Upgrading a 5 Year Old Laptop to Windows 7
October 31, 2009 by Marc Liron MVP
Filed under Windows 7
I purchased this Dell Latitude D800 laptop in June 2004. At the time it was running Windows XP professional. In 2007, on the release of Windows Vista, I tried to upgrade this D800 laptop via a clean install of the then new OS.
However Windows Vista was having none of it and I encountered many driver issues and it running slower than I ever thought possible! So I had to abandon the process, and the laptop lay unused on a shelf in my home office.
BUT with the release of Windows 7 I decided to see if this would install, after all Microsoft claim that the “footprint” for Windows 7 is far smaller than that of Windows Vista.
Well I inserted the Windows Enterprise (Windows Ultimate but with different licensing for companies) DVD that I had created from a download via MSDN and was instantly suprised at just how painless it was to install!
The only post install work I had to do was to go to the Dell Support website and download the Audio drivers (Windows Vista) for the laptop and they worked OK.
I then noticed that I was limited to only a few screen resolutions as Windows 7 had only installed a default graphics driver. This would have been ok if it was not for the fact that this laptop comes with a 15″ XGVA WideScreen.
So I visited the Dell Support website again and located drivers for the NVIDIA GeForce4 4200 graphics card installed on the Lapatop. However, they were only for Windows XP. So I thought I would give it a go and they worked!
I know have a functional 5 year old laptop running Windows 7!
The only niggle with the laptop is that the graphics card is not up to running AERO in windows 7. But that is not Windows 7 fault!
Also, I need the laptop for work and not for games etc. It has Microsoft Office 2007 installed, runs IE8 just fine and has full internet connectivity via both ethernet and built-in wireless.
I now have the laptop working for me in my business at home:
So if you have an old laptop lying around it might be worth seeing if you can install Windows 7 on it…
When Microsoft say that Windows 7 does not need high spec hardware to run Windows 7 – they are correct!
Kind Regards
Marc Liron - Microsoft MVP
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What CPU and Ram spec does you old d800 have? I have an old Inspiron 1100 I’ve been thinking about trying out Windows 7 on with 2.4Ghz Celeron and 512MB Ram. If Win7 runs good on it, I shall call it my “netbook”
Hi Chris,
The DELL D800 is a Pentium M 1.4GHz – 30GB (4,200) – 512Mb (266MHz DDR) 15.4 WXGA – 64Mb NVIDA Graphics.
Useful information. Next Gen of laptop is Netbook
I have been reading your posts lately, just want to say thanks for all informative stuff i have found here, helped me learn alot lately.
Much Regards, Mark
I have the same laptop, I also installed Windows 7 and had no problems… Except when I connect some USB devices, in device manager the Intel 82801 throw up an error. Anyone else had the same issue, and have you fixed it…?
I am running an M60 which is the same as a D800 and i get the same 82801 error…anyone have a fix for this…also i found a little fix sorta…just plug in your USB device and reboot and it will work but when you remove it, it will get the error again….
I am having the same issue with the USB drivers for this exact same laptop. It does not show as compatible with Windows 7 on Dell’s website and I assume that is because of the USB drivers. Has anyone been able to get this issue fixed as of yet?
Hi Marc i have the same latitude d800 but the procesor is PM 2.13 and have 1GB ram, i have the W/ Ultimate on this machine but my video card is cong with this driver ATI MOBILE RADEON X600 with this i can use the areo setting.
regards
I upgraded an old Dell 5100 laptop with windows 7, also loaded it on a 750 mhz desktop with 512mb ram and it ran without a hitch… great operating system.
i would like to know what audio driver did you put on your dell d800..
hi Marc – great post. I’m doing exactly the same thing and upgrading my d800 to win7. Only problem is, when i try and install the vid drivers the setup program tells me it’s for winXP and above. After a small laugh – i’m now stuck! did you have this problem? any way round it? (i’ve tried getting windows to look at the folder directly to update the driver via device manager but no luck)
update: sorry, my bad. i downloaded the wrong file from dell. it was the driver name followed by HTML rather than DRIVER. doh. works perfectly
I have a dell D800 as well, 2gB of ram, 2.1 Ghz processor. What bothers me is the Nvidia GeForce 5200go card. Vista had full support, including for Aero, but windows 7 test says it doesn’t know the card. I can get around that?
i have a dell latitude d800 and i installed windows 7 and it works fine. the only problem is with the usb devices. some usb devices dont work on my laptop eg my external hard drive and my flash disk dont show up on my computer. if anyone knows a solution, please send it to this email: nealamratia619@live.com
thanx