3 thoughts on “250000 Views – 1 Year Statistics”

  1. Hello, Philip,

    I wanted to thank you and congratulate you personally for this unofficial guide, it's been enormously helpful to me. I could write reams about this, but I have an important question for you: many Dell Dimension models have processors that support DEP (aka NX), etc., but their BIOS does not expose these features. But I have found hints that various BIOS upgrades can an do expose them, similar to your post about the Optiplex 755.

    Is there any documentation anywhere that would reveal which BIOS upgrades can be used on which BIOS chips, and what these BIOS upgrades enable?

    In one blog, a PC repair specialist noted that he upgraded a 4500C BIOS using a Dell 4700C BIOS upgrade, and then was able to upgrade it to Windows 8.1 (and therefore to Windows 10). He was quite surprised that the BIOS upgrade didn't brick the motherboard, and further surprised that thereafter his system was identified internally as a 4700C!

    Anyway, thank you again so much for (obviously) devoting a lot of time to help the PC community worldwide, and avoid the destruction of millions of quite usable computers.

    Kind Regards
    Jon Campbell
    Software Engineer
    Boston, MA

    Reply

    1. Hi Jon

      I don't actually recommend any unofficial BIOS updates because as we all know a failed BIOS update = a bricked system. The OptiPlex 755 post was the latest BIOS offered by Dell.

      Usually BIOS updates are locked to prevent flashing of unsupported systems. The 4500c is from 2002 and the 4700 must be of a similar age. I wouldn't recommend trying to run Windows 10 on either of these.

      I get the drivers and BIOS mainly from here:
      http://downloads.dell.com/published/Pages/index.html
      And here:
      http://ftp.dell.com/Browse_For_Drivers/
      The second link used to work better than it does now.

      Dell used to list the fixes and enhancements of the BIOS updates but don't really now. Usually its best just to have the latest update before attempting the Windows 10 upgrade.

      Reply

      1. Hi, Philip,

        Thanks for your quick response. I'll do a bit more research on the "chip driver" upgrade entry I found at the 4700C page (it referred to an upgrade that could be applied to virtually all Dell systems), but I see your point, well taken. If I attempt anything, it will be experimental, with a spare motherboard in hand (:-))

        Thanks again,
        Jon

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