Q&A: Dell Latitude D600 and Vista Aero Glass?
Reader F.T. asks: I did the same thing as you this past week [upgrade a D600 to Vista], I have the same ATI Radeon 9000 as you. Have you been able to do anything else with the laptop so that you can use all the features of Vista?
I'm assuming this question is about Vista's Aero Glass features like Flip-3D, Taskbar thumbnail previews, and transparency. If so, the simple answer is that a Dell Latitude D600 notebook with an ATI Radeon 9000 graphics chipset (32MB dedicated graphics RAM) simply doesn't meet the specs required for those Vista features. So, while Vista works perfectly well in other respects on a D600, you will not see the snazzy new graphical features.
It was just a stroke of luck that my cheap desktop PC had a decent graphics chipset (nVidia 6600) with enough shared video RAM (128MB). I hadn't actually expected to see any Aero Glass feature on it while planning the upgrade.
January 24th, 2009 - 01:13
i have the same laptop and vista does not permit me to use aero i use all the hacks and tweaks but no use and windows bilnds does not allow me to use perpixel skins anyone has a hack to enable aero on XDDM card
April 12th, 2009 - 06:42
So if I upgraded my RAM I could run vista on my Latitude D600 without any problems with the drivers or anyhing?
April 13th, 2009 - 21:51
Vista Business Edition ran slowly but was usable on a Dell D600 w/1GB RAM back when I had one. I’m reasonably confident that it would run reasonably nicely with 2GB RAM. It did not, however, support Aero Glass graphics features like Flip3D (not a big deal). I seem to recall using Windows XP drivers provided by Dell for WiFi, graphics, etc.
April 28th, 2009 - 16:22
I have a D600 with 2g of ram and it runs vista business very very well. No performance issues at all but it would be great to use Aero, but not to shabby for such a old laptop
April 29th, 2009 - 00:37
Keith: Thanks for the feedback on Vista running on a Dell Latitude D600 w/2GB RAM. I always wondered if it would run better with more RAM or of the CPU just couldn’t deal with Vista no matter how much RAM was thrown at it. Planning to install Windows 7 on the D600?
May 6th, 2009 - 05:50
Hi all. I am also wondering if it would be possible ton install Windows 7 RC on an old Dell Latitude D600. Has anybody tried it ? Does it find all the drivers ? Thks for your answers.
Franck
May 6th, 2009 - 17:49
Just upgraded to Vista professional….I don’t know what aero is, but I was wondering if I were to add a 1GB ram chip to the D600, would word, internet, etc. work that much faster, or should I replace the video card, inwhich I heard a knew motherboard is needed…Thx
May 18th, 2009 - 00:36
Hello!
I actually just installed 7 RC on a D600 & so far its great! im looking for th graphics driver so i can get bettr support but yea so far so good!
May 18th, 2009 - 00:51
Gabe: Thx for the D600 Win7RC feedback. How much RAM is installed on your D600? 1GB? 2GB?
May 22nd, 2009 - 12:23
Hi all. Caught this website in doing some research on my old D600. I upgraded to 1.5GB RAM and installed Win7RC. Runs very well. Outperforms Vist by leaps and bounds. For most of the drivers, I used the original drivers, except for the Intel Pro Wireless card. Went to Intel for that. Otherwise, runs great. Reminds me of an oversized Netbook
July 26th, 2009 - 07:46
I installed Windows 7 RC successfully on Dell D600 (Pentium M 1,6GHz, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9000). I would not use it in normal day to day use because the lack of drivers for graphics and sound card, however something crossed my mind and I tried it: I installed Windows XP drivers for Radeon 9000 (the pack would not install because it says that is not compatible, but I installed manually) and I was astonished to see that it worked, and quite better than I thought (all my games which I play on XP, work perfectly, like in XP, better than in Vista). No aero, but I don’t mind that. The same with sound card drivers, I installed the driver (the newest I could find, on dell.com I think, compatible with vista) and it too worked perfectly. Now I have all of my drivers installed and working, and the system runs very fast and is very responsive. You should try it, I guarantee you that it works.
August 25th, 2009 - 05:27
I installed Windows 7 on my Dell D600. First problem was Radeon 9000 drivers but i found file called Vista_ATI_Radeon_XDDM_6.14.10.6606.zip it has last Ati driver that support radeon 9000 and works ok.
Sounds i got working with latest drivers from dell site v5.10.0.3952, A15 didn’t run setup.exe just use update driver in device manager.
Intel Wlan 2200GB worked ok with vista drivers from intel site.
Dell truemobile 300 bluetooth works after i installed Dell’s quickset to get bluetooth radio on. Quick set has to be installed setting setup.exe compability to xp.
Allmost everything is ok now, only problem is sleep mode s3 does reboot when trying to resume from sleep.
Hope somebody has solution for that ?
November 27th, 2009 - 07:20
Windows 7 works great on my D600. I upgraded the RAM to 2 GB. It’s more responsive than Windows XP ever was. I intalled the Vista graphics driver and the old sound driver.
December 5th, 2009 - 01:02
i have scoured high and low and STILL cannot get audio drivers to work on my Dell D600 for win7. Is anyone else running into deadends with this also??? Any tips from anyone who struggled forever then finally got it working??
Driving me absolutely insane
January 5th, 2010 - 14:11
Hi,
I am struggling to update from Standard VGA to Radeon 9000,even though I had managed to do so before I formatted my DellD600. I was running WIN7 and had managed to run CM2010 and other games, having managed to install Radeon 9000, but then recently I had a slight glitch and formatted using WIN7RTM, I managed to reinstalled the Radeon and then unistalled it by mistake, now I cant re-install it whatsoever!Any ideas??/
June 24th, 2010 - 13:54
I am unning win 7 on dell d-600 ..no areo glass but who needs that.Win 7 is more responsive then win xp. Got my cricket broadband card going without the flash they said I would need done to my broadband card..Love this win 7 its awesome.