My first notebook was a Dell Inspiron 8200 and it’s already 5 years old. It suffered through the IT storm for so many years and up till today, it is still alive and kicking (except the battery; it died officially last year).
The most significant change was the Operating System (OS) as I’ve been using it as a test platform for all the major OSes out there. I’ve tried:
- Windows XP (Home and Pro)
- Dark Windows (Windows Vista theme on a heavily modified XP Pro)
- GoogleOS
- Ubuntu 8 (problem with my PCMCIA wireless)
- Fedora 8 (same, problem with my PCMCIA wireless)
- Windows 7 build 6000 (crashed it in 2 reboots)
The most recent OS I’ve installed was the Windows 7 RC. Gave it a blue screen in 3 reboots but other than that, it was smooth sailing. Not bad for an old vintage Pentium 4 2.2Ghz Mobile (512MB RAM) running a new OS. Next step: Install applications and games for stress testing.
I left half of the hard disk space for a Linux OS. I haven’t decided which distro but very likely I’ll end up with Ubuntu again.
Update (3/8/09): Installed Mandriva Spring 2009. Everything works magically except my PCMCIA wireless. It just won’t connect. Grrrr…
Where did you find the drivers for your video card and monitor for inspiron 8200? i have installed windows 7 and it works good but there is a 2 inch border around the screen. can you help?
I was using the same drivers provided by Dell and they worked fine. Instead of installing them directly, I went to the hardware manager and clicked “update drivers”. From there, locate the *.inf driver details and let Windows 7 does the rest.
Did you ever have a video problem with it? I have an I8200 with 2 GB RAM and 250MB HD, with ATI Mobility 64MB–I like it fine, but on 9/7/09 after Windows update, my video got garbled. I removed the update but video is still a problem. Could be a coincidence but can’t tell. I still get an image, but there are lines, and the Bios screen is not readable. Wow! you can run Windows 7 on it? I bought another computer becaude I did not think the I8200 could run Win 7.
Did you keep Windows 7 on your 8200? I recently brought mine back to life with new batterys, new 2gb ram, and a mini PCI wireless card. I have a new WD hard drive waiting to be installed but I was wondering if windows 7 would show any performance benefits of WinXP?
Hey guys. Last night I installed win 7 ultimate on my old 8200 (w/ new 2 GB RAM and new dvd-rom drive). Now I my LAN port is unrecognized and my video is in 1024×768 mode with the black border. I need to first get the LAN port working.
Where can I get drivers for LAN and the video ? Thanks all.
I have been running Windows 7 on my I8200 that has Gforce2Go chipset (wow thats old) since betas and it has run reasonably well. The only issue I have is the mouse is jerky especially when browsing and I haven’t been able to find a solution to it yet. Video is great, native screen resolution supported.
I have tried PS2 and USB mice and both have problem, but other than that the old clunker still works well and supports the kids who just need it for web surfing and email. And Windows 7 supports my old Netgear WPA 1 USB wireless adapter.
I did a clean install of Window 7 on my 1.4 GHz 8200 and it seems to be working well.
The initial install did not have a LAN port driver, so the machine was initially isolated from the internet. Fortunately I had a wireless PCMCIA adaptor, and that got me onto the internet so that I could finish installation, including Windows 7 automatically downloading and installing a LAN port dirver.
The video driver that was installed for my NVidia GE Force 4 440 video adapter was disappointing. It only allowed 16 bit color at less than full native resolution, and only supported a single monitor.
Several people had reported successfully using a NVidia XP/2000 driver available from http://www.driverheavendownloads.net/nvidia.htm (download the ForceWare 72.30 driver), and amazingly enough, I also found it works well (full screen resolution, 32 bit color, and dual monitor!). I followed “cadpro”‘s installation instructions:
1. Get the 72.30 driver as suggested before from the driver heaven web site.
2. Place on a temp folder and unpack. You should end up with a folder named 72.30_win2kxp
3. Look for the Setup file. Create a shortcut for it. Right Mouse Click on the shortcut and look for Properties, then Compatibility tab. There set Run as Administrator and set for XP Pro compatibility mode. Execute.
4. At some point it will tell you it’s an unsigned driver, just tell it to continue anyway. Accept any other defaults. Once done reboot.
5. System should be at higher resolution. The NWIZ app will make the UAC complain.
6. Do a search for NWIZ.exe which should be in the System32 folder. RMC on it and set it’s properties to Run As Administrator and set compatibility mode to XP Pro.
7. That should be all.
(the above seven instructions are copied from http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/264488-33-nvidia-geforce4-driver-windows)
hi
for Where did you find the drivers for your video card and monitor for inspiron 8200? i have installed windows 7 and it works good but there is a 2 inch border around the screen. can you help?
to get full screen in win 7 press Fn+F7 you will get
Full secren and go to
Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display\Screen Resolution
advanced settings
Adaptre >>> list all moades and select 1024 by 768 tru 32bit .
Enjoy Window 7