Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

Hard lock is often a symptom of a hardware fault. If it were mine, I'd get another, rather than invest several hours loading drivers and setting it up. I recently returned a refurb Latitude E which locked up frequently. It would always fail while calculating WEI, even though it passed three hours of Dell's diagnostics.

That said, I prefer to abandon the bloated factory load and install a minimal set of device drivers/utilities. Most of the drivers hosted on the dell's driver web site are required to access all the system functionality, but many of the accompanying management utilities (bloatware) are not. In some cases, it was necessary to launch then abort the installer in order to extract/capture the drivers for installation.

Good luck!

 

Well I don't want to start a fire but i just want to let people like i had the 3X3 6300 wireless and got a replacement M4500 with the 6200 2X2 and I'll be dammed if i notice a difference. I do video production graphics, and animation. In general if i am going to transfer TBs of files i will be on a hardwired ethernet. When I first found out that i was downgraded I was all flustered but once I started using it it wasn't worth the time to worry about. That is just my take on it. Get what you need and start producing don't spend hours worrying about little things. Its just not worth it. Anyway i love my M4500 vs my M4400.

 

Do you still have your M4400? Can you tell me which parts appear to be "shared"? Batteries, drive bays etc?

 

Should have read more carefully, sorry for the confusion!

 

Both of those, along with the coolslice I have

 

Hi all,

I'm happy to say that I received the SSD MiniCard I bought on eBay from that guy in Poland! Didn't get ripped off after all MiniCard is fully bootable and operational (running Windows 7 as we speak)! However it's missing the screw to fasten the card properly to the chassis, so you'll have to get one yourself. Specification for that screw is M2 x 3mm. Just putting it out there, should anyone need the info.
I think it's the one, the SSD minicard that's originally offered by Dell as an option for the M4500. If anyone wants more details, please let me know.

However, I got a litttle question regarding Win 7 re-install. Windows installs and boots flawlessly from the SSD minicard. That's nice
BUT, there is the Win7-specific "System Reserved" Partition that appears on the other, 500GB HDD (Marked as Active, System). I heard that this small 100MB partition holds WinRE (Recovery Environment), Encryption information, as well as Boot Information and Files. This last part kinda bothers me, to tell you the truth... What good is an SSD if the main boot files are on the regular HDD?
I was also told that all the information contained in that small partition are only a backup of critical files from the main drive, and Windows will only boot from there if the SSD fails. Which would mean that all is great and Win7 is, actually, booting entirely and properly from the SSD, with the added security of a secondary drive backup. But that wonderful theory kinda got blown to pieces when I noticed that I couldn't boot to Windows anymore, after having unplugged the 500GB HDD...

So, would anyone be able to tell me which one it is? Any answer would be greatly appreciated, thanks to all of you ^^

 

Rewstah: Great news about receiving the card. My faith in humanity has been restored!

Re: SSD and partitions, I asked a similar question earlier. To anyone who ordered M4500 with the 64GB SSD, how does Dell format the install? I have read of ways to install without the 100MB partition and how to locate User Directories to an other drive.

When you installed Win7 on the SSD "C:/", the installer should have automatically partitioned the SSD with 100MB "System Reserve" + remaining space for C:/. Did this not happen?

I believe you will want to relocated the User Directories to the spinning drive "D:/" and save the 64GB SSD for the OS. You may also want to consider which Apps to install to C:/ versus D:/.


Changing User Directories location:
How to Move your Windows User Profile to another Drive | Core Dump

Install Win7 without System Reserve:
Hack to Remove 100 MB System Reserved Partition When Installing Windows 7 My Digital Life

 

Thanks for the answer Steveo.

The article states:

"The Windows 7 created 100 MB partition is not the main boot partition or boot drive, but serve only as a backup."'

but when I remove the 500GB HDD, nothing boots! Which indicates, IMO, that Windows actually boots from there...
Even worse: I installed Win 7 with 500GB HDD unplugged, whiched worked like a charm, but when plugged back in, nothing will boot... How weird is that, huh?

I'm kinda lost here

 

I suggest you install win7 to SSD with 500GB removed, then add after. You may need to change BIOS settings as well. Set to boot from SSD before HDD.

I would wipe the partitions off the 500HDD as well

 

Anyone interested in upgrading WiFi to Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300.

I ordered one from Amazon for $35 . Installed and works fine.

Amazon.com: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 - Network adapter - PCI Express Half Mini Card - 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11n: Electronics