Dell Inspiron 6000 and Windows Vista Home Premium

Hi there,

Just registered with notebookreview.com for the first time. I have a question or questions... I have been struggling with this issue for awhile since I recently upgraded to Windows Vista Home Premium.

Anyways, I dunno if I have the right forum to ask, forgive a newb...

I have an Inspiron 6000 I bought back in the beginning of 2006. It came preloaded with Windows XP Home, it has a 1.72Ghz Celeron processor, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon Mobility X300 32mb graphics card blah blah blah...

I upgraded to Windows Vista Home Premium and I wanna know how many people are in the same or similiar boat as me, similar or same specs and tell me if they have same problem or not.

I have an external monitor I bought back in September 2006, an LG Flatron L204wt 20.1 inch widescreen monitor. I was able to use it just fine before the upgrade, but since switching over to Vista... my monitor when I plug in the VGA output on my Inspiron 6000 to the external monitor now, the screen just flashes and blinks the image of what is on my monitor, it never stays a solid image just blinks and blinks. After buying a new monitor cable, I determined it was not the connection of the cable nor the monitor itself that was the problem, as it still works fine with my Xbox360 which I still play it on.

Given the specs I have indicated, do you know if this is just a driver issue or am I screwed and have to buy a new monitor, and/or a new computer with better specs...graphics card?

I tried calling Dell, and they tell me it's just a driver issue, but I have already updated the latest driver with ATI Catalyst and the issue (blinking external monitor image) is still occuring, anyone know what I can do except wait for a new driver?

Thanks,
--Medalion

 

Hi there just wanted to acknowledge your dilemma with inspiron 6000 and Vista.
My config is Dell Inspiron from august 2005 with ATI Mobility Radeon x300, 1200MB RAM etc. I Have the same problem connecting a external monitor, it causes the monitor to flicker, go black, flash etc. I have however found that when installing the latest driver from ATI I can choose to use only the external monitor and inactivate the LCD display. I then reboot with these settings and the flickering disapears.

 

I was thank you for being the first, and seemingly the only person that has replied in awhile. I appreciate the tip, however I have the latest ATI catalyst driver installed, made the change so that my external monitor is the only monitor that loads up at start... and it still flickers like crazy after bootup.

The interesting thing I have noted is that because I have multiple user accounts, before I log in it asks me what account to login in as, at this screen, the monitor does not flicker, but when I login under the account, and all the necessary drivers load up it then the flickering on the external monitor. Also in safe mode my external monitor flicker issue does not occur. Something must be wrong with a driver or my configuration or something... it was worth a try though, for a moment I almost thought I had it.

 

I don't have anything to add to your monitor issue. But i have a Inspiron 6000 with a very similar configuration (except 2GHz Proc and 1GByte Ram). I'm thinking about installing Vista Home Premium. How is it running on your Inspiron? Is it much slower than XP? Any major issues? with drivers?

Thanks!

Jim

 

The reason for this is that DELL didnt bother to release a version of quickset for the older inpsirons b130 and 6000 series. This highly irritates me as it means we loose out on a ton of feutures and they should really release the software as most of these last gen intel laptops all had the vista stickers on them implying that they would rlease all drivers and programs which just hasnt happened.

 

I too have the I6000D and use an external monitor as a extended desktop everyday without problems. It flashes when it is first plugged in then it is fine. I use the 8.36 driver for the ati card from Windows Update. I tried the ATI drivers from the dell site but my system hung once so I removed them and went with the ms update ones. Have you looked at the settings under windows mobility?

 

I actually have a fix/workaround for the flickering problem, it happens to me when i connect to a projector. the way i stop the flickering i stop a task called TMM "Microsoft Transient Multi-Monitor Manager"

When this is disabled you have to detect the monitor manually and if you disconnect the monitor without disabling it windows still thinks its there so any programs that is on the second monitor willl stay on the second monitor.

If you want to disable it temporarily, In the Task Scheduler click "Display all running tasks" and end the TMM task.

To stop it starting when you start your computer you have to disable the task. it is found in:
Task Scheduler Libary -> Microsoft -> Windows - > Mobile PC

Right Click on the TMM task and select disable.

Hope it helps i found this on somebody blog but it was months ago and i dont remember who it was.

Im running vista on a inispiron 6000 too.

 

Just wanted to acknowledge graememk:s solution, worked like a charm..

 

Hello I upgraded my Inspiron 6000 to Vista Home Prem several months ago and have not been able to get my SD card slot to read any of my memory cards. When I insert a SD card it tries to find a driver for it, eventfully telling me to insert the disk from the manufacturer. Device manager says SD drivers are up to date. Does anyone have a solution for this problem?
1.5 gig memory
1.6 proc
128 ATI

 

Do a clean reinstall. Sometimes it is difficult to clean up the driver mess, especially with OS upgrades! Haven't seen any so called driver cleaners fix these issues!

 

I found the answer I needed. When I insert a SD card, it normally will ask for a driver, so I pointed it to the window\system32 folder where it installed a generic driver and now it will read my SD cards.

 

Sorry to bump an old thread, however, I am an Inspiron 6000 owner and was about to do a clean install with Vista Business SP1. I noticed that Dell has no drivers listed for Vista (I had thought Dell had them there previously); has anyone experienced any major issues with running Vista on their 6000?

I have two gigs RAM and a ReadyBoost capable flash drive (8G). I'm assuming I will get decent performance out of it.

Thanks for any insight.

 

Please disregard; I discovered how to search this site via Google and found enough answers to go ahead and upgrade. I started the process 30 minutes ago and all is well, and I believe all will be OK upon completion.

FYI: Google found my post above and was contained within my subsequent search within three hours of the original time of post! Nice, but scary at the same time!