Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

I haven't been able to get any linux distro other than a Ubuntu derivative or PCLOS on this m4400 as it seems to be finicky about HW detection at boot up. What are your experiences? thx

EDIT: I'm using Mint Xfce right now. My main distro, MEPIS 8, will only boot up with the Vesa driver, or X get's broken. Mint and Ubuntu run great though.

 

I've already asked for that but still have no answers.

Is it possible to install Windows XP SP2 without splistreaming SATA drivers into the WinXP installation? I haven't try to install it yet but I will have my M4400 soon and without OS and I want to be ready for installing WinXP.

Any other advices are also welcomed

 

@pitrs

yes it is. simply set sata operation to ata in your bios before installing xp. Then after installation manually load the intel AHCI drivers through device manager. reboot and set ata operation to AHCI again in BIOS before starting XP (you'll get a BSOD otherwise) Then proceed with installing Vista....when that is done use EasyBCD (google for free download) to rewrite the MBR....then you'll have the choice for either OS when booting

easy as that

edit: Vista will be installed in the D: partition although it'll seem to run from C: whenever you boot into Vista. This prevents possible mistakes by installers automatically installing in the C: partition

 

LPTP-LVR's advice is great if you'll be dual-booting Vista. However, there's an even easier method, if you aren't going to be installing Vista. Simply go into the BIOS and change the drive controller setting from AHCI (or IRRT) to ATA, prior to installing XP. No need to even change it back, or ever install AHCI-compatible drivers, as long as you're only using XP. As far as I know, there's no performance impact for disabling AHCI for XP, but I'm not certain.

 

True Fignuts...except when using the eSATA port afaik you'll need the AHCI functionality. I somehow just assumed the dual-boot part

 

Okay, thanks for advices. I wasn't sure if there is an option in BIOS to swich to ATA mode. I will definitely need eSata so I will have to install AHCI drivers later (hopefully I found the correct device in Device Manager). At first I want to install only XP, but now I am also considering to have dual boot with Win7, so I am also glad for that dual-boot method.

 

Seems to have resolved it for me too - excellent! Still see the odd "red" bar but they are usually not bad ones (2100us, just above yellow) and only one every minute or two. Other than that, latency averaging around 300us the whole time.

I see there were new audio drivers also released last week ... happy enough for now so i will not install them, but would be interested if anybody else has to know what the result is.

 

I'm trying to figure out what the best driver is for the M4400 770m. I really wish they stayed a little more up to date on driver releases. I was looking at the date on the Dell driver and it is 9/16/2008 and doesn't support cuda. (Which is one of the reasons I bought the a laptop with cuda.) What driver is everyone else running? Has anyone got badaboom or other cuda apps working?

 

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/vista64/185.20 if you're running Vista x64... I've had excellent results with this one.

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/vista/185.20 is the one for x32.

 

185.20 is from 2008, I'd take a newer driver like 181.71 or a newer with certification like 179.44.