Video drivers for DELL 505

[marsdenprimary]

Hi,

 

I'm reviving some old laptops here and want to put Windows 7 on them. I've put it on one of our old DELL 505's and it runs ok apart from the video. I cannot find a way to get it into a higher res than 640 x 480. Any help? I've looked for a solution but cannot find one.

[Dom_]

Have a look in the bios and see if you can change the video memory from 1MB to 8MB - had this issue on a few old dell optiplex's too.

[Dom_]

or more than 8MB - just set it to the max

[SYNACK]

Do you have the right drivers or the generic PnP ones that Windows defaults to if there is not other drivers?

[DrPerceptron]

Solution

 

The only driver that worked for me is: Intel® Graphics Controller 6.14.10.3722 . The reason why is that Standard VGA Adapter (Win7 native) is the same version (6.14.10.3722) but it has newer release date. Newest Intel driver 14.19.50 did NOT work. So get yourself the working video driver below. After Windows 7 install you will see that Standard VGA Adapter is installed and there is an exclamation mark on the "video controller". In order to install the driver we need to get exclamation mark on "video controller (vga compatible)". This spot is occupied by Standard VGA Adapter. Even when you unistall Standard VGA Adapter and install new driver after the reboot Standard VGA Adapter comes back. We need to disrupt Standard VGA Adapter from being installed. My way of disabling the adapter is to edit the driver file for it "c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys". There might be another way for letting Windows stop installing Standard VGA Adapter but I did not find it.

 

Intel® Graphics Controller 6.14.10.3722 (Windows)

 

Download 1

Download 2

 

Intel® Graphics Controller 6.14.10.3732 (Windows)(Sleep Mode Fixed)(Thx to pc84)

 

Download 1

(Extract to File with WinRAR)

 

Download 2

(Zip File)

 

Instructions

 

STEP 1

 

Make sure you unistall video drivers that do not work. If you see exclamation marks on your previous drivers in Device Manager, unistall them. Your Device Manager should say that you have Standard VGA Driver installed under Display category and exclamation mark on "video controller". Make sure you restart PC when asked.

 

STEP 2

 

We will need to edit "c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys" file now, but there is a problem. Windows Vista and Windows 7 will NOT allow you to edit system files even when you are the admin. Changing security attributes of that file did not work either. The file is owned by "TrustedInstaller" service. We will need to own the file and give ourselves the full control to edit it.

Click 'Start' and in 'Search' type 'cmd'. The result will show on top. Right-click on 'cmd' and choose "Run as Administrator". If your account does not have admin rights you might be prompted to enter username and password. I used account that already has administrator priviledges. You should have a command prompt with administrator priviledges.

 

STEP 3

 

Lets say my logged in username is peter

 

First command you do is:

 

takeown /f c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys

 

This will give ownship to the current user. You should see a message saying SUCCESS etc..

 

Second command you do is:

 

cacls c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys /G peter:F

 

There will be a confirmation message so type 'y'. This will change the security attributes to give you ONLY all the permissions for the file. If you are paranoid as me and want original permissions restored, I will show you how to restore the permissions to the previous step later on in this tutorial . If 'cacls' command does not work you can try using 'icacls'. If you cannot edit this file try to boot to "Save Mode" and try it again (Thx to Giuseppe Chill).

 

STEP 4

 

Open c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys in any text editor. Just add any character to the begining of the text. Let's say we will add character x . So the text should start with xMZ and the rest of stuff. Save the file. This edit will render that file unusable.

 

STEP 5

 

In Device Manager uninstall Standard VGA Adapter. It will prompt you to restart so do it. After install you will see a message saying that certain devices did NOT installed successfuly, which is GOOD . Go to Device Manager and you should see the exclamation point next to "video controller" and "video controller (vga compatible)". Right-click on "video controller (vga compatible)" and do update driver. Choose "Browse for the Driver" (or something like it ). Point to the driver directory that you downloaded and extracted (win2000). Click "OK". Wait for the driver to be installed. It might hang for a little (It will say that window is "not responding"). Do not worry as this is still installing the driver. It will prompt you to restart so do it. (If it does not prompt click anywhere and wait for message). After restart it will finish installing the driver.

 

Congratulations!!! You should have a working video driver!!!

 

STEP 6

 

Open c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys in any text editor. Remove the first character you put there which was x. Save the file. Your file will be usuable again . You can stop here if you want, but if you want to restore the permissions for the file to original state go to next step.

 

STEP 7

 

Right-click on any other file in the c:\windows\system32\drivers. Choose "Properties". Go to "Security" tab. Now compare that security tab with the security tab of c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys. Just make sure the security tabs of those two files look the same (all tabs and advanced options). In order to add "TrustedInstaller" it is not the same as regular usernames because it is a service.

You will need to type "NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller" (without quotes) when adding it to own the file and to have all permissions. Once you done editing you can delete your account from c:\windows\system32\drivers\vgapnp.sys, because it was not there from the beginning. We took control over and the previous commands added it by default.

 

Apparently you need a message too :/

[3s-gtech]

Are these D505s with Pentium M processors and 915 graphics? Before you put any more work in, is it definitely worth doing this? You can use 2GB of RAM with that chipset, but it's only DDR, and the processor is very old though good in its day. Only PATA HDDs too. I suspect performance will be very poor in use!

 

You should be able to get the 915 to work in 7, just badly as it doesn't support WDDM properly unless using hacked drivers.

[SYNACK]

Using the native drivers, even if they are the XP ones do give you some advantages, the biggest is that multiple moniters work. You also get propper screen detection so you get access to all the supported resolutions along with OpenGL acceleration and DirectX up to the level that the chip supports. Without the drivers a lot of stuff stops working as well as it should.

 

Windows 7 is a hell of a lot more picky about using XP video drivers though and certain drivers don't work as easily as they do under Vista or even at all. Intel are expecially bad for this with their XP/Vista changeover drivers.

 

I only just tracked down some Radeon 9250 drivers for Windows 7 recently that didn't bluescreen the thing on shutdown. Its sometimes tricky to get a hold of the exact right ones.

[marsdenprimary]

Are these D505s with Pentium M processors and 915 graphics? Before you put any more work in, is it definitely worth doing this? You can use 2GB of RAM with that chipset, but it's only DDR, and the processor is very old though good in its day. Only PATA HDDs too. I suspect performance will be very poor in use!

 

You should be able to get the 915 to work in 7, just badly as it doesn't support WDDM properly unless using hacked drivers.

 

I hate to see half-decent technology going to waste SURELY it can be used...!

[3s-gtech]

It can - but those things work nicely on XP or even a nice Linux distribution...

[marsdenprimary]

It can - but those things work nicely on XP or even a nice Linux distribution...

 

My only gripe is we've moved to a predominantly Windows 7 network. Upgrading our server to 2008 so i'm trying to get rid of all the XP machines... If only everyone were open to Linux! I'd have that on EVERYTHING.

[tumbleweed]

1st step - ensure you've got the latest BIOS - A11, this then gives you the option of 1 or 8 mb graphics memory.

I've tried the mentioned intel drivers in the past, but they kept dying on me.

[marsdenprimary]

1st step - ensure you've got the latest BIOS - A11, this then gives you the option of 1 or 8 mb graphics memory.

I've tried the mentioned intel drivers in the past, but they kept dying on me.

 

Thanks i'll give that a whirl- they'll have it on the DELL website surely?

[3s-gtech]

Dell's website has been pretty good in my experience - finding the BIOS for old laptops has not been a problem. Drivers and Downloads | Dell [united States]