Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

Dell IDT Windows 7 x64 (prob OK for 32bit too) sound drivers now available:

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...&servicetag=&os=W764&osl=en&catid=-1&impid=-1

I previously used the Vista x64 drivers which worked OK. The stock M$ win7 IDT drivers had problems, and sound would simply stop working after a while.

Paul.

 

A couple of quick questions that I could go to another forum for but you are people with the same basic machine and.....well I just like this forum more, like a pair of favorite shoes. Also because it's cuts all the bull about arguing Mac or PC and all the other endless stuff that just confuses my simple mind.

I'm about ready to decide to replace XP 32bit with Win 7 64bit as my default OS and what is now my primary objection to 7 is it's size. I'm not abandoning XP but just switching which is the default boot. And that's important to me because C drive where the default lives is a 64GB SLC SSD and I better not start on the advantages of that or I'll write a book. The other will reside on a 7200rpm disk that's no slouch, unless you compare it to the SSD. And I somehow have two 'old windows' files in my 7 install and want to know if one or both of them can be eliminated. One is 24GB! The other is 'only' 12GB but will the OS work without them? If it's a new OS what does it need the old one for? If it's something to do with the 'XP mode', which I think is probably more marketing related than useful, I not only don't want it I don't want it in the OS at all. Just saying it boggles me, 36 friggin GBs of 'old windows' in the 'new' windows. And the actual 'old' windows is 3.4GB. I think I should be able to understand that, I'm not a total idiot but those numbers just don't track right in my mind.

And if I'm going to up my current RAM which is 2 x 2GB, to 2 x 4 would it be better to buy all new cards or will I have the same results just filling the two empty slots? Most of what I read stresses using all the same make and model and others insist that's not true. And since everything I know I read somewhere I need to figure out which is true and which is not. Any help of suggestions will be much appreciated.

 

gulfstreamtec:

Not a direct answer to your question, but I also have a SSD as my C drive (Its a Patriot TorqX 128GB). What I did is that I install windows 7 64-bit on that drive and I kept the Windows XP 32-bit install (from the dell shipping image) on the other drive (Seagate 320GB 7200rpm). I now use the F12 boot device selection when I need to boot from XP (since I default to boot with win 7).

PJM

 

you only get windows old folders if you have performed a upgrade or have reinstalled a copy of windows 7 on top of it's self!
As you have gone from 32bit xp to 64 bit windows 7,an updrade is not even possible, so god knows how you've ended up with those windows old folders?

 

No, I formatted the drive and not the quick format choice, the full format. Before the format it had Windows 7 32 bit on it. That I am totally sure of. So taking that into account, what could it be? I've also got Win 7 32bit running in another machine as it's the only OS on the machine and there's an 'old wiindows' folder in it. So either I'm misunderstanding what you're saying or we've got a wire crossed somewhere in the mix. How and why then is there an 'old windows' folder on the Win 7 install on my Toshiba? That also was installed on a freshly formatted drive, again a full format not a quick format.

 

I also have a 320GB Seagate as the second drive and it's partitioned into D, E and F drives. Windows 7 is now on D and all I want to do is reverse it. XP on the D drive and 7 on the C. What do you think of the Patriot? And if it's MLC has it or is it reputed to have some of the issues I keep reading about concerning SLC as opposed to MLC solid state drives? When I bought the Samsung Intel had just come out with a MLC drive that was getting rave reviews but I also read more than one account of total drive failure and more complaints about one thing or another. But every time I got to ask someone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about, they all said to go with the SLC because they didn't think they'd worked all the kinks out of the MLC configuration.

And a semi related question, why do you choose the F12 route to boot to XP? It seems so much easier when it's in the boot process and I have the timer set to five seconds, so I have time to choose 7 and if I don't it boots XP automatically. Reverse the situation and that's the same you're trying to do, except I don't have to do the F12 thing, I can just hit the power button and go get my coffee. When I get back XPs up and ready. Unless you only use XP once a month or less. Then it'd make sense but I'm interested to know why you choose what seems to be the longer more complicated way to do it.

Though lacking in skill compared to many who post here I know exactly how to move them into each others spots but the 'old windows' folders alone would eat up more than half of my 64GB (60 in reality, like the 320GB is really 298GB). I'm going to look through each of the old windows folders and if it looks like it may work I'm just going to delete them and see what happens. If it implodes I've got both drives cloned to spare drives that I can just slip in and I'm back where I started. But it would be better if someone told me what my chances of success are, or better yet give me detailed instructions!

 

gulfstreamtec:

When I bought my Patriot TorqX, most review were very positive (newegg had only one person complaining that it died after 1 week). I also read an extensive review on benchmarkreviews.com about it that was good. Apparently some of the issues that these drives were experiencing has been fixed with the new Indilinx drive controller and the new firmware.

So far my experience has been very good. I got one scare one day about corruption and that I need to run checkdisk on next reboot, and there was indeed some corruption (fortunately that was on chrome cache so nothing critical). This happen the same day I was running the laptop with an old power supply (130W) and I can not say for sure if this is related or not, but I have been religiously using the shipping one ever since (and I have not had any more issues).

About the configuration question. You are correct that I am not planning to use XP frequently (if at all), but there are some utilities (for instance the one use in flashing a firmware) that requires XP 32-bit and do not work on Vista or Windows 7 64-bit. This is mainly the reason why I keep that XP installation.
For every other OS need that I have; I use virtual machines (under windows 7 64-bit).

About this "Old Windows" folder, I really never had this before. As far as I can see I have none on my windows 7 drive.

PJM

 

Thanks for the heads up on your SSD. There's so much info out there and so much of it conflicting that it's hard to make an educated decision without studying for a month. And then it's still a wild guess for a lot of stuff. But the right info is always there, it's just finding it among all the clutter.

This 'old windows' file that had me stumped is now a solved mystery. I'll include the screenshot I just took of the article that says that even in a clean install of either Vista or Win 7 it automatically makes an 'old windows' folder and they can be safely deleted. There's pages and pages about these files, the one I'm including is representative of them all. Don't know how I missed such a simple thing before. But it still doesn't answer how I did it to a formatted drive tho. I thought I was finally losing my mind and it turns out that maybe I'm not. A starting point for an answer. But with not one but two 'old window' folders, one much bigger than the other, could it be an 'old Vista folder' and a 'old Windows 7 folder'? It would answer some questions but would raise as many as it answers. Hmmm......

 

anyone having problem with a07 bios???

 

none..but what kind of problems are you having?