Archive for February, 2009

Inspiron 1520 Experiment

Posted by jaker in Hardware on February 15, 2009

For those of you who roll with the Inspiron 1520 with the GeForce 8600M GT video card, here’s a fun experiment for you. Download and run GPU-Z. Check the GPU clock, Memory, and Shader speeds. If they’re slower than the picture below, you could get yourself a free upgrade!

GPU-Z Statistics showing speed information for your video card

GPU-Z Statistics showing speed information for your video card

It’s quite possible that your machine shows clock speeds of 475MHz or 400MHz. If this is the case, stop by the techPowerUp! VGA BIOS Page and download the BIOS that shows the faster clock speeds. The nVidia BIOS flasher can be found at that website.

NOTE: There’s always the chance that the flash can fail, and you’ll brick your video card. Not fun, but at least it’s a Dell BIOS (and the versions match: 60.84.50.00.02), so I’m sure you’ll be able to send it in and they won’t notice a thing.

After installing this update, my Windows Experience Index jumped quite a bit:

The top WMI is my laptop before the update. The bottom WMI is after the update (and an installation of new drivers from laptopvideo2go)

The top WMI is my laptop before the update. The bottom WMI is after the update (and an installation of new drivers from laptopvideo2go)

 

Score!

~Jaker

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Media Center not downloading your program guide?

Posted by jaker in Media Center on February 11, 2009

Looks like there’s two fixes for you! The first fix involves a wipe and install of Windows 7 to test the new Media Center capabilities (recommended if you have a blog not unlike me, and you plan on writing about it).

The second fix involves downloading a new patch from Microsoft that resolves the problem for you. The problem of the unavailable program guide, that is.

~Jaker

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