New School Computers – Dell Vostro 220
March 25, 2009 at 7:58 pm 3 comments
5 Dell Vostro 220 computers arrived last week at my house, along with 19″ LCD monitors. These computers are destined for 5 lucky teachers at the school, and will replace some rather aged machines currently in use.
The first task after unboxing was to load a clean install of Windows XP Pro (the systems came with Vista Home Basic, but the school has a volume license for XP Pro). Sure enough, this was the first hurdle, as upon booting with the XP CD in order to delete the Vista partition and install XP, a blue screen popped-up. So I booted from a Vista Recovery CD and deleted the parition and formated a new one from the command prompt. Booted from the XP CD and still a blue screen. So, it was off to Google.
Turns out it’s a common thing with the Vostro 220′s, as described here. Once I made the settings change in the BIOS, the install chugged along just fine. Once installed, I downloaded the XP drivers from Dell’s support website, and installed them. Finally, I installed Service Pack 3, all the XP critical updates, and Internet Explorer 8.
Next Steps: Install Antivirus/Security software, install browser plug ins, Add a local admin for teacher software installs, install SteadyState, and clone the image onto remaining 4 computers.
Entry filed under: New Computers. Tags: Dell, teacher computers, Vostro 220.
1.
Faiz | May 5, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Hi Jason,
I have a Vostro 220 with Vista Business SP1 installed. I keep getting these Blue Screen every day atleast twice. I haven’t tried to install XP on it though. I was just wondering if this is a software or a hardware issue.
Have you experienced this problem in your Vostro 220′s after you installed XP on them?
Please let me know
Thanks
Faiz
2.
jasonstarcher | May 5, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Faiz,
Nope – no more problems with the blue screen on these Vostro 220′s once I made the change in the BIOS. I wouldn’t advise making that change on yours since you already have Vista installed and booting. I would try the Dell Driver Reset Tool to make sure that no driver files are corrupted. If that checks out, maybe try to download memtest86 and run some tests on your system memory?
3.
David | December 11, 2010 at 11:25 am
Hi,
I have been having a sporadic BSOD issues for the last 2 years with a Vostro 220s. I have been down the usual route of fresh installs and isolation of the hardware, but to still no evail, but i have found that when i turn off speedstep the BSODs seem to be less frequent. (The proc was overclocked i seem to remember)
I have a few dells, i suppose you get a bad one in a while..