M4500 Windows 10 upgrade

I just completed the upgrade of this older (2010) laptop to Windows 10.

This post describes the steps I believe allowed me to do this. My upgrade process included 4 separate attempts to download and upgrade to Windows 10, with various Windows-Update-Diagnostics and Fix-Me steps in between..

My laptop had:

- fingerprint reader

- smartcard reader

- tpm 1.2

- quad CPU

- Nvidia FX1800M graphics

I had recently re-formatted and re-installed Windows 7, and applied the SP and 270+ patches to get it current w.r.t. the Windows Update console. If you have a cruft-laden box, you may encounter problems because of that cruft. The 4 years of cruft on my box was the reason I needed to reformat it a few weeks ago (to get the Azure Hadoop emulator to install).

I believe some of my challenges with the Windows 10 install were due to a few Windows 7 patches that were not yet installed before I began the Windows 10 install process. Be sure you are current with your updates before you initiate the Windows 10 upgrade.

Despite there being no Dell-blessed drivers for Windows 8, Microsoft seemed to think that Windows 10 would run on the system, so ...

The first naive install failed at "85%" during the upgrade process. It then rolled back, and I logged in again under Windows 7.

To get it to successfully upgrade, I needed to:

(1) upgrade to the NVidia drivers on the NVIdia website -- the search parameters were:

Quadro

Quadro FX Series (notebooks)

Quadro FX 1800M

Windows 10 64-bit

Quadro ODE Graphics Driver

English

Note that you want the ODE graphics driver (version 341.74) that works on Windows 10. Download and run this, then run the installer within the exploded directory to upgrade the Dell drivers to this newer driver. The Windows 10 driver is backward-compatible with Windows 7, so you don't have to worry about it breaking anything.

(2) In the Control Panel, uninstall all Dell drivers and tools for the TPM (control Vault), Bluetooth, smartcard reader, touch pad, etc. You should use a mouse as you do this so that you have some usable pointer device.

(3) Launch the Device Manager and right-click Disable on all of these advanced devices that you can find ( TPM, Bluetooth, smartcard reader, touchpad). I also used the right-click menu here to uninstall any device drivers from them.

(4) Now, upgrade to Windows 10

This should get you past the 85% mark in the upgrade. If it doesn't work, you may need to repair your registry using the Windows Update diagnostics tool, or run a FixMe app downloaded from Microsoft to handle an error.

I found that even after my recent fresh update, I still had some registry configuration problems that the update diagnostics tool needed to correct.

As I said earlier, it took me 4 tries to successfully upgrade. The system continued to work under Windows 7 after each of the failures.

On Windows 10, it seems that Microsoft has supplied drivers for all of the disabled devices, and has re-enabled them. From what I've seen so far, it looks like you can upgrade without any loss of functionality!

 

I did a fresh install of Windows 10 and only had to install a couple of drivers from the Dell Web site. I let it search for the NVidia f8800 driver (which mine had), and it found and installed it. The other drivers were pretty minor (sensors). So far so good so far...

 

Thank you Mitch. I followed your suggestions on my very similar Precision M4500 and Windows 10 installed the first time without a hitch. As in your case, Microsoft supplied drivers for all the disabled devices and re-enabled.

My graphics card is the lesser NVidia FX 880M, but the same process applied as you described. I think you saved me a chunk of time and headache. Sure do appreciate it.

 

Don't bother installing Win7 or Win8/8.1 and attempt the upgrade route. It will give you all sorts of problems. Just do a fresh install of Win10 and it should automatically install drivers for most devices bar a few. The most current ISO of Win10 that you can download from Microsoft's website accepts Win7, Win8 and Win8.1 keys directly.

As for the devices without drivers, in most instances you can use the ones from Win8/8.1 and it should work fine. There are a few exceptions though and you have will have to be careful.