Dell 1501 with ATI xpress 1150 256mb (Part II)

From a previous post, some other people and I were having problems with this laptop and changing the UMA size. After a BIOS update, that problem was solved.

Problem number 2: If you download the latest driver for the Motherboard/Video Card from ATI, the installation terminated with a message "setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware". ATI Support tells me to call Dell, and Dell support doesn't have a clue. Anyone have any ideas?

see previous post for more info about problem number 1
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=92680

 

if you look at ati's site, you will see a list of supported companies for the drivers, dell is not on that list, there are hacks to make it work, you should search the gaming forum

 

Thank you zx10guy and Iceman01234 for your replies. I didn't realize that ATI didn't list Dell, that sure seems odd. Oh well, since fix number 1, I haven't had a lockup, so I guess leaving it alone is probably the best "fix". Thanks again.

 

if its working properly that sounds like a good idea, glad you've got it more or less sorted out

 

You re getting that error because DELL puts a restriction on their drivers so that they can only be upgraded with a DELL branded driver.

Personally I don’t think DELL does anything better to the drivers through their customizations; most probably they are just taking off some features that might cause problems and put some sort of a lock to restrict installing anything other than DELL branded drivers afterwards.

If you install the DELL driver then you cant install anything else, but if you install manufacturer’s driver at the beginning then you can install anything afterwards. This happened to me with GMA 900 graphics drivers. DELL driver has fewer features and they normally skip one or two Intel updates before releasing their own branded driver.

In my opinion installing manufacture’s driver is better.

 

Dell uses theire own drivers for easier support troubleshooting and overall stability, and those drivers are fine for 90% of their users, if you want to eek out every oz of performance you'll want to go with tweaked drivers like the omegas or LPVTG, with integrated video, your not going to gain much if anything, more often than not all you get are problems

 

Well, obviously opinions differ from professional to professional. I think I am going to do some testing with the Dell vs. ATI drivers (from the beginning) and see if the original UMA problem and the lockup problems creep up. OR, if there is some better performance or stability differences. Either way, thank all of you for your input and information. I didn't realize Dell did that with their drivers.

 

All I can say is, that was a BAD IDEA! I un-installed the ATI Drivers and the ATI Control Center, then attempted to install the newer drivers and control center to test the above mentioned theory. Well, first of all, the same error message appears while trying to install the driver. But, if you use the "update driver" option in Device Manager, then you can use the manual method to point to the new driver. It did install and it did work. However, when I installed the Control Center, it would install, but wouldn't run correctly. You did have several more screen size resolution options with the new driver (and I can see why Dell didn't allow them in their driver, because an in-experienced user would choose the wrong one and lock it up). Without the Control Center, there is no option to change the UMA.

So, I used a system restore point, un-installed all ATI Drivers and Control Center again (through several lock-ups I might add), then re-installed the Dell ATI Drivers and Control Center. The original problems of lock-up and not being able to change the UMA came back. So, I re-installed the BIOS update and then the Control Center stopped working again........blah blah blah. I won't bore you with my 2 hours of hell.

Moral to this post: DO NOT MESS IT! Use the Dell provided Drivers and Control Center, install the BIOS update and LEAVE IT ALONE. I know this was the original suggestion, but I had to know all of the details myself so that I may pass it on to others. No need to say "I told you so". Just laugh at my expense and move along.

 

we've all been there dude, just take heart it was easily fixed, thats not always the case