Adventures in Win7 & Dell Precision T7400

LarryV · 27 Oct 2009

Hi Guys,

I am working on upgrading my office Dell Precision T4700.
- I am doing a clean install
- machine has 4Gb of ram
- I am using Win7 64bit
- Machine has an SAS 6 SCSI controller and two 250GB drives which are joined into a 500GB virtual drive

I just tried the install for the first time, it seemed to see the drive. I formated the drive and installed.

It seemed to go well but then after first install, the screen remained blank. It stayed so long that I thought it had hung. I shut it down and tried to go into safe mode, where it told me that it could not complete setup in safe mode.
So I restarted again and left it on the blank screen for a while and after 15 minutes, a colorful windows logo showed up but no mouse and nothing else.

I have waited about 15 minutes now and it does not seem to change at all.

I suspect that I need the raid drivers. Let's see what's next...

stay tuned.

-Larry

LarryV · 27 Oct 2009

Ok, progress. I let it sit for a while and hit the power button quickly. it then shut down as if it was doing a normal shut down. this hinted at me that I might not be seeing everything I should be.

I think I made the mistake of leaving both my monitors connected during install and it might have done the install on a monitor that the video card could not yet show me.

On a hunch, I switched the monitor connections and rebooted, and this time I saw windows load up. So either I got lucky after a few reboots, or it was doing things I could not see.

I can't turn on the second monitor yet, but am doing all windows updates to see if I can get the video loaded up properly. but at least I am seeing explorer now.

I press on...

LarryV · 27 Oct 2009

The sound looked like it was not working but I ran the sound troubleshoot wizard and it started working. not sure what that was about.

The NVidia Quadro NVS 290 is there as an optional update and I am installing it now..

So far no 3rd party drivers, just the Win7 install CD. pretty good.

LarryV · 27 Oct 2009

I think I can declare success.

Optional updates on NVidia driver fixed the second screen not showing issue. I have both screens working beautifully.

Ran The Windows Experience Index:
Processor: 7.5
Memory: 7.5
Graphics: 3.4 (Aero is on)
Gaming Graphics: 5.3
Primary Hard Disk: 5.9

Now onto installing all my programs and Outlook (which unfortunately will likely slow down the machine)

I'll check in again once I am all up and running.

So the big lesson is: Do not connect more than one monitor during Windows 7 install, you might not see what is going on...