I just got a new work laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1525. Pretty snazzy little unit, with a red cover making it as fast as a Ferrari…well maybe not that fast.
Specs:
- Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo Processor T6400 (2GHz/ 800 FSB/ 2MB Cache)
- 4GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory
- 320GB Hard Drive
- 15.4″ Widescreen WXGA (1280×800) TFT Display
- Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 Graphics Card
- 8X DVD Burner
- Dell™ Wireless 1395 802.11g 54Mbps Wireless Mini Card
- AverTV DVB-T Tuner Card
The laptop came with Vista Home Premium 32bit and while I like Vista, I am going to put on XP Pro as this is the OS we utilise at work. So it will be better for any error replication I might need to do and guarantees that everything will be compatible with work systems (as we have some custom made programs / database packages). Not to mention being able to log onto the domain, which Home versions of Windows cannot do.
So after hunting around for a correct version of Windows XP Pro with a valid key it was time to install, but I ran into a hiccup. Windows XP setup could not find any hardware drives. The problem here is that it comes factory defaulted to have AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) enabled. You can rectify this be either slip streaming the SATA drivers for the Dell’s HDD into the installation, or add them during setup with a floppy (which it doesn’t have, and XP doesn’t support adding them from USB). But that’s too much mucking around for my liking and AHCI is going to give me no benefits. So I simply disabled this in the BIOS and set the drive to perform as a normal ATA device. Before you can do this I had to disable “Flash Cache Module”, which basically turns part of your HDD into a “flash disk” so it can be used with Windows Vista’s ReadyDrive to supposedly increase read speeds and reduce battery drain. But because I’m not using Vista this won’t be an issue what so ever.
