Dell XPS 420 Windows XP Pro SP2 installation success

Just wanted to report in my success installing Windows XP Pro SP2 on a new
Dell XPS 420 I bought last night at Micro Center. Normally buy my hardware
through dell.com, but was in a pinch to replace the PC for our graphic
designer... A couple notes about this Q6600 machine at Micro Center for
$849 ... the DVD burner is a dual layer burner (was not explicitly specified
"DL" in the specs) ... the installed memory is 2 512MB sticks (not 4 256MB
sticks as specified on the Dell label on the box - thank goodness) ... The
network interface is gigabit (not 10/100 as listed on the MicroCenter site)
.... beautifully designed toolless chassis, all in all a great machine so
far.

Now, on to installing XP ...

First, disconnect the 19-in-1 card reader cable from the motherboard -
otherwise XP setup will see the card reader(s) first and set up the hard
drive as the H: drive, and even though XP boots successfully on H:, when I
tried to do the registry edits to make it a C: drive, XP rebooted and hung
just before the login screen. Once I disconnected the card reader and did
a quick format/reinstall, drive came up as C: and everything worked fine.

Side note, I use a little utility on a Win98/DOS bootable floppy disk from
Seagate called "NFDISC" to wipe the hard drive zero track and eliminate
Vista before starting all of this.

Downloaded Intel Matrix System Manager drivers "OS Pre-Install" file
R173412.EXE from dell.com, and copied the extracted files to a blank floppy
disk for the "F6" installation step. Attached a USB floppy drive to the
machine.

I booted off a Windows XP Pro SP2 boot CD, pressed "F6" when prompted, read
the intel disk controller drivers off the floppy, when 4 choices of disk
controllers popped up, selected bottom choice "ICH9R" Sata RAID. XP
installation proceeded normally (remember to keep the floppy in the drive
until you're completely done)

Ran Windows Update - attempted to install SP3 but failed after sitting there
for a long time (had this happen on a couple other machines, seems to be a
common problem, so I'm not bothering with SP3 for now) So I chose to
install all the other 92 patches, did the usual reboot/windows update dance
until the system was completely up to date.

These are the driver packages I downloaded (all from dell.com, not third
party site) and installed once XP was up and running and all patched up:

R174616.EXE - Intel ICH9R Chipset

R173416.EXE - Intel Matrix Storage Manager

R162323.EXE - Intel 825xx Gigabit Network driver

R181352.EXE - ATI (AMD) Radeon HD 2400 Pro 128M video driver

R114282.EXE - Sigmatel STAC 9227 Audio driver

R162386.EXE - Conexant D850 modem driver

R152639.EXE - Teac CAB-200 19-in-1 card reader - this will extract the files
to disk, but the installer applet will only run under Vista. When device
manager prompted to install the bluetooth device, I pointed it at the
c:\dell\drivers\R152639\Win32 directory and bluetooth works fine. Note
that XP detected the card reader portion automatically, I did not need to
install a driver for that. Only needed to install this driver for
bluetooth.

So bottom line every device now works in XP. Only loss is the little XPS
Miniview Sideshow display is limited to playing solitaire, but big whoop no
great loss, IMHO ...

Seems that the stack of 4 usb ports adjacent to the gigabit network jack on
the back are the USB 2.0 speed - the two usb below the network jack, and the
two usb jacks on the front panel operate at slower USB 1.1 speed.

HTH,

-- Paul

"Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in
news:kYmdncKM9JP9wb7VnZ2dnUVZ_v3inZ2d@supernews.co m:

> First, disconnect the 19-in-1 card reader cable from the motherboard -
> otherwise XP setup will see the card reader(s) first and set up the
> hard drive as the H: drive, and even though XP boots successfully on
> H:, when I tried to do the registry edits to make it a C: drive, XP
> rebooted and hung just before the login screen. Once I disconnected
> the card reader and did a quick format/reinstall, drive came up as C:
> and everything worked fine.

I never disconnected the 19-in-1 card reader on my machine and I never saw
this at all. Disk came up as C: and D:, DVD as E: and the four slots in
the card reader were F: G: H: & I:

> Seems that the stack of 4 usb ports adjacent to the gigabit network
> jack on the back are the USB 2.0 speed - the two usb below the network
> jack, and the two usb jacks on the front panel operate at slower USB
> 1.1 speed.

How do you determine that because on my machine they all seem to be USB 2.0

--
Red Squirrel

"Red Squirrel" <invalid@thisis.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xns9A98DCEE56D75redsquirrelusenet@208.49.82.6 0...
> "Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in
> news:kYmdncKM9JP9wb7VnZ2dnUVZ_v3inZ2d@supernews.co m:
>
>> Seems that the stack of 4 usb ports adjacent to the gigabit network
>> jack on the back are the USB 2.0 speed - the two usb below the network
>> jack, and the two usb jacks on the front panel operate at slower USB
>> 1.1 speed.
>
> How do you determine that because on my machine they all seem to be USB
> 2.0

Copying large files from a USB flash drive in the front seemed really slow,
plus I got the warning in the XP systray about "your device can work
faster..." Also had a USB 2.0 HDD attached on the back below the network
jack and Ghost told me it would take 3 hours (!!!) to backup, which I knew
was not right. When I plugged the HDD into one of the 4-stack ports, it
breezed through a backup in 10 minutes.

-- Paul

"Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in
news:WtOdnfCCfZZ8-77VnZ2dnUVZ_jidnZ2d@supernews.com:

>
> "Red Squirrel" <invalid@thisis.invalid> wrote in message
> news:Xns9A98DCEE56D75redsquirrelusenet@208.49.82.6 0...
>> "Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in
>> news:kYmdncKM9JP9wb7VnZ2dnUVZ_v3inZ2d@supernews.co m:
>>
>>> Seems that the stack of 4 usb ports adjacent to the gigabit network
>>> jack on the back are the USB 2.0 speed - the two usb below the
>>> network jack, and the two usb jacks on the front panel operate at
>>> slower USB 1.1 speed.
>>
>> How do you determine that because on my machine they all seem to be
>> USB 2.0
>
> Copying large files from a USB flash drive in the front seemed really
> slow, plus I got the warning in the XP systray about "your device can
> work faster..." Also had a USB 2.0 HDD attached on the back below
> the network jack and Ghost told me it would take 3 hours (!!!) to
> backup, which I knew was not right. When I plugged the HDD into one
> of the 4-stack ports, it breezed through a backup in 10 minutes.

Thanks for the clarification. Funnily enough that is exactly the same
reason why I think mine has USB 2.0 - I don't get the "your device can
work faster ..." message when I plug any of my USB memory devices into
the front two ports on my machine but I do when I use an old PC at work,
both running the same XP with SP2 software.

Perhaps Dell just use slightly different components on the same family of
machines. Your 19-in-1 reader has the bluetooth module but mine
doesn't.


--
Red Squirrel

"Red Squirrel" <invalid@thisis.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xns9A98DEF02AB78redsquirrelusenet@208.49.82.6 0...
> "Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in
> news:WtOdnfCCfZZ8-77VnZ2dnUVZ_jidnZ2d@supernews.com:
>
>>
>> "Red Squirrel" <invalid@thisis.invalid> wrote in message
>> news:Xns9A98DCEE56D75redsquirrelusenet@208.49.82.6 0...
>>> "Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in
>>> news:kYmdncKM9JP9wb7VnZ2dnUVZ_v3inZ2d@supernews.co m:
>>>
>>>> Seems that the stack of 4 usb ports adjacent to the gigabit network
>>>> jack on the back are the USB 2.0 speed - the two usb below the
>>>> network jack, and the two usb jacks on the front panel operate at
>>>> slower USB 1.1 speed.
>>>
>>> How do you determine that because on my machine they all seem to be
>>> USB 2.0
>>
>> Copying large files from a USB flash drive in the front seemed really
>> slow, plus I got the warning in the XP systray about "your device can
>> work faster..." Also had a USB 2.0 HDD attached on the back below
>> the network jack and Ghost told me it would take 3 hours (!!!) to
>> backup, which I knew was not right. When I plugged the HDD into one
>> of the 4-stack ports, it breezed through a backup in 10 minutes.
>
> Thanks for the clarification. Funnily enough that is exactly the same
> reason why I think mine has USB 2.0 - I don't get the "your device can
> work faster ..." message when I plug any of my USB memory devices into
> the front two ports on my machine but I do when I use an old PC at work,
> both running the same XP with SP2 software.
>
> Perhaps Dell just use slightly different components on the same family of
> machines. Your 19-in-1 reader has the bluetooth module but mine
> doesn't.
>
>
> --
> Red Squirrel



I just recently installed WinXP Pro SP2 on my XPS420 as well (no card reader
or bluetooth on mine). I'm seeing no issues at all with my front USB ports.

Additionally, I did make the mistake of leaving a USB flash drive connected
to one of the front ports during the intial install. As the OP pointed out,
this ended up causing the boot drive to be assigned drive letter E:\ rather
than C:\. My screw up.

Since the install had gone so seamlessly and fast (along with the driver
installs), I just wiped it and started over (since I was largely out of the
room during the install).

No issues. I'm waiting now for a 2nd HDD to arrive from newegg.com to
mirror/RAID1 - the original drive from newegg.com was damaged and I had to
RMA it.......

The machine is amazingly fast with WinXP.....


Stew

> Since the install had gone so seamlessly and fast (along with the driver
> installs), I just wiped it and started over (since I was largely out of
> the room during the install).
>
> No issues. I'm waiting now for a 2nd HDD to arrive from newegg.com to
> mirror/RAID1 - the original drive from newegg.com was damaged and I had
> to RMA it.......
>
> The machine is amazingly fast with WinXP.....

Yes, I'm loving the quad core and quickly finding the limitation is with
disk I/O - this machine really wants 2 disks in RAID 0 to truly scream.
No matter what I throw at it, the four "processors" barely work up a sweat
in task manager, it's all disk I/O slowing things down. ( Not that I'm
complaining ... the machine is still fast as hell even with the single SATA
drive )

Like you said, no big deal to reinstall everything at this speed. I think
the entire Office 2003 Pro Suite installed in about 3 minutes, and that
bloated pig of an Adobe CS2 Suite installed in about 5 minutes, LOL.

To top it off, 2 more gigs of RAM are on the way from Crucial for a mere $89
....

-- Paul

On May 8, 9:43*pm, Red Squirrel <inva...@thisis.invalid> wrote:
>
> I never disconnected the 19-in-1 card reader on my machine and I never saw
> this at all. * Disk came up as C: and D:, DVD as E: and the four slots in
> the card reader were F: G: H: & I:
>

I got caught like that on one of my Dimension 9200's........but even
worse!

Card reader took C,D,E and F, DVD ROM took G, DVD RW took H and my
2407 monitor took I,J,K and L.

XP ended up installing on M :-/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Red Squirrel [mailto:invalid@thisis.invalid]
> Posted At: Thursday, May 08, 2008 3:43 PM
> Posted To: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
> Conversation: Dell XPS 420 Windows XP Pro SP2 installation success
> Subject: Re: Dell XPS 420 Windows XP Pro SP2 installation success
>
> "Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in
> news:kYmdncKM9JP9wb7VnZ2dnUVZ_v3inZ2d@supernews.co m:
>
> > First, disconnect the 19-in-1 card reader cable from the motherboard
> -
> > otherwise XP setup will see the card reader(s) first and set up the
> > hard drive as the H: drive, and even though XP boots successfully on
> > H:, when I tried to do the registry edits to make it a C: drive, XP
> > rebooted and hung just before the login screen. Once I
disconnected
> > the card reader and did a quick format/reinstall, drive came up as
C:
> > and everything worked fine.
>
> I never disconnected the 19-in-1 card reader on my machine and I never
> saw
> this at all. Disk came up as C: and D:, DVD as E: and the four slots
> in
> the card reader were F: G: H: & I:
>
> > Seems that the stack of 4 usb ports adjacent to the gigabit network
> > jack on the back are the USB 2.0 speed - the two usb below the
> network
> > jack, and the two usb jacks on the front panel operate at slower USB
> > 1.1 speed.
>
> How do you determine that because on my machine they all seem to be
USB
> 2.0
>
> --
> Red Squirrel


They are ALL USB2.0. Absolutely. No question. If they haven't
installed as High Speed, then the install is flawed. Dell hasn't
shipped a machine with USB1.1 ports for years.

"Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:kYmdncKM9JP9wb7VnZ2dnUVZ_v3inZ2d@supernews.co m...

> First, disconnect the 19-in-1 card reader cable from the motherboard - otherwise XP
> setup will see the card reader(s) first and set up the hard drive as the H: drive,
> and even though XP boots successfully on H:, when I tried to do the registry edits
> to make it a C: drive, XP rebooted and hung just before the login screen.

Why does it matter what drive letter the system drive is? XP will work fine
in any case and software will install to the system drive no matter what letter it
is.
MS is trying to get us away from relying on drive letters so we can move ahead
into the future.


Tom Lake

"Tom Lake" <tlake@twcny.rr.com> wrote in message
news:g020bk$okn$1@aioe.org...
>
> "Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:kYmdncKM9JP9wb7VnZ2dnUVZ_v3inZ2d@supernews.co m...
>
>> First, disconnect the 19-in-1 card reader cable from the motherboard -
>> otherwise XP setup will see the card reader(s) first and set up the hard
>> drive as the H: drive, and even though XP boots successfully on H:, when
>> I tried to do the registry edits to make it a C: drive, XP rebooted and
>> hung just before the login screen.
>
> Why does it matter what drive letter the system drive is? XP will work
> fine
> in any case and software will install to the system drive no matter what
> letter it is.
> MS is trying to get us away from relying on drive letters so we can move
> ahead
> into the future.
>
>
> Tom Lake


Call me superstitious or old-fashoined, but I prefer to have my system drive
with apps installed on C:. "If it ain't broke"

If I were interested in blazing new trails into the future I would have
installed Vista 64-bit edition. <g>

-- Paul