M1330 upgrading

Just to give some background info. I'm going to put it in a quote so that you can skip it if you want.

So now, I figure as I've always had insufficient room on my default 160gb hard drive, I'd upgrade to a 500gb hard drive. The original plan was to clone my 160gb drive to the new drive, but that's out of the window now as I'll have to do a clean install regardless.

With regards to a clean install on a brand new hard drive, is it as simple as using the Dell Vista installation, and I'm guessing the driver installation CD too so that I have all the basic stuff like media direct and quickset. Not entirely sure how I'll get a new recovery drive though...or if it's possible to create a new one.

I plan on getting a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade from this place and upgrading my copy of Vista to Windows 7. Apparently Vista SP1 is required to make this upgrade as well...from what I've read anyway.

If anyone has any experience with this, it'd be great.

Edit: Since my old hard drive is still usable as a slave drive in a caddy, I had entertained the thought of just copy and pasting the C:\Windows folder from one PC with Vista to the Windows folder of the slave, and praying that could be a fix?

Also, with reinstalling to a new hard drive, will just the windows reinstallation disc do? I'm guessing it won't do much more than just that. I guess most things such as the media direct, quickset, remote control compatability, sigmatel audio and all that will be covered by the drivers and utilities CD? And with the recovery partition, is there any way to make a new one of these, or would you say that it's a waste of space providing that I have an installation CD to fix things?

 

1) I think the only way to save the recovery partition is to make an appropriately sized partition on the new disk and clone it over. Depending on how good your cloning software is, it may or may not be a hassle to make the partition bootable again. I've never tried this so I can't say more than that, but I always just scrap the recovery partition anyway.

2) Between the actual Vista install media and the drivers/utility disk, you should have all the software required to re-install Windows and make said install fully functional. If you're upgrading to 7, you should do a clean install from the 7 disk.

3)

I don't understand what you're trying to do here... if you're doing a clean install on your new 500GB drive, why are you trying to fix the install on the 160GB device? Either way, what you're proposing most likely isn't going to work.

 

Sounds like it's more hassle than its worth tbf, as long as the installation CD has repair tools, I am not too fussed.

On second thought, would it be better to get the appropriate driversd from the dell website as they will be more up to date than a CD I got 3 years ago?

Was just throwing an idea out there for the sake of it. Not really intending on keeping that hard drive, but it would be nice to have a laptop that isn't dead for a bit longer.

 

That's probably not a bad idea. Though some Vista drivers might not work with 7, so you may have to get 7 versions of those through Windows Update.

 

If I am to get an upgrade copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, I hear that i need Vista to at least SP1 anyway. Also that i have to give up my Vista key in order for the upgrade key to work.

I figure that should reinstall Vista onto the new drive, upgrade to 7 and then pick custom install in order for a 'clean' install?

 

I don't think you need to do that. I got the Windows 7 HP "family pack" which is supposed to technically be an "upgrade" pack, but I never needed to have an OS on disk before installation.

 

I might order that upgrade edition anyway, and hope for the best.

At the very worst, I'll have to reinstall Vista and upgrade it, at best, I'll just go for a straight install.

Do you think it's worth getting a 64-bit version for the M1330? I am considering it, but since I only have 2GB of RAM on my M1330, it seems a bit pointless to upgrade other than if I want to carry the 7 Ultimate license to another PC in the future?

 

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone has ever upgraded their graphic card for the Dell XPS M1330? I have a few games that are video-heavy and the gameplay slows to a crawl when there is a lot of animation on the screen. Any recommendations?

 

You cannot upgrade the GPU. It's directly soldered onto the PCB.

 

thanks jeremy for your help