Will Win7 work on Dell Latitude D610

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Hi all

An old Dell Latitude D610 is lurking around for quiet a time with WinXP-SP3 and MSSE and latest updates as far as MS provided. Kids normally use it for internet games. It has 1.5GB RAM and 80GB hard-disk.

I feel somewhat uneasy due to lack of security offered by new OSes.

Is it recommended to upgrade the OS to Win7 (32-bit) or later?

I have read a post on TechNet (MS forums):

Upgrading D610 to Windows 7

As you can see they have hints for getting drivers as Dell does not provide these. But someone there warned about slow performance.

Do any of Lounge members ever tried it? If so what was the result?

TIA

Kamran
Islamabad, Pakistan

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Looks like there’s some useful info here.

Dell do odd things with their hardware/firmware and drivers, often to try to prevent you upgrading the base Inspiron to a Latitude or to a Precision, where the the main components are common to all. You might find that the Precision equivalent (if there was one) has W7 drivers available. Conversely, sometimes things like the better wireless card fitted to the Precision version will fail because the Dell drivers ‘block’ the lower machines from using it (this can sometimes be fixed by extracting the files and modifying the installer *.inf file).

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I had WinXP on a Dell Latitude D810 Notebook then upgraded it to Win7, now has Win8.1 on it. The D610 is quite similar and both models have a limit of 2GB RAM. Main difference between the 2 displays is the D610 is 14.1″ and the D810 is 15.6″. I keep the D810 as it has an interchangeable bay for Optical Disk Drive, Floppy Drive or additional battery [have the drives but not the extra battery]. The drives have a pop-out button to release them.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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That is a 32-bit single core Pen M 533MHz FSB CPU with 2GB max DDR2, on a 915PM (discrete video; ATI Mobility Radeon X300) chipset, SATA HDD. That computer was made for XP not a 32-bit more advanced (and demanding) Win OS.

While it likely will run Win7 or greater (slowly) it is not a good idea IMHO.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/latitude-d610/manuals

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There is always a flavour of Linux, if your games will run.
Other than that, buy something like DeepFreeze and lock the machine down.

cheers, Paul

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You will likely have trouble finding a driver for the ATI Mobility Radeon X300 GPU. First thing to check.
They may have something under a legacy driver section. If it is only used for games just image and if it goes pear shaped restore the image.

:cheers:

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Satrow, Wavy, PaulT, and FascistNation made excellent points, and I don’t disagree with them. You may want to check out this website: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20.

I checked out my Latitude D630 on this website, and it correctly told me I could update to Win 7. An important difference is my laptop has a dual core chip.

One other thing comes to mind–have you considered Vista? What do more expert readers think about Vista.

Please let us know what you decide and what the outcome is.

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Satrow, Wavy, PaulT, and FascistNation made excellent points, and I appreciate their thoughts. One thing came to mind–would Vista work on your computer?

Would more experienced contributors please share their thoughts and input on Vista. Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!:D

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….would Vista work on your computer?

Would more experienced contributors please share their thoughts and input on Vista. …

Vista was really MS’ push towards adopting a 64-bit OS. 64-bit XP was really for power users/IT to experiment (beta). 64-bit Vista came out of that. The growing pains from the transition and MS’ unwillingness to acknowledge that more time was required for hardware device driver development sinked what would become a perfectly good OS (once SP1 was released nine disastrous months later).

That said, 64-bit Vista will not run on the OP’s system. The requirements for 32-bit Vista are more than XP and I do not think they are worth an upgrade. Also, Vista is hitting its end of life April 11, 2017 (a year and a third from now), so unless the OP had access to a free copy of Vista 32-bit it would be a waste of money IMHO. The OP’s laptop in my opinion has the very best OS (other than Linux) now for their now limited system.

The only real upgrade would be to go to 2GB max. If the wifi is not at least G protocol with WPA2, a USB fob should be added. I would survey the installed apps and devices/chips, back up the drive, update the BIOS if not already, check for HDD, SSD, or ODD firmware and install if any. Old system probably good idea to run memtest86, hwmonitor and mfg. HDD diagnostic app(s). Blow out any dust.

Then clean install XP with all updates and with the latest drivers available including any peripherals, enable XP autoupdate for cash registers per register hack, add a still supported antiviral app, firewall, Malabytes Anti-Exploit, PSI Secunia and disable any autoupdates except AV, browser and harden it, email and harden it. [This means dumping IE8, Outlook Express, XP’s firewall.]

Install any apps the OP used, or suggest still XP supported app replacements. Talk them out of reinstalling any apps they did not use. Run Belarc Advisor to detect any missing security patches.

Limit the user account and set up an Admin password for the OP they won’t forget. I think that is about it as far as getting XP as secure and fast as it will ever be on any system. I would try to avoid installing flash, java, adobe reader, shockwave, silverlight, quicktime, netframework, C++ runtime versions as much as I could.]

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I guess if I was the OP and bound and determined to upgrade to 32-bit Win7 I would upgrade to 2GB RAM first, all of the other hardware prep I mentioned above: If the wifi is not at least G protocol with WPA2, a USB fob should be added. I would survey the installed apps and devices/chips, back up the drive (requires external HDD), update the BIOS (found on the Dell support site for your laptop) if not already, check for HDD, SSD, or ODD firmware and install if any. Old system probably good idea to run memtest86, hwmonitor and mfg. HDD diagnostic app(s). Blow out any dust.

Then survey installed apps with Belarc Advisor and WinAudit. Back up drive. Plan what apps you plan on reinstalling. You can download and use MS’ free Easy Transfer app for Win7:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/transfer-your-data-with-windows-easy-transfer/#upgrade (requires external HDD)

You need to identify all of the device drivers on your XP laptop and any peripherals (mouse, printer?) and download the latest 32-bit Win7 versions. If 32-bit Win7 supported versions are unavailable download the latest Vista supported drivers (they usually work). If not then download the latest XP versions (they usually do not work). You want the drivers from the chip makers not the old drivers found on the Dell site. Here is how:
http://forum.scottmueller.com/viewtopic.php?t=1308
and
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089404/how-to-easily-find-drivers-for-unknown-devices-in-windows.html

Check the Device Manager after the Win7 installation/updates and device driver installations to make sure no red or yellow flags remain.
[Linux makes more sense to me.]

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It may be installed. but finding drivers for your hardware is bit difficult task. go ahead and search your hardware drivers before doing this

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Upgrading the Dell Latitude D610 to Win 7 has certainly been done, but you may need to use Vista drivers for some things. See: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3517/t/19300969. The Dell forums are probably the best place to go for specific advice about the Latitude D610.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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