Good news for Latitude X1 owners!

Thanks for sharing your experience and updates with us, glad to see the enthusiasm to keep the Dell X1's in the world going=) I have refurbishbed many of these nice quiet lappy's, still going strong on my favorite XP Performance Edition. I still have a few X1's in stock to sell as I'm now moving into the Dell E4200 model, very nice bright LED screen, 64-128SSD drive, 3-5GB DDR3 RAM, it has outperformed and replaced my main Dell Precision 390 Desktop since there is a Dell E-Dock that runs dual external monitors, giving me the "workstation" experience I'm used to with the old Desktop. The X1's are good for most surfing but lack when it comes to HD youtube video's in my experience, and they tend to get pretty hot and very hot on the lap. The E4200 does have a fan but it is pretty quiet most of the time and not always on, my Dell D430 fan was much louder and that lappy is also very heavy compared to the 2.2lb E4200 with slim battery. With the prices of E4200's coming down and plentiful on ebay these days, it's something to consider as alternative to investing into the X1. Anyway, didn't mean to turn this into an E4200 thread or divert our focus too much from the classic X1's we all have grown to love. I'm glad to hear about a possible LED replacement for the X1 though, as some of those original screens aren't bright enough in daylight.

 

I am having trouble with Windows 7. How did everyone get the video driver to work? I have tried everything I can find, on this site and elsewhere.

I tried installing the original driver in XP compatibility mode, tried installing the sp34749.exe in the Device Manager. And various combinations.

Here was my best result: installed the original driver in compatibility mode and restarted. The computer booted up and the graphics were perfect, for about 20 seconds. The screen then went black and the graphics were really bad. (much worse than the generic VGA).

Can anybody help?

Thanks!

 

Have you tried using driver software such as Driver Genius, which scans for missing drivers and then attempts to download them and install, or at least gives you more specs to search for the drivers yourself if the download fails. Personally I see no reason to use Win7 yet or ever at this point, XP Performance Edition is so fast and light, only uses under 4GB of space. I have not needed any new versions of software that don't work on XP, these lappy's are a bit weak for Win7 in my opinion. I have bought and sold over 50 of these Dell x1's from eBay and all my customers are still happily using them for many years. Now I've moved up to the Dell Latitude E4200 with 128GB SSD, 5GB Ram, 2.2lbs, BRIGHT LED screen, backlit keyboard, like having an X1 on steroids! They are coming down in price on eBay lately, plenty fast for Win7 but I still run XP on mine=)

Anyway I suggest the Driver Genius solution as it worked the other day for me on a Compaq Presario SR5900 Series Desktop that I could only find Vista drivers for, ughhh HP, but Driver Genius downloaded 3 of 5 drivers and helped me find the other 2 from their specs, very easy compared to goggling by PC model etc. Good luck to you and long live the Dell X1!

 

As below, Windows update works perfectly for me and finds the right video drivers (see one of my old posts, on this forum):

X1 - Win 7 Install Guide


Dan


.

 

It was a while ago I had the same problem. I believe it is to do with power management. Somewhere there is a setting to adjust the amount of power to use, and it defaults to the lowest setting. Turn it up a notch and you should be fine. Sorry I can't be more specific right now.

 

installed windows 8 this weekend . .then picked up dell wireless drivers to enable wireless

WDDM (generic driver) will run the display at the non-native resolution. (one choice) I think it is up the thread looks slightly squashed.

you cannot run the 915gm drivers from Intel in compatibility mode because windows 8 doesn't support xp mode for drivers .. and probably some other reason. Hopefully the final generic driver might allow for more screen resolution options?

otherwise its doing ok / I'm running it on the x1 I have that still has the standard drive and I think 1 gig of memory. Ran win 7 beta & I've run Ubuntu on it for the past 2 years. and after windows 8

I have a separate x1 with 32gb Samsung ssd and 2g memory running win xp and its been plugged in and on for probably 3 years straight. Occasionally the display light shorts out but pushing on the hinge usually fixes.

like another poster I've got a E4200 that is similar (its light & faster) but has that noisy fan & the screen bezel has cracked 2x (under warranty).

 

I want to thank everyone who's posted how they've upgraded their X1. This thread is an invaluable resource, and for under $300, it's allowed me to convert a very slow, nearly useless laptop to something that works well enough for what I need it for: basic e-mail, web browsing and word processing while I'm on occasional business trips.

Here's what I did:

Hardware

1. Upgraded memory to 2 GB with a Crucial DDR2 SODIM 2GB 667 MHz (CT25664AC667).

2. Upgraded the disk drive to a 128GB KingSpec 1.8-inch IDE CF50-pin SSD Solid State Disk (MLC). I wanted to try out the MX Nano PATA Series SSD 1.8 (120 GB), but it wasn't available and the retailer didn't know when it would be. I sent an e-mail to MX and they suggested trying this retailer -- but by the time I received that reply, I had already ordered the Kingspec.

3. Since I was going to be taking the laptop apart anyway, I figured I might as well upgrade the wireless network card as well in order to have n connectivity. It turns out that this is much more involved than upgrading the memory and hard disk, as you have to remove the screen. But it wasn't that difficult, and now I have a Broadcom BCM43222 4322 mini-PCI 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless Wifi Card 300Mbps, which cost less than $8 (and ships remarkably fast direct from China).

Software

1. First I went to the Dell website and upgraded the BIOS to the latest version (A06).

2. I installed Windows 7. I then went to Sean's Windows 7 Install & Optimization Guide for SSDs and followed his instructions for optimizing Windows 7 for use with a SSD. Windows 7 did seem to recognize that the drive was a SSD. For instance, it's sending the TRIM command, although I doubt that the Kingspec SSD is listening to it. Windows didn't try to set up background defragmentation, but I did have to manually disable Fetch and Superfetch.

3. I installed drivers (again from the Dell website) for the Synaptics Pointing Device, and for the audio, both in XP mode.

4. For video, I installed the sp34749 driver from hp, as recommended upthread.

5. For the new wireless card, the Broadcom BCM43222 4322 mini-PCI a/b/g/n A241-431801R-02 Dual Band wifi Card 300M Driver works fine. What's more, the driver allows you to change the location from US to Europe to Japan, which might sometimes be required, as described in detail here. But I haven't traveled to Europe or Japan to test out this feature (yet).

6. For antivirus, I'm relying on Microsoft Security Essentials instead of what I used to use (Symantec). It's quite a bit faster and supposedly just as good. Not to mention free.

7. I installed Dell Quickset (again from the Dell website) for X1, but most of the functions don't work. Screen dimming using the function keys works fine, but switching the wireless card on and off (nice for use on airplanes) using Fn keys doesn't work at all. HOWEVER, I discovered that Windows 7 has a built-in version of many of these functions: press the "Windows" key and X, and you get a pop-up that lets you turn the wireless card on and off, as well as switch to dual screen mode (to use the VGA port). The wireless card control works, but I haven't yet determined whether the VGA port control works. The one thing I haven't figured out how to do is to automatically disable the LAN card when the power cable is unplugged. I might just disable the LAN card in the bios, as I rarely use wired networking with the laptop anyway.


For the most part, my X1 now works remarkably well. It boots way, WAY faster than before, and there is no longer an unreasonably long pause when launching or switching applications. And I have twice the hard disk storage as before. I'm looking forward to at least another 3 years of life out of my 6 year old X1, and maybe more!

 

Hi all,
I just joined this forum because my X1 died and I'm intrigued by the upgrading options I've discovered here. When I was in CA last year (I'm currently in France), Dell told me I couldn't put more than 1MB of RAM in my X1 (2006 model). Now the hard drive has died and I ordered a compatible replacement from a place in China but the package has been lost.

Any pointers to compatible hard drives (must I have IDE?) and assurances that a 2GB memory card as mentioned below will work would be greatly appreciated--really want to get this thing working again!

 

Dell is completely incorrect if they told you there's a 1 GB limit. I, and many others on this forum, have reported installing 2 GB. It works fine.

As for a disk drive: yes, you need an IDE drive. Specifically, a 1.8" 50 pin PATA IDE drive. Again, I and others have installed solid-state drives with great success. They are supposed to be faster than mechanical drives, but they are more expensive per GB. The KingSpec line seems to be the most popular for X1 upgraders, but there are others that should work, which you can find by digging through the last 100 or so posts in this thread.

Good luck!

 

Thanks!
Scanning through here from the beginning today, i suddenly find your post right above mine. So sorry for redundancy.