New Dell Vostro V131

OK Guys I need a bit of help. I've had my V131 for about 5 months now, and the trackpad has been a P.I.T.A. At times, the trackpad simply refuses to take my input. I've tried wiping my (already washed) finger dry, putting powder on it, cleaning the trackpad, and even oiling the trackpad surface (it works with my ol' Studio 15, don't judge!), but it still can be tempermental.

Do any of you have this problem or have any suggestions that I could try? I'm thinking about getting an iPhone screen cover and cutting that to the trackpad size, because that would sort of act like the "glass" layer on my MBP (which is a POS). Also note that this is my second trackpad, so it probably isn't a fluke.

On another note, someone just recently mentioned the hinge looking wierd. That would be a design flaw with this computer's chassis. The hole? that the hinge drops into (part of the chassis) flexes, so you may have functioning hinges, but the entire assembly (esp. on the left hinge) will rock back and fourth after a while. For now, I screw the hinge tighter every time I notice the hinges getting worse. I guess you could complain to Dell and ask for a new chassis/frame if it gets really bad. (I had a bunch of stuff replaced on my computer to try alleviate that and a few other QC problems on my original unit)

 

On our Vostro V131, we are fortunate enough to receive a Synaptics touchpad. It is the best brand. Sounds to me like you have your sensitivity turned down. I took some screen shots for you. This is the best settings that I have managed to come up with without it feeling overdone or unnatural:

First, go to Welcome to Dell Technical Support and download the Touchpad Driver for the Vostro V131.

Then follow this: http://imagebin.org/194587

Let us know how this works out for you.

 

^ Great advice. I have been meaning to mess with the trackpad settings and your guide takes out most of the guess work in calibration. Thanks!

 

I've had my V131 for a few months now and decided to bite the bullet and replace the 500GB Samsung hard drive w/ a 120GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD that I got on sale. I thought I'd share what I learned for anyone else who wants to try this.

The Dell Recovery partition takes up 14GB and so I wanted to get rid of that in order to maximize the available free space on the SSD. Dell provided recovery disks so I didn't see much need to keep this data. This turned out to be quite an adventure. The C: drive is marked as the Boot drive while the recovery partition is marked as the System and Active drive.

I at first thought I could just set the C: drive Active so I used Norton Ghost to image both partitions from the HDD. I then restored only the C: partition to the SSD, telling Ghost to make it Active. However, upon trying to boot I got the msg "Autochk.exe not found... skipping Autocheck" then a quick BSOD, and then a reboot. It was hung in an endless loop.

I searched all over trying to find a solution to the autochk error. Lots of conflicting info and nothing that really helped. There were 12-step procedures for copying boot files to C:, running a BCDedit program, and other solutions.

I finally gave up (after hours of trial/error) and decided to restore both the Recovery partition and the C: drive. (The 100MB Dell OEM partition at the beginning of the disk didn't seem to make any difference so I didn't restore it.) The system booted OK but I was still left w/ a fairly useless 14GB Recovery partition. I used Win7 Disk Management to shrink the partition as far as it would go. I then found about 7GB of recovery files that had nothing to do w/ booting and deleted those. Shrank the partition again and got it down to 4GB. I ran that way for a couple of days.

Still determined to completely remove the Recovery partition, I searched the web again for information on moving the System partition. I came across this article (Switching my Windows 7 Boot Disk from D to C with BCDBoot rather than BCDEdit - Scott Hanselman) which provided a simple way to do this. In short, first set the C: partition as Active in Disk Management. Then open a Command Prompt and follow the post's instructions on using the 'bcdboot' command. I then rebooted and the C: partition was now correctly marked as both Active and System. I then deleted the Recovery partition, used the free EASUS Partition Master program to move the C: partition into the space vacated by the Recovery partition, and then resized the C: drive to fill the remaining space at the end of the drive.

Upon reboot all worked OK and everything has been running well for a couple of days. I thought this info might be helpful to anyone else thinking about moving to an SSD or even just trying to recover 14GB from their existing HDD.

 

Good to know. Whenever I swap to a new Hdd(SSD) I just do a fresh install and make sure I have all the up to date drivers on a USB drive. I have seen the 256 drives start to go down in price, so I am waiting until I can snag one on sale.

 

I just hate the idea of having to reinstall apps and data on a clean install. With an SSD, it might be best to install Win7 from scratch but I researched what services (e.g. defrag) to turn off and knew that the partitions would be correctly aligned.

FWIW, the new drive is correctly reported by IRST as Sata III 6Gbps.

 

I'm on the same boat as you.

I wiped out the recovery partition and did a fresh install. If I ever plan to sell it, I just do a fresh copy using the OEM download of Windows Home Premium and going off the sticker under the laptop. A lot of people like it better since they don't have to deal with the crapware when they first turn on their laptop.

BY THE WAY: Anyone know where I can get the fingerprint software? I can't find it online anywhere. Dell only provides the drivers but no software!
EDIT: Found it.. The fingerprint software is the same as the driver that is downloaded Dell. After you install it, reboot. Then go into Control Panel and click on Biometric Devices. Then you will see an option to Manage your fingerprint data. That's how you enroll your fingerprint. The entire time I was looking for an icon to launch the app. It's not very intuitive since the software doesn't provide any instructions after installation. It just disappears.

 

Did a regular 2.5 drive fit well? I put one in my V130 and it was VERY TIGHT... like, when I rested my palm on the right side, you could notice flex after the SSD install.

 

My understanding is that this is for the diagnostic tools you get when you press F12 during boot.
My V131 came with Ubuntu, so when I repartitioned the drive and installed Win7 I just left the 100MB partition alone. I can still access the diagnostic tools by pressing F12 during boot.

Unless you really need the extra 100MB space it might be handy to copy that partition across if you have the time.

 

All - quick question. I just purchased a v131 from Dell and it's installed w/ Ubuntu. It wasn't real clear when I ordered, but will I be getting a backlit keyboard? Also, am I getting a fingerprint reader as well. These weren't important things for me, but noticed some systems had them. Thanks in advance!