Dell Inspiron 6400 upgrades

hey everyone...

so i got this 6400 before i began law school. i recently graduated and am taking the bar next week (ahh!). i've been making sure my system is good for the exam and i noticed my hard drive was acting up a little. and by acting up i mean it made a clicking sound and blue screened on me lol. i did some searching and saw this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-inspiron-dell-studio/361654-dell-inspiron-6400-e1505-hard-drive-upgrade.html

i took the advice of two of the members/mods and i got myself this hard drive: Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

for those of you that would rather not click on the links, its a Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive.

anyway, i'm wondering what else i can upgrade, now that i am upgrading. the battery died long ago and this laptop has long been a non-portable PC. so at this point i just want to make it as future-proof as i can. honestly, now that the hard drive is working, the computer is fine. but i'm aching to buy something and to upgrade something, so i think this will be my after-bar-exam project. specifically, i'm wondering if i can upgrade (1) the Ram and (2) the video card. right now i have 2gb ram. in the forum link i pasted, K-TRON is using a 1505, which is the same as a 6400, and he has 4GB of ram. i'd love to have that... can someone help me regarding which ram to purchase and if i can even do it. further, the GFX card i have is the ATI Radeon x1400. it was the upgraded card that was offered when i got this pc. i'm not looking to play games or anything like that, but i know that a good card can go a long way to improving performance. this x1400 has been excellent to me. but i think its time to retire it. any recommendations on a card to get? is it even possible?

thank you all for your help. back to studying i go!

 

1 - Yes you can upgrade the RAM, I believe it can accept up to 4 GB of DDR2 PC5300/PC6400 make sure it is 200 pin. That should give you a good performance boost.
2 - I do not think you can upgrade the video card even if you have a video card now as the form factors are different. But I may be wrong, so I would wait to find the answer from someone else.

Good luck on your studies, lol. And hope this helps.

 

ive read something about needing a 64bit system to actually be able to use 4gb of ram. can i install the x64 version of win7 onto this system? it is using the following processor: Intel Cure2Duo P5200 / 1.6GHz.

edit:
so i did some research and seems like as long as i install win7x64 i should be good, since my CPU supports 64bit. i couldnt get a clear answer as to whether or not i need PC2-5300 or PC2-6400 or PC2-4200.

Compsavy, you said 5300 or 6400. other places said 4200 or 5300. are you sure the 6400/1505 accepts 6400? if so then i will just go ahead and buy this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006519+50001455+40000381+600006176+600000403&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=381&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

the 6400 bundle is just 3 dollars more and i guess the higher number = slightly higher speed heh.

anyone wanna chime in?

edit:
i ran that crucial system scan and it tells me i have pc2-5300 in my pc right now. 2x1gb. so if i can't get the 6400, i'll get 2x2gb sticks of crucial 5300. eagerly awaiting someone's response

 

It shouldn't matter if you use PC5300 or PC6400... they will both run at PC5300 speed, as that is the fastest speed your chipset allows. Then again, the E1505 might not be happy with PC6400; I'd say stick with PC5300 for compatibility's sake.

 

perfect. thanks very much. just purchased the 2x2gb pc2-5300 crucial package at newegg. will have to install it after exams.

 

Had the same system, and upgraded the RAM to 3GB. Didn't go for 4 since the extra little bit didn't seem worth the cost. XP detected it, and performance did improve. When you install the RAM, the system will "error message" and scare the hell out of you - just let it sit and detect the RAM instead of rebooting/shutting down to reseat the RAM like it tells you to. I saw the message and kept rebooting and reseating to try and figure out where I went wrong, but it turns out I was just impatient. It'll downclock as necessary, so no worries there.

The X1400 should be good enough for the life of the laptop. I wouldn't really concern myself with upgrading the video card unless I were playing heavy games. The hard drive is the real issue, so hopefully it doesn't fail mid-exam and force you to handwrite (what a pain).

And good luck on your exam! I'm in the same boat exam-wise, but my e1505 went toast a while ago ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-shipping-order-status-customer-service-issues/481996-dell-completecare-system-exchange-experience-e1505-studio-1558-a.html if you're curious), not that the replacement has been all that stable until the last few weeks.

 

after this exam, i personally dont care if this laptop explodes lol. i'll be so happy to be done. taking NY and NJ bars. 3 days of hell. and newegg has great customer support so if i need to return the HDD/ram i'm sure they'll take it back.

i'll post an update on my success with the system updates some time next week. i've got win7x64 rdy to be installed to recognize the full 4gb

as far as that refurb you got... that is a nice upgrade. i wouldnt mind that myself haha. but my system hasnt suffered anything catastrophic i imagine there is some threshold before i would qualify to get a new system. that and i never purchased the warranty but i like this pc. nice keyboard. i got a little airlink n usb dongle and it plays very well with my n router. got a bluetooth dongle as well. other than those two things, the pc does everything i need. i wanted to upgrade the vid card to enable the pc to process 1080p mkvs. it chugs along when i run those. maybe with the extra ram it might run better. if not, 720p is fine.

and as far as dying mid-exam... dont frighten me haha. i already removed all music and movies and other non essentials off the PC to get as far away from the damaged HDD sector as possible. i think it should be ok. i've tested and re-tested the exam software for both exams, and they seem to run fine.

 

Oh? I'm in White Plains/Somerset for the same.
The software should mostly not access the hard drive except for bootup, shutdown, and the auto-saves.

I definitely miss my e1505, seemed like it had a much higher build quality than the replacement. One day I might get around to replacing the screen on this for a higher res, just not yet.

I'd make sure your processor is 64-bit friendly. My CoreDuo T2400 wasn't, but I believe the Core2Duos that came after were. I did try the Win7 32-bit RC beta on it, and it worked well enough.

 

already checked to make sure the system is 64bit friendly. and yep, somerset for me as well. javits center for the ny/mbe tho.

i noticed you are running lucid lynx. i just did a quick youtube investigation and it looks great. i intend to install it alongside win7. or maybe have it as my primary, and get win7 running in vmware.

 

Javits for MPRE was hell, huge room and a terrible check-in line. Still, get there early!

Linux runs fine on the e1505, probably snappier than XP or Win7. I'd just make sure you install Win7 before Linux, because Windows 7 will gobble up the GRUB2 bootloader and make it a pain to restore. As for vmware, do a dual boot install even if you don't use it, just because some programs just won't play well in a VM.

 

if i dual boot i'll never, ever use it. i hate rebooting the system. i'm considering just going exclusively Ubuntu. it looks fast and smooth. all i need at this point in life is surfing, word processing, IMing (which appears to now be built in), and video playback. i'll throw vlc on there and i'll be good to go. i think this will be a nice change from the usual windows OS. but i'll take your advice and go with the dual boot. win7 first, followed by Ubuntu

and yea, i also took the mpre at Javits. was insane haha. but this time i'm using my laptop, so i imagine i'll have a little more space, since each person gets his/her own outlet. when the gates came down during the exam... that was the icing on the cake.

 

I'd like to know if 4Gb does indeed work in this laptop. I just received one with only 1Gb. Dell specs say it accepts up to 2Gb sticks in each slot, but only 2Gb max. I have 2Gb now, but 4 would be nice

 

If the BIOS is updated to the most recent version (a17? i think?) it'll read up to 3.* GB. It's a 32-bit issue, not the laptop.

 

hey woofer. hope the bar exams went well for you. i'm not gonna think positively or negatively. just gonna forget about it until results come out.

i do have some negative news however. i installed the HDD and that worked 100% fine. i notice a nice speed increase immediately. i put win7x64 on this bad boy. then i installed the 4gb ram. but it says 4gb is installed and only 3.25 is being used. i've got a 64bit processor and 64bit windows. what gives!? ( any help would be appreciated

 

yea, best to ignore til results are out.

The Ram limit isn't because of the OS, but because of the hardware memory controller. The physical controller can only see 32-bit memory extensions, so you're limited to 3.25GB.