Windows 7 Conundrum
It’s almost here – on October 22, 2009 Microsoft will release its newest version of Windows, 7. But didn’t Microsoft recently come out with a new O/S, Vista? What happened to Vista and why was Microsoft so eager to put it behind itself?
Despite the release of Vista, XP is the O/S everyone wanted to buy. While speaking to a DELL support professional, DELL wanted to know if there was a reason why I wanted to buy a new system with XP. The truth was you could buy a DELL system preloaded with Windows XP - that was a fact was not readily advertised to customers. Some customers who bought Vista suddenly wanted XP back.
Not long ago, if you went to Comp USA and bought yourself Windows XP either as an upgrade or the full retail version, you had a reasonable level of assurance that it would be compatible with your system. Through some initial trial and errors for early adopters, eventually vendors came in line and released updated XP drivers.
Case in point: DELL Dimension 8400 system - service tag: 4C93R51.
Doing a check for Vista Compatible Drivers turned up none. The motherboard for this unit was manufactured exclusively for DELL by Intel. Unfortunately, Intel does not support this motherboard with newer Vista drivers.
As a tech, you can apply some workarounds to get the system up and running. But you may still be left with a system that’s not optimized for Vista, sink more money into upgrades or replacement parts, and ultimately be left with some important drivers missing leaving you with generic drivers that may not be fully compatible with all device components.
Now we have Windows 7. DELL apparently learned a lesson and opened up a support page for Windows 7. I checked DELL’s new support page for Windows 7 compatible drivers for the Dimension 8400. After all, the Dimension 8400 is a powerful system, and time and money was spent on upgrades for an O/S that never got installed. Apparently, there’s no driver support for 7 either.
After speaking to a DELL chat support specialist, I received this in response to my inquiry for drivers for two powerful and expensive DELL systems: “Both these units are not manufactured any more, so there will be no drivers released for Windows 7 for these units.”
9 Comments
Russ
September 9th, 2009
at 10:31am
Shoulda bought a Mac
zenium
September 9th, 2009
at 7:38pm
At least it is not an HP.
I’ve seen $2K small business scanner / copier from HP purchased this year and unable to get drivers for Server 2003. Server 2000 or windows xp only according to HP
At least with the Dell 8400 you got 5 years of service out of.
Joel
September 10th, 2009
at 12:39pm
Sad that OEMs don’t support thier hardware. I had an HP system for a while, it came with XP and didn’t have many problems with Vista. The only problem I had was Intel didn’t make a WDDM driver for the integrated chip. Now I have a custom built computer and driver support is probably much better than an OEM computer.
JFK
September 10th, 2009
at 1:08pm
Yes, w/o the correct chipset driver the money you sink into a Full Version of any Operating System can turn out to be a bad investment. For gamers – it’s definetely not a good idea.
llsee
September 10th, 2009
at 2:09pm
I installed Win7 RC1 on an older HP with a pentium P4 and was pleasantly surprised with a noticeable performance improvement over XP. Of course part of the improvement is due to the need for a clean install. But after 3 months, I’m still happy with it. So far no hardware incompatibilities, and only 1 software incompatibility… Sunbelt software’s firewall doesn’t run on 7. I plan to install it on my wife’s older laptop cuz I think it will add a little life to the hardware.
Cecil Porter
September 10th, 2009
at 4:39pm
Same thing with my Dell. Win7 runs on it just fine, but without a compatible driver for the on-board video, it’s stuck at 640×480. It’s 3-4 years old and they “don’t support” it?! Screw Dell. That’s the last one I’ll own.
JFK
September 10th, 2009
at 4:49pm
I’ve got another XPS system that’t running Vista just fine. But DELL won’t support 7 on this machine and this unit is no more than 4 years old.
LVM
February 6th, 2010
at 9:08am
Purchased Windows 7 for Dell Dimension 8400 – after install cannot connect to internet and no sound – Dell Tech support has no clue what drivers to use and have been living on the phone with them for 2 weeks – Last Dell for me
JFK
February 6th, 2010
at 9:12am
Despite what LVM just told us about his experience with DELL they still try to push WIndows 7 and sell it for their older machines but don’t have any supporting drivers.