Vostro 460/XPS 8300, Upgrade Adventures

I have been using my XPS 8300 as a primary PC at home for about 7 years, it's still going strong (it's been on for most of the time). It had an i7-2600, 16 GB of RAM (the RAM for it is relatively pricey nowadays). It still has it's original video card the HD-5770.

It unfortunately just missed out on a UEFI Boot so you have to have to install Windows 10 Version 1709 (or 1803 if it's out by the time you get round to it) with the Bootable USB formatted using the MBR partition scheme and NTFS format.

I added a 500 GB Crucial MX200 to mine and 2×2 TB drives to mine. Make sure to use SATA0 and SATA1 for the SSD as they are SATA III whereas SATA2 and SATA3 are only SATAII. I put the SSD in the empty optical drive bay.

The system's wireless card isn't fantastic so I ripped mine out and installed an Intel AC-7260.

Finally the system does not have USB 3.0 ports so I installed a Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card in mine as I needed them for my USB3HDCAP device.

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@Philip_Yipwrote:

1. I have been using my XPS 8300 as a primary PC at home for about 7 years, it's still going strong (it's been on for most of the time).

2. It had an i7-2600, 16 GB of RAM (the RAM for it is relatively pricey nowadays).

2b. It still has it's original video card the HD-5770.

3. It unfortunately just missed out on a UEFI Boot so you have to have to install Windows 10 Version 1709 (or 1803 if it's out by the time you get round to it) with the Bootable USB formatted

4. using the MBR partition scheme and NTFS format.

5. I added a 500 GB Crucial MX200 to mine and 2×2 TB drives to mine. Make sure to use SATA0 and SATA1 for the SSD as they are SATA III whereas SATA2 and SATA3 are only SATAII.

6. I put the SSD in the empty optical drive bay.

7. The system's wireless card isn't fantastic so I ripped mine out and installed an Intel AC-7260.

8. Finally the system does not have USB 3.0 ports so I installed a Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card in mine as I needed them for my USB3HDCAP device.

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Thanks for taking the time for the detailed reply.

1. Perfect, just what I needed to know.

2. Yeah, my 4gb is really just fair for Windows-10/64bit. I'll check eBay. I would be happy with 8gb total installed.

2b. I saw in the brochure that the little 350w PS has "up to 150W of graphics-card power" but I'll likely drop a spare "nice sized" Corsair in there.

3. Yeah, that is unfortunate ... I'm really liking UEFI these days. But what's strange, it that it boots-fast like a UEFI machine.

4. Oh really? I'll watch that.

5. Nice config. you have. OK, with H67 Cougar-Point chipset I will watch that. I'll think I'll move the DVD-ROM to a higher SATA-2/300 Port (to leave the first two for faster SSD/HDD).

6. Good idea. I will put my bootable SSD there also. That saves the lower bays for other drives. I noticed the plastic trays from XPS-410 fit. 

7. Yeah, I was surprised to see the Mini-PCIe slot in there. Mine is empty and I just need wired Gigabit Ethernet anyway.

8. Right, looks like it "just missed-out" on USB-3 also.  Thanks for the recommendation. Fresco FL1100 Chipset is welcome (I'd rather not buy any more Renesas-based cards).

UPGRADES and PROCEDURES Done
   (I'll try to come back and keep this list edited and updated as my adventure continues).

Updated BIOS from A03 to A06 (with FreeDOS boot-flash)
- Set "CPU C6 Report" back to Disabled so Sleep and Shut-Down work properly again.
- Successfully completed F12-on-Boot ePSA Diagnostics.

In-place upgrade from Windows-7 to (free) Windows-10 Pro 64-bit :Cool:
- Try connecting live ethernet cable before you start so it gets final pre-install updates
- Maybe it didn't reboot on-its-own that one first time, but Install was normal and fine otherwise.
- All this will be deleted and wiped soon (but now I got legit Windows-10)

Ran "wmic idecontroller get deviceid" and got REV_05 which is B3 Stepping.
- So that is the better (Intel fixed) SATA-2/300 Ports 2-5 ... dodged that bullet. The bad ones were B2.

Upgraded Power-Supply to Corsair tx650w.
- Not modular or new, but it was ... low-hours, my old parts, and a perfect fit

Ran Magic Jelly Bean and NirSoft-ProduKey 
- Retrieved Microsoft Office-2010 (Home & Business) Dell-OEM license-key.

Installed AMD Radeon HD-7750 (1gb) Video Card (XFX)
- Single-slot and at 55w-max, does not use a PCIe-Power-cable.
- Windows-10/64bit loads v17.30 driver with a working Radeon control-panel

Installed Kingston V300 240gb SSD (2.5inch, SATA-3/600, MLC)
- In 3.5inch bay under DVD-ROM on first SATA Port (SATA-0)
- Disconnected spinning HDD for now

Clean-installed Windows-10 Pro 64bit (v1703) to blank/raw SSD.
- Used Microsoft.com made flash-drive. F12 to start.
- Entered Windows-7 key from sticker on machine. Full install to blank SSD.
- Took about 15 minutes total (including a few reboots)
- Windows Installer formatted SSD as MBR/NTFS (says DiskPart later)
- Device Manager is clean and correct. Windows-10 Pro 64bit shows Activated
- Set to Private Network and other network settings
- Boots up (to fully loaded and usable desktop) in about 15 seconds. :Cool:

Re-connected its old 320gb WDC 7200rpm-HDD and Formatted at MBR/NTFS as D:
- Also, Over-Provisioned the Kingston SSD by 7% (Shrink main C: partition by 16gb or 16000mb)

Added Aluratek USB-2.0-dongle for system BlueTooth 2.0 EDR
- Via BlueTooth-2.0-EDR, added Sony DualShock-4 Controller (with gyro and vibration-rumble)

Installed Steam with new account (and Family Sharing from main account)
- Steam Family Sharing is pretty cool (never tried it before).
- Setup Big-Picture Mode and DualShock-4
- To get gyro to work with (driving) games, add "Joystick-Move/Horizontal output-axis only" to config

Upgraded ram Memory from 4gb to 8gb 
- Found an identical pair of Samsung DDR3-1333mhz 2gb DIMMs on eBay for $17 shipped.
- So now, 4 of these DIMMs are installed: Samsung 2gb 1Rx8 PC3-10600u (M378B5773DH0-CH9)
- Installed new pair in (black-clipped) "Secondary Memory Bank" slots
- Shows up in BIOS and Windows (and as Dual-Channel)
- Passed Extended ePSA Ram Memory test.

I did some more hardware upgrades and clean-installed Windows-10 Pro (64bit). I only used Microsoft drivers (NO specific Dell drivers from dell.com ). Did NOT install Intel-RST either. I added these to post above.

All working smoothly.

Sleep-Mode is working nicely.

EDIT:

Before I removed the stock Dell 350-watt power-supply:
- Model No: L350PD-00   ~  P/N: PS-6351-4DF-RoHS   ~  Dell PN: 9J0VD  ~  Circa-2011
- Two dedicated +12volt Rails . One with 16Amps max. and the other with 18Amps max 
- Vostro-460 sales brochure said "up to 150-watts of power for video card".
- It has all the usual cables and a single 6-pin PCIe-Power. 

I tested the following old video-cards and they worked fine:

- GeForce-7300 (2-DVI, Passive-HeatSink and no PCIe-Power-cable required)
- GeForce-8600 (Fanned and required the 6-pin PCIe-Power-cable)

Remember, the Vostro-460/XPS-8300 is Legacy-BIOS (aka non-UEFI )

More hardware and software updates (see edits above) ... mostly focused around Steam, gaming and seeing what this little machine can do.

As configured (with AMD-5770) the Vostro-460 seems to be handling games from 2015 (and older) with no problems. This is at 1080p with medium-to-high graphical settings in games.

If it can do this, I'm not expecting any problems with Kodi.

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@Philip_Yipwrote:

the RAM for it is relatively pricey nowadays).

My ram upgrade showed up today.

Not too bad ... I got another 4gb (2gb x2 dimms) from eBay for $17 shipped. :Cool:

Works fine. 8gb in total now (running Dual-Channel). :Yes:  :Beer:

My local Microsoft Certified Refurbisher Sells Systems with OEM System Builder Windows 10 DVD's and COA's . The pro is purple disk and home is blue disk.  EITHER Disk will reinstall windows home or pro when choosing the "I don't have a key" option on install.

https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Pro-System-Builder/dp/B00ZSHDJ4O

The 1709 DVD is my starting point for any system.

I then download and install DOT NET 4.71 offline installer and run that.

Then Manually Download the March 22, 2018 - KB4089848 Rollup to get to 16299.334

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=kb4089848

I never create a microsoft Account I create a local user and administrator.

Self Destruct Version  build Availability
Revision date

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@speedstepwrote:

 

1. My local Microsoft Certified Refurbisher Sells Systems with OEM System Builder Windows 10 DVD's and COA's . The pro is purple disk and home is blue disk.  EITHER Disk will reinstall windows home or pro when choosing the "I don't have a key" option on install.

 

2. Self Destruct Version  build Availability
Revision date

Creators Self Destruct Version	1709	16299.334	10/17/2017	3/22/2018
Current Branch (CB)	1703	15063.994	4/11/2017	3/22/2018
Current Branch (CB)	1607	14393.2156	8/2/2016	3/29/2018
Current Branch (CB)	1511	10586.1478	11/12/2015	3/13/2018

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1. cool

But no use burning a Windows-10 license if you don't have to, right? Upgrades of old Dells (with Windows-7 CoA stickers) still seems to work. I've been doing an in-place upgrade to Win-10 and it shows Activated. Then, I erase that, then enter CoA sticker Key at start of clean-install.

2. Funny.

Yeah, v1709 had some glitchy updates a month-or-so-ago. A little hard to fix, but not impossible. However, doing full updates on "recently birthed Win-10 systems" reveals that only the new replacement updates are used and seems OK (Self Destruct avoided). :Smile:

The 1703 and 1709 disks allow you to clean install by saying " I do not have a KEY"  and then entering a

WIN7 or 8 or 10 Key afterwards for HOME or PRO.  If you have 7 ultimate you choose PRO and it activates.

The OEM key I keep for later.   I havent had to buy 10 copies of the DVD.  I bought one at 1511 then 1607 then 1703 now 1709. 

The other disks are in storage now.

The point is that all the older ones have WINDOWS.OLD that is a pain to get rid of and wastes 20gigs or more of space.  Much easier to start with 1709 and then manually download the march rollup 735 megs and DOTNET 471 stand alone.  Do Dotnet then the rollup.  It has few if any updates after that.

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@Philip_Yipwrote:

I have been using my XPS 8300 as a primary PC at home for about 7 years, it's still going strong (it's been on for most of the time). It had an i7-2600, 16 GB of RAM (the RAM for it is relatively pricey nowadays). It still has it's original video card the HD-5770.

 

@Philip_Yip

Are you doing all that on the original power-supply?
Does yours still have the stock 350watt Dell power-supply? If so, I noticed it did have ONE 6-pin PCIe power, so I guess you've proven that it's OK to use it for extended periods (ie years).

Well, I ordered an Inatech USB-3.0 4-port PCIe card (KTU3FR-4P). It has the Fresco chipset controller. It came in a nice sealed box.

I installed it and hooked up the internal (SATA) power. It's tiny-green-led lights to indicate that part is working.

Strangely, the Vostro-460 did a "sad-face BSOD" on the first boot. It was the first time I've ever seen this machine do that (or really, hardly any Windows machine do it in years).

Anyway, after power cycling, the machine booted fine and I could see the Fresco USB 3.0 card in Device Manager (with the driver already loaded). I tested it with a 8gb flash drive and then shut down the machine.

A few days later, I booted-up the machine to do a Crystal DiskMark on it ... to compare with the Renesas-card in the other machine (using the same Seagate external USB-3 HDD on both). Well, the card is dead now and not appearing in Device Manager at all. I guess I will troubleshoot it later, but I think it might be going back to Amazon for a refund.

I was bad-mouthing Renesas cards (with all the drivers, firmwares, and what not) ... but they were never this much trouble to get initially working ( and none of them ever died on me ) .

EDIT - Troublshooting:
- Re-seating card did not help.
- Installing into a different slot again results in a BSOD (Stop Code: MACHINE CHECK EXCEPTION) on initial boot. Windows boots ok the next time, but it's still not appearing in Device Manager or working.

Looks like it's a gonner. I'll contact Amazon about a refund.

At least my old Renesas cards work (and don't die after 1 hour). The firmware should be solid by now, and maybe Microsoft has the WHQL drivers ready to download.

I thought these posts might be helpful to others. Not only for those looking for a good USB-3.0 card (for "still good" machines like this one released just before it made it to the motherboards) but also, it seems the VR-users sometimes use them for extra sensors. 

I found this. It's a bit old ( but so is this Vostro-460 / XPS-8300 )

http://vrzone.com/articles/usb-3-0-speed-tests-7-way-host-controllers-roundup/13358.html

So, I'm going to try this (yeah, back to good-ole Renesas) :

https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/USB-3.0/Cards/2-port-PCI-Express-USB-3-Card~PEXUSB3S24

For reference, this is my old StarTech Renesas card (in other older machine):
StarTech  PCIe USB3.0 2-Port Card (PEXUSB3S2)
- NEC uPD720200a Chipset (Renesas)
- Chip visually confirmed as D720200AF1
... a 4 year old version of the card, with an older version of the NEC controller chip.

NEC/Renesas USB-3.0 controller-chips were released in this order over the years ...
uPD720200, uPD720200A, uPD720201, and uPD720202 .

This upgrade is concluded here.

I noticed BIOS was still A03, and not A06 (like I thought I flashed it to the other day).
Tried flashing A06-BIOS again, and noticed I was getting "Problem Allocating Memory" during middle of the process (you have to read screen closely).

While this Rufus-made FreeDOS boot-flash has worked for other Dell machine's BIOS updates,
https://www.howtogeek.com/136987/how-to-create-a-bootable-dos-usb-drive/
Seems to be a problem with FreeDOS and this particular updater.exe .

As with any firmware update, there is a motherboard "bricking" or killing risk. However, it's been my experience that flashing them like this (outside of Windows) in DOS or FreeDOS is MUCH MORE reliable. If this is a desktop, it should be connected to a good UPS, and any unnecessary peripherals should be disconnected.

So, I found this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3594782/updating-bios-a03-a05-aurora-error-problem-allocating-memory.html
These direction are derived from that page (thanks to Ragnatok with his Alienware Aurora ).

I had this same (Error: problem allocating memory) problem when upgrading an Dell Vostro-460 (XPS-8300) BIOS using a FreeDOS bootable USB drive created by Rufus.

To get it working, I needed to add extra files to the FreeDOS installation that came with Rufus. In particular, the FDCONFIG.SYS file includes a few settings related to memory management. I listed the steps below. Creating a FreeDOS USB boot drive might have worked, but I didn't try that.

1. Use Rufus version 2.18 (latest a time of writing) to create a FAT32 bootable FreeDOS USB drive.
2. Download FreeDOS's USB "Full" Installer from http://www.freedos.org/download/. (FD12FULL.zip)
3. Unzip FreeDOS
4. Use 7-zip to extract all files from FD12FULL.img.
5. While working with these FreeDOS system-files, you may need to edit your "Windows File Explorer options" and un-check "Hide protected operating system files" to see the files mentioned in the next steps.
6. Copy the following extracted items to the root of the USB drive:

COMMAND.COM
FDCONFIG.SYS
KERNEL.SYS
COUNTRY.SYS
HIMEMX.EXE

7. Use notepad or a similar text editor to edit FDCONFIG.SYS on the USB drive (don't accidentally update the original copy) so that the paths correctly point to the files we copied to the root of the drive.
I've copy-and-pasted my version below.

!COUNTRY=001,858:\COUNTRY.SYS
!LASTDRIVE=Z
!BUFFERS=20
!FILES=40

DOS=HIGH
DOS=UMB
DOSDATA=UMB

DEVICE=HIMEMX.EXE

SHELLHIGH=COMMAND.COM \ /E:2048 /P=\AUTOEXEC.BAT

7b. Be sure to set your Windows File-Explorer options back to normal.

8. Copy your BIOS update-files onto the USB drive. I use folders/directories and this same flash-drive for all machines.
9. I shortened the names of the BIOS updates on the USB drive to A5.exe and A11.exe to make things easier on the command line (or eight-dot-three naming), including any folders . FreeDOS might display a different name for the files if the names are too long.
10. Boot up the USB drive . Notice memory is allocated better now.
10b. Run the TR-A06_QS.exe file (or whatever you renamed it to).
11. Notice that ONLY NOW does the AMI-Updater actually Read, Erase, Write, and Verify. It Works.  :Yes:
12. The version of the ME is also checked. It said v7.0.4.1197 was current. Restart when finished.
13. I booted into Windows to make sure everything was okay. msinfo32 says BIOS is now "Dell Inc. A06 10/17/2011"
14. Also shows Legacy (non-UEFI) and no SecureBoot available (but we know all that already) :)
14. Checked BIOS and all looks fine.

XPS-8300 / Vostro-460

This procedure should work for practically any Dell/Alienware BIOS firmware flasher ... designed for older machnes that are Legacy-BIOS (non-UEFI) based. If I have a reason to update the BIOS, I like to install all available BIOS updates in consecutive order. For newer UEFI-based machines, I would think you would just load the BIOS file from the provided (F12 on initial-boot) UEFI environment.

My machine is Sleeping, Waking, and Shutting-Down fine. If yours is not, try flipping the option at BIOS/Advanced/CPU Config/CPU C6 Report.

With its bootable SSD ... (from completely off) it cold-boots to usable desktop in about 20 seconds. Waking from Sleep takes less than 5 seconds.

XFX let me RMA a dead AMD-6770. It had a lifetime-warranty. They sent me a AMD-7750 in return.

It appears to be in the same performance-tier as the 6770 and 5770. Unlike the others, it's "single slot" . Since it only uses 55w max (for basically the same performance), it does not require the 6-pin PCIe-Power cable either. It's also a slightly newer card than those (I think circa 2013).

Looks like the AMD-7750 has 
- Could use PCIe-v3.0 lanes if I had them.
- Is DX-12 compatible
- Windows loaded a better v17.x driver (not being held-back as far as the 5770 was).
- Driver is called “Crimson ReLive” so that sounds pretty new.
- It has a DisplayPort in addition to the HDMI and DVI
... making it slightly better than AMD-5770:

So, while it might be a tab-bit slower than the power-hungry AMD-5770 was, it appears to be more-advanced and I think maybe a "better match" for a HTPC. Anyway, it needed to be tested, so I'll leave it in for a while. :Smile:

Here is the old info about ATI Radeon HD-5770 (1gb) that I pulled back out:
- At 22x11x4cm and dual-slot, no cards much bigger will fit (because of drive-cage).
- According to @Cass-Ole , it uses over 75w-max, so that's why it needs the 6-pin PCIe-Power-cable.
- Windows-10/64bit loads old v15.201.x driver from 11-2015 (only)
- And Windows does install a working Catalyst-Control-Center (as hoped)

So, these cards have all been previously installed, drivers loaded, and tested as working:
Nvidia: 7300-GT, 9600-GTS
ATI/AMD: HD-5770, HD-7750
And while I also have an old dual-slot AMD-5870 also, it won't really even fit (too long).

I think only older ATI/AMD cards will work with this non-UEFI motherboard, unless they have a Legacy-BIOS/UEFI Switch.

Another general tip is ... after you install the new video-card in this particular machine, go into BIOS and flip-flop the "Intel Multiple Monitor Feature" option in the BIOS (but leave it Disabled). That seemed to help the new card get detected properly once for me. While is was happening, it was starting to look like a dead video-card (but it was fine). You might have to use the on-board video-port temporarily to see what is happening.

I ordered and installed this USB-3.0 PCIe Addin card

StarTech PEXUSB3S24
Chipset ID Renesas/NEC - µPD720202
Industry Standards USB 3.0 Specification Rev. 1.0
PCI Express Base Specification Rev. 2.0
Intel xHCI Specification Rev. 1.0
UASP Support
Two external USB-3.0 ports
Uses x1 PCIe slot

Installation was normal.
I used a spare Molex-to-reverse-SATA power adapter cable.

Windows-10 detected the card and loaded a working WHQL 64bit driver. I tested it with a flash-drive and did a few tests and reboots ... all still working.

Using Crystal DiskMark, and the same Seagate 3tb USB-3.0 HDD (with UASP and 5400rpm spinner) I tested two different Renesas cards in two different machines:

Vostro-460     StarTech PEXUSB3S24 (new) with Renesas µPD720202     read 190/161 write
Aurora-R1      StarTech PEXUSB3S2 (old) with Renesas  uPD720200A      read 168/110 write

So, yes ... the new card and controller is faster than the old one from around 4 years ago. Both are faster than if the spinning HDD was installed inside a machine on a conventional SATA-2/300 speed controller.

Best of all, it's still working after a few hours and some testing. :Smile:

I'll update this post if anything note-worthy happens with it.