D830 Owner's Lounge

Thanks! I just figured out what the problem was. It turns out that the problems with the hard drive and the motherboard were preventing the recovery disc from fully formatting the hard drive upon a fresh installation. I noticed this at my last format, when I just the OS and no other installed programs were already taking up nearly 60 gigs. And for some reason, whenever Windows booted up, it would try to load things from the OLDER installations. (Hey, I don't get it either, that's what the ASP tech told me.)

Now with all the hardware replaced and with the hard drive cleanly formatted (with an XP disc, ironically enough), the system is running decently, and the processor activity is finally under control.

 

Hi - I just received my new D830 (2.40 GHz, 4GB RAM, 120GB 7200 SATA HDD, XPPro) and have a couple questions about AHCI mode I'm hoping someone can help with.

1). From reading the various forums, it appears that enabling ACHI will result in improved performance. Can anyone confirm?

2). If I enable AHCI in the BIOS will it render the current drive unreadable? In other words, after enabling it, will I get the benefits immediately or will I need to reinstall everything first?

Thanks!
Scott

 

I was just going through my BIOS and noticed that I was set to ATA as well. Is there any benefit to setting it to AHCI under Vista Ultimate? And does it affect things such as BitLocker and Hard Drive Passwords?

 

What makes you think it is running at 400Mhz?

-Pascal

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

-Pascal

 

Just gave it a try, and turns out that KB article is only the first step. After enabling the driver, rebooting, and changing the BIOS to AHCI, once booted Windows will install more drivers, and then want to reboot again. At this point you have to go into device manager, select the generic AHCI controller windows installed, and replace its drivers with the "Intel Matrix Storage Manager" drivers from the Dell support site. Failure to do this before rebooting will result in a BSOD when you try to boot.

As for performance, the Windows Experience Index score for my HDD is still 5.2.

Also, due to the Intel drivers reporting your HDD serial number differently than the Microsoft drivers, Windows will think you have changed your HDD and you may be given 3 days to re-activate.

-Pascal

 

Thanks for this, Pascal! Let us know if you notice any real-world performance gains. I've been wanting to know if it's worth the trouble to switch to AHCI as well.

How did you load up the Intel Matrix drivers? through a CD, or a USB drive? Finally, how do we go about reactivating Windows if the product key is supposedly slipstreamed into the Dell Recovery and Reinstallation Disc?

 

I just downloaded the drivers from support.dell.com and extracted them to the hard drive.

If you are running the Windows either pre-installed with your laptop or from a Dell Recovery disc, then it is locked to your motherboard and you will not have to reactivate unless you change motherboards. If you installed Windows yourself from a retail disc, then you may have to go through the normal phone re-activation process. Windows will tell you what you have to do, if anything.

-Pascal

 

Hi guys, I just got my D830 and had some questions:


I've installed the nvidia driver, but my screen still lags when I'm dragging window's across the screen. When I watch movies, the picture lags as well. Is this because of the driver? Is there something better out there?

Thanks

 

Where did you get your video driver? From Dell, or from LaptopVideo2Go? I upgraded to the latest driver from Dell's site a few weeks ago and I haven't had any issues. If that doesn't help, try the ones on LaptopVideo2Go.

If that still doesn't help, try installing a resource monitor in Sidebar and watch your processor activity (or simply select processes in the Task Manager and sort by CPU consumption.) It might be a faulty driver or something that's using up precious resources and slowing your system down.