Dell Latitude OS Dilemma
I acquired a Dell Latitude D620 from my local computer repair shop a few days ago. The guy who runs the place is great with hardware, but not so much with software. He crammed a barely-running Windows 7 64-bit installation onto the little thing. That would be extremely laggy if the laptop still had its original processor, but it doesn't. It originally came with an Intel Centrino Duo, but somewhere along the line someone switched that out for a Core Duo running at 2.34 ghz, which causes the system to heat up pretty fast (though insufficient as the cooling fan is, it does stop the thing from melting). But whoever upgraded the processor clearly didn't understand how nearly pointless that is if the system has crap for memory. It only has 2 gb of RAM, which is enough to run a 64-bit OS, but just barely.
Now my issue is what OS I should install that would let it run at a decent speed with its decent processor and crappy memory. Should I load Windows 7 32-bit? Would Vista 64-bit run better than 7 64-bit? Or perhaps I should even go the 32-bit Vista route? Heck, I'd be okay with putting XP on the thing, as long as I can get it running at an acceptable speed.
Now my issue is what OS I should install that would let it run at a decent speed with its decent processor and crappy memory. Should I load Windows 7 32-bit? Would Vista 64-bit run better than 7 64-bit? Or perhaps I should even go the 32-bit Vista route? Heck, I'd be okay with putting XP on the thing, as long as I can get it running at an acceptable speed.
Comments
Just run 7 to 10 on it. The SSD is by far the important thing to upgrade though - you'll notice the difference between a new SSD and an anemic, dying laptop drive.
I don't have a copy of Windows 10, but on the 7 suggestion, are you saying I should put 32-bit on it?
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sop=10& ... heino+pata
If you have 7, then you have 10 (Well, for the next two months anyway).
Download it from Microsoft, use your 7 key to activate it: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwar ... windows10/
The reason I'm guessing it is heating up, since the processor is such high end (As I said, most likely original) it's probably safe to assume that they also chose the higher end graphics option - the nVidia NVS...I believe 110M or 120M. Something was wrong with these chips that caused them to get much hotter than they should have and they'll overheat quickly and a lot of them failed. To prevent it from heating up you'll have to disassemble the laptop and replace the thermal pad with a copper shim with thermal compound on both sides, or replace the motherboard with an intel graphics motherboard (Which, if it doesn't come with a processor, would require thermal compound replaced anyway since you'd be taking off the heatsink).
2GB was a fairly standard amount of RAM for the time period, hell, if it's from 2006 it was on the higher side (I think the average then was 512MB or 1GB). 64-bit operating systems don't require a certain amount of RAM, they can just address more RAM than 32-bit. It should do Win7 fine, especially if you disable the aero effects and go with a browser that uses less CPU and RAM because that's probably the offender that's using up all of your resources.
A D620 will run Win7 fine, my dad has what used to be my D620 and it's on Win7 and running fine.
Centrino Duo also does not mean it has a T2400.
Thanks for pointing out that the heating issue is with the graphics unit! The original buyer did indeed have it ship with an nvidia card, though I can't remember which one. But now I'm not sure how to access the graphics card to replace the thermal pad. I found a service manual on Dell's website ( http://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-p ... _en-us.pdf ) but it doesn't say anything about the GPU as far as I can tell. It does mention the processor's thermal cooling assembly, but I don't know if that assembly is shared with the GPU or not.
Also, if I did access the GPU, would there be any specific model or something that the copper shim would have to be? Or can I buy any kind and be okay?
It will take time to disassemble but it'll be worth it to keep the GPU from failing due to heat. I've disassembled one, detailed directions are at the bottom of this reply.
Try this thermal pad, it says D630 but they both use the same heatsink design - at least between the nvidia models.: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-D630-GPU-T ... ia-Quadro-
135M-Overheating-Fix-/281110174375?hash=item417378daa7:g:lpUAAOxy8hNRjJS~
You'll also need thermal compound if you don't already have it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835100007
It's been a while since I last had a D6xx laptop so this will be going off memory. I have a D531 but it's a little different.
First remove the battery (of course). Remove all of the screws on the bottom (I don't remember which ones are for what so just remove all of them. You can always look that up. Make sure to put them all together, maybe draw a diagram of the laptop and draw little screw holes where each of the screws go and put each screw on top of each corresponding one) and the two screws on the back to unscrew the display (This will be important for later) Then open up the laptop the way you normally do, but push the screen back until it's flat and grab a flathead screwdriver. See the little notch that's to the far right of the little thing that says "LATITUDE D620" with the volume and power controls? stick your flathead screwdriver into that and push up and then it'll require a little bit of effort but you'll be able to take off that part. Then, unscrew the three screws on the keyboard (One is hard to see but it's where the power buttons are) and then gently lift the keyboard off the machine. Pull up the blue lever that is above the keyboard cable and holding it in (Don't worry if this breaks or is extremely hard to take out, it doesn't really matter, just holds the keyboard in. You CAN still remove the palmrest with it just unhooked from the motherboard and still under the lever, but I wouldn't recommend it.) Then, disconnect the WiFi cables from the Centrino WiFi card and route them out and disconnect the display cable, since I already covered unscrewing the display, after you get these cables out you can just take the display off. Then, unscrew all of the screws around the palmrest area that are marked "P", which stand for palmrest, along with disconnecting the touchpad. After you get this done along with taking the display off you should be able to remove the palmrest/touchpad.
Onto the actual thermal paste job...I can't really describe how to do this anymore because I only took off the heatsink on one of these laptops once or twice. This isn't my own video, I've just used the videos from this person before when I first disassembled one of these:
https://youtu.be/30Oima1QDGI?t=3m21s
You'll also have to repaste the regular CPU too because it'll otherwise cause bubbles in the thermal compound. If you haven't done this before, there are tutorials on it so don't worry.
Copper Shim application tutorial:
https://youtu.be/RhT4uz6OwNQ?t=1m15s
To reassemble just follow those steps in reverse and it should work. After you've disassembled one of those D6xx laptops once they become lego-like.
I've worked on a lot of these laptops, if you can maybe tell. I didn't even look at one besides looking at a spare keyboard I had to see how many screws it has.
In terms of OS though, if Win7 proves to be too laggy with all of the modern programs with 2GB RAM, you can always add more RAM. If you don't want to do that, I ran Vista on mine when I was using it (Well - I went between Vista and 7. Both ran fine.), although that's because that was what it was licensed for originally. Both ran about the same - I just didn't really store anything important on it to I would go between operating systems for fun from time to time. Vista could run better but I really doubt it since Vista is known for being a memory hog, it'll also lose support next year. XP is too obsolete to use in 2016.
If you need it to be a Windows laptop, however, try Win7 64bit otherwise investigating Windows Thin PC is an option, as well as looking into NTLite / RT7Lite. However, if a N270 can run Win7 at an somewhat acceptable speed then a Core Duo should run Win7 fine.