At the risk of being one-hand clapping... I will post my experiences here as they may be of use to other people who (like me) find this thread when trying to decide whether to move a M1330 to Windows 10. I have two M1330's. One with NVIDIA graphics and a T7500 CPU, the other with the Intel graphics and T9300 cpu.
I have used the Intel graphics machine now for several weeks running Windows 10. Mainly for email and web browsing. I briefly tested Windows 10 on the NVIDIA graphics model by swapping hard disks and it seemed to be working just as well as the Intel Graphics machine (better in one respect).
Why not update a Dell XPS M1330 to Windows 10?
- The battery life is not comparable to more modern laptops (I estimate 2 hours 40 mins on a new 6-cell battery.. mine is at 25% original capacity so gives me about 43 mins - Intel Graphics variant)
- Power to weight ratio is not as good as modern laptops
- A Windows 10 license is fairly expensive
- Although most devices/drivers will work ok you are on your own for any problems that may emerge
- The wireless card may need replacing
- Modern laptops support SATA 3 and DDR3 memory while the M1330 is SATA 2 and DDR2
- Display is inferior to modern laptops: the LED display is probably not as bright, the resolution is likely inferior, scrolling may not be as smooth.
- The LED indicator lights are probably rather dim
- The built-in webcam is not supported for facial recognition login by Windows 10
Why upgrade a Dell XPS M1330 to Windows 10?
- Vista is no longer supported/updated
- You may have some old devices which need the Firewire (i1394 port), VGA port, DVD drive (if still working) etc.
- The retail Windows 10 license can later be moved to another machine unlike the licenses provided with new machines (e.g. maybe you have another machine currently running Windows 7 but when extended support for 7 ends in Jan 2020 you may want to retire the M1330 and upgrade the Windows 7 machine to 10)
- Windows 10 is lighter and faster than Vista. The 64 bit version can run with 2GB RAM, runs well and uses all 4GB of RAM that you may have. If you happen to have 8GB of RAM (2x4GB DDR2) and you have the most recent BIOS from Dell then it can use all of that.
- If you have a SSD I believe you will get TRIM support from Windows 10 (that Vista lacked)
- Windows 10 uses under 40GB of disk space even with hibernation enabled and several apps installed while old installations of Vista are likely to be heavily bloated by updates.
Advice
Do a clean Install of Windows 10 64 bit - I did from USB memory stick to a spare SSD
To boot from USB you may need Floppy Disk enabled as a boot device in BIOS as well as USB boot.
Default Windows 10 drivers support almost all of the M1330 hardware
To get Sony Memory sticks to be recognized in the card reader (Ricoh driver)
- Downloaded the Dell http://ftp.dell.com/chipset/Ricoh_R5C833_A00_R240788.exe
(This is probably not the latest release but online comments indicated someone had that working and it was the one another site suggested)
- Executed it… it extracts to C:\dell\drivers\R240788\
- Used Device Manager to browse to that folder manually and install drivers
(I did this to try and avoid supplanting the SDCard drivers that were installed by Windows 10 and were working)
The biggest issue is likely to be the wireless card. For an Intel WiFi card, go to Device Manager and in the properties, disable the ability of the system to disable power to the WiFi, and change setting - Advanced - Wireless Mode: from 6. 802.11a/b/g to 4. 802.11b/g
If it is still giving problems you can replace it with a different WiFi card. Avoid Intel cards as they seem to be problematic… I suspect they are too closely integrated with the Intel chip sets. I tried the original Intel 4965AGN card, and then an Intel Dual Band AC 3160 card (which seemed to cause BSODs).
I am currently running with the Bigfoot Killer-N 1102 card I borrowed from an Alienware M14X and it works very well. Although that card is no longer sold, the drivers are up to date (it is based on a Qualcomm/Atheros chip and I guess most cards with that hardware would be ok)
[Most new WiFi cards are half height Mini PCIe. Ideally you then buy a cheap metal plate to extend them to full height so you can screw them in place. To get one aerial to reach you probably have to get a tiny extender cable, or put the WiFi card in the WWAN PCIe slot - which has the side effect of stopping the WiFi LED on the keyboard from working. No big loss when you have an onscreen indicator in the system tray. I am currently using a 1.5" UMCC extension cable to extend the black cable to the WLAN slot and it seems to be working very well – perhaps even better signal than without the extension, though I paid rather a lot of (International) postage on the cable]
Features that I suggest forgetting about
- Dell Media Direct (I never used it anyway, Windows 10 boots fast anyway, I lost the special partition anyway when I upgraded the hard disk some time ago). The "Home" button seems to boot Windows 10 just the same as the power button does (after showing a splash screen for Dell Media Direct which presumably comes from BIOS)
- Dell Recovery Partition - if you need to reinstall Windows 10 you would just go back to a USB stick
- WiFi Catcher (you can disable it in BIOS…. Very last item of the menus). Again I wasn't using it and I don't think it worked under Windows 10
- DVD/CD drive… failed long ago on the two machines I have. Yours may be working… but if not… well a replacement laptop probably doesn't have one anyway.
- Fingerprint protected vault - The Fingerprint reader works well in Windows 10 for Windows logon…. Better than it did under Vista (anyone having trouble with that era of fingerprint reader.. I suggest breathing on your finger to moisten it, avoid too liberal application of greasy hand-cream, and don’t expect it to work if you just stepped out of the bath). I haven't tried installing the browser plugin to remember passwords as I use a different solution. I haven't tried the password protected Vault that the Dell originally had. Might work, might not.
- Motion detection on camera - this was removed from Dell Webcam software in Windows 7 and on. A pity as I caught a thief with that. Dell Webcam Central does work in Windows 10 (though no motion detection).
- Dell Quickset - I didn't bother trying to install it. I haven't missed it.
- Touchpad - Windows 10 supports normal use but not the scroll regions at the edge and I think not any multi-touch or gesture facility that might or might not have previously existed… again something I wasn't using.
- Dell Dock - seems to only be supported for Vista.
Known issues
I could not compute the Windows Experience score on the M1330 with Intel Graphics and T9300 cpu. Winsat crashes when it tried to play back one of the WMV files that the test plays.
The problematic video is C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\Clip_1080_5sec_VC1_15mbps.wmv which winsat tries to play as part of the process of computing the WEI score. This takes part in the "graphics formal" part of the test.
Faulting application name: Video.UI.exe, version: 10.17022.1031.0, time stamp: 0x58d327b6
Faulting module name: igdumd64.dll, version: 8.14.10.2697, time stamp: 0x4f6bfd42
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000b221d
Faulting process ID: 0xd0
Faulting application start time: 0x01d2bd3081386c01
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.ZuneVideo_10.17022.10311.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\Video.UI.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\igdumd64.dll
Report ID: 8ebb747c-7f4b-41c3-bcac-f313166e5c28
Faulting package full name: Microsoft.ZuneVideo_10.17022.10311.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
Faulting package-relative application ID: Microsoft.ZuneVideo
You can check if the score was computed with:
Windows-R shell:games
You can try and compute for score manually from an Administrator CMD window:
> winsat formal
The Winsat log files are in C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\
The failure I saw was logged as follows
Application Error 1000
"Faulting application name: winsat.exe, version: 10.0.14393.0
Faulting module name: igdumd64.dll, version: 8.14.10.2697"
I have not discovered any resulting problems in use. Google Earth works fine (for example). I haven't tried gaming.
The M1330 with NVIDIA graphics ran Winsat successfully and gave a WEI score of 4.3
It is possible firmware update(s) would solve the wireless and winsat issues. I didn't try that hard to find one. I tried the Intel Update Utility and it suggested a chipset driver which didn't actually succeed in installing. I tried a couple of wireless drivers for the Intel wireless without resolving issues.
I didn't exercise the Bluetooth very much... I think I transmitted a couple of images from my phone to the M1330 – that's all. So I can't make any great claims for how well it works – though it was looking good in Device Manager.
The touch sensitive strip above the keyboard mostly works -
In the Groove Music player (playing MP3): Eject, Back, pause/play, and the speaker controls work. The Stop and skip forward don't seem to)
In Windows Media player (playing MP4): Eject, Stop, Pause/Play are working but not skip forward or back
Special note if you have the version of M1330 with NVIDIA graphics card
This configuration had a known problem with the solder on the NVIDIA chip cracking leading to graphics failure. I had the motherboard replaced twice under warranty. After the second replacement I had no more problems…. So I presume the later versions of the motherboard solved this issue.
If you are new to Windows 10… one hint
Download the OneNote 2016 Desktop version as the built-in OneNote App is annoying. Does not support screen grabs with Shift-Windows-S, Does not support entry of unicode characters using Alt… key sequences. Does not let you access the notebook when you do not have an internet connection!
