Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

You are, of course, absolutely right on both accounts. Windows 7 really was a pleasant surprise, as I did not have expected it to work even that well. In the end, I only had to remove/install a boat-load of drivers, which was expected. I would dare to speculate that I would have had more grieve with XP.

I also know that Linux should be easier to transfer in theory, as all hardware enumeration and detection is done at boot time and not during installation. Seeing it actually work that way is still somewhat astounding (I have spent two years on Linux, but 15 years on Windows, which might explain that)

 

Thanks! I had not thought about the daisy-chaining capabilities of eSATA - so two drives should work. I will test with two empty drives once I get the docking station and report back.

 

Thanks. I was too paranoid about the software. Indeed you are correct that it works fine this way.

What have you been able to get it up to?

Are the Find Max and Test for Stability options useful.

 

Hello forum members,

I got a 120gb Intel SSD and 8gb of Crucial DDR3 memory (2x4gb) for my M4500. I installed Windows 7 on the 120gb drive, then tried installing the 8GB of memory. It goes into System Repair bootup, finds no problems, then reboots and does it all over again. If I remove one of the modules, it boots fine. If I put in the old hard drive (250gb 7200RPM) and 8GB of memory, it boots fine. Anyone encountered this problem before?

 

Sounds like your os install somehow got hosed up. I'd install the 8gb of ram and the new ssd and then go ahead and reinstall windows 7 x64 fresh with all the new hardware in. If you encounter any errors during the install then I say a bad ram stick perhaps. Did you get 1066mhz or 1333mhz ram?

 

I've tried installing Windows 3 times now, and the install DVD won't even load with 8GB of RAM in. The RAM tested fine in Memtest. The RAM works fine on the old hard drive. I got 1333mhz RAM.

 

a couple pages back you will be able to find my posting with details regarding that. i got about 19.5% increase in 3d mark 06 benchmark score.

but it actually became unstable when i was running black ops game on the MAX setting with the OC (it would crash almost every often). but it might be because the ratio of core clock and shader clock was wayyy off. (just see my old post couple pages back)

find max is not a good feature. just increase yourself using furmark. like increase 5-10mhz and run furmark for like 30 secs. and do it till your furmark crashes. remember, when your drivers crash, you HAVE to reboot your computer everytime because somehow your core clock would be stuck at like 405mhz and so on. it will take you some time....

when you found the max for all clocks in such way, run furmark for like 1.5hrs or so. if furmark crashes in the way, try lowering like 5-10mhz of each core till it doesnt crash anymore.

for me, it took a whole day to figure out the clocks. but because shader clock is oced way higher than the core clock, it crashes in intense games.

ask me if you still got questions and post your results!

 

1. I assume that you are installing 64 bit Windows (although 32 bit should install OK but not use the RAM above about 3.5GB).

2. What is the memory setting in the boot.ini file (MSconfig > boot > Advanced should reveal). Mine is 0, which I think means no limit.

3. Are there any RAM options in the BIOS.

John

 

I would still suspect the memory, it seems like the pair is not within tolerances for dual channel operation. The only fact that does not make any sense is the fact that it works with the old drive.

A few things to try:

1. What happens if you use Clonezilla (or Acronis) to copy the Windows image from your old drive to the SSD? Will it boot with 8 GB in that case?

2. Do not trust Memtest86 exclusively. It can find a lot of problems, but not everything. You might try to boot an Ubuntu Live CD and install/run some of the memory stress tests from the package manager. And yes, you can install packages in Live Mode, they will just not be persistent.

 

John: checked out all that. No go.

Recluse: I'll have to let you know how it goes. Anyone else have any input, please let me know.