Windows 7 on a Inspiron 510m

My ancient old knackered laptop (recently upgraded with a brand new 1Gb stick of RAM) had been running Ubuntu for a number of years, and was getting to the point where a OS re-install was necessary. I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed with the university wireless not playing nicely – so decided to give Windows 7 a try (since I can get it nice and free!)

Install was a breeze, OS booted fine first time, all drivers found and installed by Windows Update – apart from one…

Seems I was stuck with the 640×480 VGA resolution driver, Intel doesn’t think their 8XXGM series drivers work well with 7. Never fear – a bit of Googling revealed this site: http://www.groundstate.net/855GMWin7.html, which contains instructions for tricking 7 into installing the old drivers! Result! Although Seb may have had a slight point on this weeks Tech 107 (episode 3) about Macs being easier due to them not needing separate driver install. Ah well.

So – I’m now officially off Linux and 100% Windows again. Lets see how long it lasts this time!

Tech 107

Over Christmas, myself and Seb Payne came up with an idea for a brand new student radio show – Tech 107. Essentially, we wanted to create a show where we could publicly discuss the latest technological developments of the week in a relaxed atmosphere, that would hopefully appeal to a few people!

The show goes out live on Purple Radio every Tuesday at 1pm, with a podcast available on our website (when Seb gets round to posting it!). You can listen now to episodes #1 and #2.