My experience of getting Windows 7 working on antiquated hardware (Dell Dimension 9150/XPS 400)

Iceman · Unread post by **Iceman** » 21 May 2021, 06:22

A specific site that was recommended to me and helped me out tremendously... when I upgraded an older LGA775 Dell that started life as a Dimension 9100 I found in a dumpster... Of course, this is mainly for OEM Dell instructions, but could be positive info for other systems/brands as well that ran similar hardware.

https://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com (lots of dead links now, I have discovered)

This was an interesting rebuild. As I mentioned, it started life as a Dimension 9100 I found in a dumpster, sitting upright, intact, and was the only item in said dumpster. The exterior was in great shape and only had a bad power supply, an easy fix, and the person was smart to pull the HDD. Got it running without much effort and installed the native Windows XP OS on it without issue, of course. Began using it as a secondary desktop for a couple months before the MoBo decided to crater, as pretty much all Dell desktops of this era did, at least from my experience. Terrible Caps sourced from china would be to blame.

I decided to replace the MoBo with one from a 9150/XPS 400 (more on that), upgrade the processor to a Pentium D 960, 3.6 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache (after flashing the BIOS), two (2) 500 GB WD Black HDDs in RAID 0, 4 GB DDR2 RAM, additional optical drive (DVD R/W), Intel 1000GT LAN Controller, and a GeForce GT 2 GB DDR3 PCIe something-or-other video card I bought from Best Buy. It wasn't anything exciting or special, but better than stock.

Sad thing is, The 9150/XPS 400 MoBo was capable of Hyper Threading, although Dell never decided to implement it. They wanted you to buy their flagship XPS 600 model of the time, which I own one, still. That, in itself, is another topic for another day.

My goal was to have Windows 7 running on it, but that turned out to be a driver challenge until... I was told about that website, which helped me locate the correct drivers and have it up and running in a couple of days. Customization took a few days longer, but was worth the effort. I was even able to source a new "XPS 400" front bezel off eBay to complete the rebuild, so it looked the part.

I don't dumpster dive, just throwing something away, but you never know what you may come across that could spark your interest, such as mine.

Long story short, it was a fun project and ended up giving the PC to my father so he could check and stay current with his email at home. He's since bought something new. Can't say I blame him.

Kouto · Unread post by **Kouto** » 21 May 2021, 13:05

I find searching the device ID reported in devmgmt.msc can help.

For driver exes, and infact many things, sometimes pairing file names in speechmarks (if nothing relevant comes up, prepending, in speechmarks, "index of" to the query)

Iceman · Unread post by **Iceman** » 22 May 2021, 08:40

Kouto wrote: ↑21 May 2021, 13:05 I find searching the device ID reported in devmgmt.msc can help.

For driver exes, and infact many things, sometimes pairing file names in speechmarks (if nothing relevant comes up, prepending, in speechmarks, "index of" to the query)

This is true, the IDs do help. True, that I never tried speechmarks. I may have to give it a go when the time is right. Also true, I wish the device manager was accessible as a command in Win 98

Kouto · Unread post by **Kouto** » 22 May 2021, 08:45

Yeah, I've found some oddball things in the past by essentially using Google as an "Apache2 open directory searcher" XD

Iceman · Unread post by **Iceman** » 22 May 2021, 08:51

Kouto wrote: ↑22 May 2021, 08:45 Yeah, I've found some oddball things in the past by essentially using Google as an "Apache2 open directory searcher" XD

That's an interesting thing. Something I wouldn't have considered as feasible. How did you stumble across this?

Kouto · Unread post by **Kouto** » 22 May 2021, 09:00

Boredom, mostly. Does help when I know the name of a file and the original is gone - MS have lately tampered a bunch with the DX9 redist download, so searching exactly:

"directx_jun2010_redist.exe" "index of"

in google would likely return some random storage of said file untouched xP

Iceman · Unread post by **Iceman** » 23 May 2021, 06:21

Kouto wrote: ↑22 May 2021, 09:00 Boredom, mostly. Does help when I know the name of a file and the original is gone - MS have lately tampered a bunch with the DX9 redist download, so searching exactly:

"directx_jun2010_redist.exe" "index of"

in google would likely return some random storage of said file untouched xP

I'll be damned. It worked. Not that I ever doubted you, but for my own eyes. This is extremely helpful under lots of circumstances, when you know the name of a file as you said. Nice!

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