Windows 7 and Chipset driver question | The Coffeehouse

giovanni
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I have a spare license of Windows 7 and since I would like to move my configuration from no RAID to RAID0, this could be a good opportunity to upgrade. Unfortunately, my Dell Precision T5400 does not ufficially support Windows 7, but I doubt that there will be any problem (the upgrade advisor did not show any warning).

I saw that other Precision models that are sold with Windows 7 do not have a Chipset Driver in their respective drivers download pages: do I need one or not? Did Microsoft finally include the driver on the Windows installation? Thanks

figuerres
???

Hmm... well they do tend to include drivers for lots of stuff each time they do a new windows version.

if the advisor did not complain thats a good sign. there are vista file for it?

if there are put all the vista stuff on a cd /dvd along with any new 7 drivers you find and backup the system.

then see what happens.

wed at a microsoft "Loadfest" we had about 20 folks with different laptops all load 7 in about an hour and i did not hear any one having issues.

giovanni
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In reply to figuerres

#Oct 23rd @ 4:53 AM

Yes, there are for Vista. However all similar models (mine only supports Vista) do have one for vista but none for 7. I think I will try without unless you strongly advise against this decision.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

In reply to giovanni

#Oct 23rd @ 5:24 AM

Either it works without a driver, or you'll be able to use the Vista driver. It's highly unlikely that the Vista drivers won't work on 7, so I say go for it.

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

In reply to giovanni

#Oct 23rd @ 5:24 AM

Vista 32 and 64 drivers work on 7 32 and 64 respectively.

giovanni
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In reply to Sven Groot

#Oct 23rd @ 5:26 AM

Thanks I'll give it a try.

giovanni
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Wow that was smooth! Just finished installing everything (I might be missing a couple of applications that I fogot, but nothing major). Everything went really smoothly and fast. I did not need to dowload any driver at all and installing Windows took way less than 30 mins.

The only problem I had was installing our network printer with the original CD (installation failed). I should have used the add printer dialog box from the beginning.

kaavar

In reply to giovanni

#Oct 24th @ 3:46 AM

thats awesome you did not have a problem.. I did .. i upgrade from vista 64 bit and after a couple of days, I receive blue screens of death stating there is a timing issue with 'one' of my processors.

of course dell would not help me (why do i pay for extra warranty anyways) as it's windows 7 and not vista which came with the box.

so i have restored the whole machine and will do a full clean install ... that kinda sucks.

I have had to do this twice with vista on this machine for other issues.. took forever to get the box to run without crashing and I did not think I would have a problem with win7 once I got vista running on it ...

guess I was wrong.

giovanni
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In reply to kaavar

#Oct 25th @ 6:28 PM

My esperience with tech support is that if you have any knowledge at all, then you better off this way.

I don't understand your post: you say that Windows 7 came with the box and then you say you had to do that before with Vista. Anyway, the clean install went very fast for me, the only problem timewise was reinstalling all the apps.

kaavar

In reply to giovanni

#Oct 26th @ 3:52 AM

sorry .. yes .. my t5400 came with vista business 64bit... i want to upgrade to windows 7 professional. i tried the upgrade, on top of the vista install, and ended up with blue screen and the message stating basically there was a timing issue with "one" of the processors.. as you will see in device manager, windows shows 8 processors (being 2 cpu's quad) .. maybe not related, as vista shows the same.

i just tried a fresh / clean install of windows 7 ... not an upgrade, but just windows 7 from the cd .. still the same thing .. i blue screen almost right away..

so i think this is a bios issue with the dell (intel) mother board and / or cpu's so i am stuck until dell or intell addresses i suppose.

i am running the current a04 bios from the dell website .

glad to hear you have no issues.. enjoy your system

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

In reply to kaavar

#Oct 27th @ 9:24 PM

Isn't there an a05 BIOS update out? I'm at work but I'm sure I have a05 on my home computer.

giovanni
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In reply to kaavar

#Oct 27th @ 9:24 PM

I have a very similar system (a Precision T5400 also with bios version A04 which is the latest for this system) and things went well without installing any drivers. Maybe you have some different hardware installed: I would try temporarely removing everything except for the video card or try resetting all bios settings to the default. If you downloaded the Windows 7 iso file, I would try dowloading it again as sometimes you might have an error in it.

The only other thing that comes to mind is that one of your processors is indeed defective. Do you have any way of testing that under Vista?