image was in the folder dell\image\factory.wim
eg. Imagex f:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:\
this restored the factory default installation back to c drive, an interesting thing was if I didn’t format c:, it merged the factory default image with the existing installation (i.e. data will be saved).
e. Mission accomplished :clap: , note that I only formatted the vista partition this may or may not work if the whole disk is formatted, also note this procedure is only applicable to Vista, on XP dell uses another method (see gooddells.net). More info on imagx can be found at MS Technet
2. Dowload all XP drivers from the Dell site by entering your product code or selecting the model. Save them on some external storage.
Another roadblock, Inspiron has a SATA hdd and the XP setup will not recognize the hdd, there are two options: disable AHCI and Flash cache from BIOS and enable ATA mode, XP will now recognize the hdd but this will probably give lower performance and if you switch to AHCI in the future windows will crash.
Better option is to slipstream AHCI drivers into XP setup, for this we will use a tool called nlite (nLite - Deployment Tool for the bootable Unattended Windows installation please chk here for detailed instructions and screenshots) and the intel matrix storage manager drivers from the dell site.
a. copy all files from the xp cd to a folder on your computer, extract the intel sata drivers to another folder
b. click next>next, task selection window will come up, choose integrate drivers and create a bootable iso (you may also want to customize and tweak the installation by enabling other buttons)
c. click next, on the integrate drivers dialog select insert, give the location of the extracted ahci drivers, the selected drivers will be shown in the window
d. click next until you come to the create bootable iso window, it is recommended though not necessary to give the same label as your xp original cd
e. done. Test it out by booting off it and verifying whether it recognizes the hdd in ahci bios mode :cool2:
3. Time to reformat, double check you have backed up everything you need.
Boot the XP cd (press f12 at the BIOS screen and from the menu select cd/dvd). The setup should correctly recognize the hdd, there will be four partitions as given above.
Since, the BIOS itself provides the option booting the utility partition (partition code 0xDE), I figured, that the utility partition is not dependant on the MBR and should survive as long as I left the utility partition intact.
So now, delete all partition except the utility partition (it will not have any label and will be 78Mb in size)
Another roadblock, two un-partitioned segments were being shown 149 gb (from recovery and os) and one 2.5gb (from media direct), since the partitions were already deleted I didn’t know why two free space segments were there and setup was not allowing to delete them. I next inserted the Vista dvd and tried the Vista GUI partition manger, same result, I fired up the command line and started diskpart command (type help to get disk part help). Diskpart works like this, select a disk using select command, then select a partition using select command, now you can operate on this partitions, I deleted both the un-partitioned segments and tried creating new ones, since I was using diskpart the first time and had no manual, it didn’t work correctly.
Booted off the XP cd again, now there was one un-partitioned segment, I created a 15 GB NTFS partitioned on it and installed XP; the installation went smoothly (Hooray! Mission accomplished :clap: )
Install chipset driver, nvidia driver, network driver, wifi driver, audio driver, another roadblock, the driver didn’t work and neither did the modem one.
Googled around found another driver (can’t remember the link now, tried a combination of driver from windows update, this hotfix Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) High Definition Audio class driver version 1.0a available for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 and new driver), I don’t know what worked but it finally did.
Now only the Bluetooth driver is left which I will tackle today as when I start the setup it asks to switch on the Bluetooth device:huh: , but I don’t know how , will post the results tomorrow
Whew, that was a long article, if you know other simpler methods for doing the above tasks please do post and was anyone able to install the Bluetooth driver? It will save me a lot of trouble tonight.
Thanks
