Tag Archives: Dell

Troubleshoot: No sound from Dell XPS M1330 speakers after Windows 7 upgrade

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My Dell XPS M1330 speakers stopped working ever since I upgraded to Windows 7. Even this issue was existing there in the beta versions, I believed that this issue will be sorted out in the final release as this series of machine is one of hot cake of that time (also the most problematic laptop too)

I have raised the issues in several forums and being helpless I directly contacted veteran Larry Osterman who leads Windows 7 Audio Development at Microsoft. He promptly responded with the issues with the Dell’s driver issues when working with their class driver. It was back 2009 July. I tried re-installing the driver and it really dint work at that time. But the very same driver when I tried reinstalling of late worked perfectly.

The normal to troubleshoot the problem is to use the Windows Hardware Troubleshooting mechanisms available. But Microsoft troubleshooter wrongly reported that Teefer2 Miniport #8 driver is required to be reinstalled which is actually part of Norton End Point Protection installed in my system. It’s a wrong diagnosis.

Search in Dell website for “SIGMATEL STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio” and download the latest version of the driver. The one which worked for me can be downloaded from here (Seems it will upgraded automatically on new releases). Thanks Larry for your great help.

 

How to make a bootable USB for Windows XP 2003 or Vista?

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Recently I purchased a Dell Mini 10v with Windows 7 starter edition. As most of you know, netbooks are not coming with any optical drive. USB takes of it’s role. Installing an operating system is hectic with netbook especially if it’s Windows XP. You’re blessed if you’ve the luxury of an external optical drive. But usually nobody would like to own and external big optical drive with the small netbooks.

When I purchased it from Japan it was pre-installed with Windows 7 Japanese version and I prepared the bootable Windows 7 USB drive using and installed using USB to DVD tool from Microsoft Store. It was painless and installation finished within few minutes.

Lately I inspired few my colleagues towards Dell Mini 10v and obviously the installing risk came to my shoulders( I never expected of it!) and they’ve not prefer to Install Windows 7 even I boasted about the quality security of the Win7.

I’ve tried different methods after Googling. One of the proven method was using BartPE which was little bit painful and I failed to Install it several times. Luckly I got another excellent tool called Novicorp WinToFlash which made all the tasks so easy. It’s so simple.

  • Just download the Zip
  • Start WinToFlash in Administrator mode (if you’re running Windows 7 or Windows Vista)
  • Mount the ISO image or insert the DVD/CD to the optical drive
  • Insert the USB drive
  • Now Start the Wizard and select source drive and destination USB drive (take care to choose right path especially if any of your other USB drives are plugged in)

image

Wizard will prepare the USB and will finish it in few minutes

  • Now insert the USB in your netbook and select the USB as the primary boot device. (In Dell System you can press F12 to select the boot device in the POST BIOS screen)
  • First you’ve to choose the commandline option to install. once the files are finished copying the system will reboot and you’ve to choose the USB as first boot device. Now go for option 2 which spawn the remaining setup in the GUI mode.
  • Once you finish, reboot( no need to select USB device as the primary boot device. select your HDD if you changed the option in BIOS). Now the system may report that HAL.dll was not found and failed to boot. If this issue comes you can see several debugging option. Just try each by each and check properly boot or not. Nothing special to do there. It will report some error and when we reboot, if the issue is solved you can simply boot in to the OS otherwise boot again from USB and select the next debug option. Try one by one until succeeded.

There are few issues I’ve faced with Windows XP install during USB install

The C: drive will most probably be occupied by the inserted USB drive. So your dream to install the OS in C: Drive will remain as a dream. I was little bit tricky and first I installed it in Drive E: and in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices I swapped the E: Drive with C: drive in my ambition to boot from it( I’ve done it according to Microsoft Guidance). Boot worked fine but it failed to display the login screen. I reinstalled again but this time, I made another boot USB disk and formatted the drive and created a primary partition( however it seems you can do it with Windows XP installation Windows itself. Format a drive once, reboot it may take place of the C drive. I’ve not tried it though). After that booted from Windows bootable USB. Now this can occupy another drive name as the partition was already existing there.

It may show you that format the USB device and install in it during the initial stage of the boot. You’ve to press ESC key then it will display the attached hard disk and it’s partition. Format it once again if needed or install straight in the new partition. For me installing from USB was damn slow even I used USB 2.0 device.

Now you’re done. Any queries, ask as comments.

Note that I’ve successfully tried only Windows XP. Windows 2003 and Windows Vista are the other options in the Novicorp WinToFlash tool.

Kudos to the team who created this excellent tool and I blame Microsoft for not providing an easy tool to install their OS.