A couple of M4400 issues

I believe there's a reason why XP support from Microsoft has been extended, and why companies such as dell are offering a XP rollback for all workstations. I'm skipping Vista, but I will of course be evaluating Windows 7. Right now XP seems to be the best choice for me, apart from Linux (I work with 3D and compositing).

These things are personal, and there's no point dicussing the OS. Let's get back on topic

Does anyone know if Broadcom USH is used for anything at all when the M4400 doesn't have a fingerprint reader? Are there any other security features in the machine that needs the driver?

 

I'm a fanboy of no OS stingray,simply use what I think is best at the time for my usage,and couldn't really care less what someone else uses,but people [particularly on this forum] seem to want everybody to use what they themselves like,particularly vista user's.

Google result's mean jack to me,I'll take my own personal experience and known unbiased user's opinion's in my particular profession any day over some writer with an agenda in either direction telling me what's best....I take it from your reply that your not benefitting from being able to see all 4 GB of your ram then.?

If you don't ram vista down people's gob's,I'll pretty much keep my mouth shut...k



@superrune,also affects usage of trusted platform module and smartcard's if you use them,probably other thing's as well,anything security related seems to be tied in with it.

 

i wasnt trying to ram vista down people's gobs, as you put it. there are a lot of people who have never even tried vista and avoid it because of all the bad press it got pre sp1.

you misunderstood and over reacted.

 

Vista is solid on the M4400, the machine was meant to run on it. It's fast, smooth, and rock solid. Yes, it chews up too much RAM, but with 4gb RAM and a T series processor you're good to go.

I was a die-hard XP user till I tried Vista on my M4400, now I can't go back to XP.

Moving to Vista is almost mental thing. Just don't listen to everyone on their cheap best buy laptops cry and complain about Vista.

 

Same here...i run both Vista64 and XP...but i only have XP because my soundcard won't work with vista (only piece of hardware i own that doesn't) and because i tend to always have a separate OS for music production. Apps like Cubase etc. are REALLY sensitive to other apps/drivers messing around, the emptier the better.
My 3D apps on the other hand are loving vista, especially for the 64bit and the larger amount of Ram it can see
I did read somewhere though that a pretty large part of the Ram that seems to be in use isn't actually used but sorta preloaded so when an app needs it it can use it faster or something, now that's all just a bit too far out of my league to actually explain but it made sense when i read it lol.

 

No luck on the FX 770M drivers from Dell. After installing them I still get a BSOD from just opening Quicktime. Are there any other drivers I can install on this thing, perhaps straight from Nvidia?

 

did you try calling dell/emailing them?

 

Alternative is to use driver's from here http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/2?os[]=xp ......have used them a lot previously,but not for a while,it appear's you don't have to download the modified inf file anymore to install the driver's,so I'm presuming they will install on most thing's in it's unmodified state.

the site has a very good FAQ which will answer most question's you have about installing them.

Have you tried this one here also 4th from the bottom,it list's FX 1700M in driver version 176.07 A01.
http://search.dell.com/results.aspx...~srd=False&ipsys=False&advsrch=False&~ck=anav

BTW,did your driver disc that came with the machine have no video driver on it.?

 

Thanks for your help!

The first thing I installed was the A03 drivers on the Dell Drivers CD, that's the same 770M drivers that are on the web. Those had the instabilities that made me search for a new driver in the first place (my reasoning was that they weren't labeled for the 1700M).

After that I called Dell. Now, Norwegian Dell support are good for some things, but they are very "did you plug in your computer" when you call them. They recommended I try to download Quadro NVS drivers from nvidia - of course that didn't work (as they are a completely different line of cards). I got premium support on my workstation, with experts in the US helping me out. Didn't buy support of that kind on my laptop, unfortunately. Well well...

As per your ideas Weegie, I tried two sets of forceware drivers from laptopvideo2go, the 185.20 and the 179.13 (both needed modified inf's to install). The first ones made Windows turn all VGA, as well as the graphics card going superhot with the fan maxing out. I removed that quickly - I don't recommend that anyone else try that! The second forceware also had temperature and fan problems, and there were minor flickerings going on. I also removed that.

Finally, I tried the link you gave me to the Dell site. That was a Vista driver, so no luck there.

And now I'm back with the A03 drivers from Dell.

As I see it, I have two options: Call Dell and have this card replaced with a 770M, or swap out the harddisk and see if Vista gives me better stability...

There are three pieces of software I check to see if the video drivers are working OK. It would be great if anyone here have used any of those:

Quicktime (gives me BSOD, but not in the past eight hours... hmmm)
Mudbox (fatal error and exit when painting on models, although it worked fine with the temperature-crazy 179.13 drivers)
Photoshop CS4 (gives me no OpenGL support on all drivers I've tried. Anyone know if PS CS4 will support OpenGL at all on this laptop?)

Anyways, I still got problems with the WiFi, so there could be some other crap I've done that makes this machine hate me.

Thanks for taking time to read this

 

Sorry about giving you the vista driver link it had XP on the header but didn't look further.

Did you use any sort of driver cleaner before installing LTV2GO driver's?

I am using bios A02 and have had a good run out of this one,have you tried different bios version's?

If you have another hard drive with Vista,I would try that out of curiosity also.

I think I would be asking for a replacement,whether you go with 770 or 1700 is up to you,but can't really see that being the problem as they are essentially the same thing with a different core clock rate....maybe the one you have is just faulty? the wifi problem is another reason to ask for replacement......don't know whether I would be keen for the motherboard to be replaced after hearing the horror stories from some of the other guy's here with the tech's mangling the palm rest etc.

Sorry I don't use any of the software you listed,so can't really help with my specific performance on those.