Windows 7 installation on eMachine D620 went well.

[Hectic]

Ok, the only reason for this post is that I was advised by Acer support that there were no driver support for the D620 eMachine laptop, but there was for the E620, should I decide to replace Vista Home Basic with Windows 7. I was actually advised not to do the replacement.

I did not have laptop with me yet and could not run the advisor software. I also read on the net of people having problems with Lan and wireless cards after installing Windows 7 on a D620. I'm not sure if it was with the final release or earlier versions. The advisor software cleared the laptop up to the Ultimate version and with Aero as well. There were some 64bit issues, but I did not dwell on them as I was going to install Win 7 Home Basic 32 bit.

I made the recovery dvd disks and I kept the recovery partition containing the Vista image.

Installed Win 7 and had no problems apart from the ATI x1250 graphics chip that was not detected and a standard adapter was installed. I downloaded an ATI catalyst driver and that sorted the graphics.

The lan and wireless were both operating with generic drivers, but Win 7 sorted itself by updating and looking for better drivers.

All other software went well, accept for a Belkin bluetooth dongle that did not find all the drivers. i did not try to install the Vista driver for it as the customer only needed the modem part and that was functional. It is possible that the Vista driver and software could have work.
The same for the Canon Pixma MP250. I downloaded all the Win 7 drivers and software without trying to install the original Vista drivers and software. I did not install these drivers, just wrote them to cd and gave them to the customer.

Forgot to mention that I also added a 1GB SoDimm and with the 2 GB the Vista installation ran much better, before I replaced it with Win 7.

The D620 ran well with the Win 7 and I can clearly see why Win 7 is so well rated at this stage.

 

[Smiley_lauf]

Hi there--I also have this machine from IC; I upgraded the RAM to 3GB. I also installed Windows 7 without hassles--only problem was the ATI graphics drivers--this it downloaded from the windows update. But I over-wrote that with the prop ATi drivers from emachines site.

j1Q: Is this processor AMD K8 Processor Athlon 64 1.6GHz a DUAL CORE? or it is single core? I am not getting the feeling that it is dual;

 

[Synaesthesia]

j1Q: Is this processor AMD K8 Processor Athlon 64 1.6GHz a DUAL CORE? or it is single core? I am not getting the feeling that it is dual;

Push Control-Alt-Delete then run task manager, then go to the performance tab and see if there are 2 cpu's or one.

 

[DJNgoma]

Hi there--I also have this machine from IC; I upgraded the RAM to 3GB. I also installed Windows 7 without hassles--only problem was the ATI graphics drivers--this it downloaded from the windows update. But I over-wrote that with the prop ATi drivers from emachines site.

j1Q: Is this processor AMD K8 Processor Athlon 64 1.6GHz a DUAL CORE? or it is single core? I am not getting the feeling that it is dual;

I recommed downloading the latest drivers for your ATi 3200 from AMD themselves, they are more up to date than the OEMs.

From what I can see is that the D620 runs on an AMD Athlon™ 2650e and it's a single core but more powerful than most of the Atom range from Intel (even the dual core Atom 330).

 

[Smiley_lauf]

Yah, to my disappointment this is a single core CPU. Ok I will check out the AMD site for the updated drivers.

Does anyone know if there is a way to upgrade this CPU to a more substantial one like say Dual Core or even AMD Dual Core?? And where can I get this done. I must say it isa sweet machine and just the right size for mobility and all day computing in my office. I like the keyboard and screen very much. Would be good to see if the CPU is upgradable though so it could improve performance--512K L2 cache keeps lagging when I try doing many things at same time.

Thanks
S