Setup for Dell Latitude E5430
My recent project was the setup for a refurbished Dell Latitude laptop that I purchased online. Latitudes are business oriented laptops that Dell sells and leases to a variety of business customers. Many large enterprise level companies lease their machines and return them to Dell periodically as they upgrade to newer hardware. This means that a few times throughout the year Dell amasses a stock pile of old machines that they then rebuild and sell at significant discount prices. Even better, if you browse discount sites such as DealNews and TechBargains they will detail how to get a discount on top the already low refurbished price. Dell has these discounted sales periodically, at the beginning of the year in January or in the middle of the Summer, such as July. If you are going to buy a refurbished laptop, there are some risks. These laptops are not brand new, they have seen some usage, and so if you want a perfect looking laptop you are not going to find one. Your best bet is a Grade A model, which will be priced a little higher. The other factor is that these machines only come with a very short warranty. Three months or one hundred days type warranty will apply. You can purchase an extended warranty from the Dell Refurbish site at the time of purchase, but note that you will be adding to the total price of the machine. You will want to consider this extended warranty price and what it is worth to you personally. In my case, this was a secondary machine that I am not going to worry too much about, so no extended warranty for me. These are older model machines as well and not the latest and greatest technology. Business laptops are not gaming machines either, so if your main emphasis is gaming, consider looking for an Alienware type models instead of Latitudes. Overall my best advice is to wait for the discount from the DealNews.com and then shop for something that you will like and that will cost you about forty-five percent of a new laptop. Once you get higher than fifty percent, I usually think you might as well save up for a new machine that you really want. Given all this, lets get started on setting up the laptop.
Out Of the Box
Dell took about three to four business days to ship the laptop. The machine is serviced by a third party company named Genco. The machine was packaged well and was very clean. The only accessories were the Dell power adaptor and a printed explanation of the standard warranty for a refurbished machine. Below are the specs for the laptop:
Dell Latitude E5430 Laptop (non-Vpro model)
- 2.7GHz CPU
- 4GB RAM
- 1600×900 HD display
- 320GB Western Digital Hard Drive
There were two types of e5430 models, there is an Intel-Vpro model and then there is the non-Vpro model. This one is the latter. The hard drive inside the laptop was a Western Digital mechanical hard drive and it was dated July 19th, 2013. The laptop like the hard drive is from the the same year as well, in other words I bought a three year old laptop.
The installed operating system is Windows 7 Professional (32-bit). There were no installation disks for Windows included, as the hard drive includes a recovery image.
HARDWARE Upgades
There is nothing wrong with the laptop at this point and it is perfectly usable out of the box. However, I love hardware upgrades and so I couldn’t help myself from adding some things. The best possible upgrade is an SSD hard drive. SSD drives are now much more affordable, and so you can take your pick from a variety of SSD drives out on the market right now. My personal preference is Crucial/Micron and Samsung, but I have purchased other brands such as PNY if they were at a good price. For this project I did purchase the Crucial MX300 750GB – CT750MX300SSD1. I did consider the 525GB model as well, but unfortunately it was out of stock at the time. This SSD drive is a 7mm height drive and a spacer is included so that it fits as a 9.5mm drive. I did utilize the spacer when I switched out the drives.
Next was the memory. In current terms 4GB is not nearly adequate, so I opted for maxing out the memory. Most people might consider upgrading to 8GB memory (2 x 4GB DDR3 modules), since this is a very cheap upgrade to make. The e5430 does in fact support 2 x 8GB modules, for a total of 16GB memory! The easy way to purchase memory for this machine is to visit Crucial and buy direct from them. They will guarantee that the memory will work and are only slightly more expensive than buying from online stores like Newegg.com.
Both the hard drive swap and the memory upgrades are very easy to do. You will need a philips #0 screwdriver and for the lower memory module, I found a plastic spudger handy for pushing down the memory SIMM into place.
Note before doing any hardware upgrades, consider downloading all the required software in the following Software Installation section first if you do not have another Windows machine that you can use to download stated software. Look through Device Manager in Windows and note the type of hardware you have, such as the Network Card, Wi-fi Card, etc. My particular laptop did not have a finger print sensor or Bluetooth. In the Software Installation part we will need to download multiple software, so it is best to use a second machine or read this entire post before doing any software steps.
SOFTWARE Installation
WARNING! I take no responsibility for any use of software or any losses of software or hardware functions. If you do not know how to use DISKPART or any other tool in this post, then perhaps this project is not for you.
Part 1: Win7_Pro_SP1_English_COEM_x64.iso
Now that we have our e5430 laptop upgraded, the big problem is Windows. The image on the original hard drive is Windows 7 Pro 32-bit and not 64-bit. Even if I took the original software image from the drive, it would not recognize my new memory. My goal is to setup this laptop with Windows 7 Pro, the 64-bit version. The machine fully supports 64-bit Windows, so the problem is just the media. The laptop has an OEM license for Windows 7, and so I do not need to purchase Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, I just need to get the installation media.
Here is where nothing is ever easy. Windows 7 ISO images are no longer easily attainable directly on the Internet. There is a long story about this, but I will skip that and simply state that from a Windows machine with IE 11, you can do the following:
First go to Heidoc.net and learn about what you will want to download. In this case a Windows 7 64-bit OEM ISO image. Next download and run his Microsoft Windows Download Tool. This will allow you to download a clean ISO image of Windows 7 64-bit, the exact file name being: Win7_Pro_SP1_English_COEM_x64.iso
Part 2: Flash Drive Setup
Once downloaded, you will need an 8GB or 16GB USB Flash Drive. This will be used as the installation source.
Insert the flash drive and note what drive letter it shows as.
Type CMD in the StartMenu Search and right-click and choose Run as administrator. Use DISKPART to setup the flash drive. Note that for the SELECT DISK command you will need to substitute # for the exact number that the flash drive comes up. Choose wisely, if you are not careful you may destroy your other disks on that computer!
DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK #
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT QUICK FS=FAT32
ASSIGN
EXIT
With the flash drive setup, the next step is to copy the ISO onto the flash drive. There are multiple ways of doing this. For this step I placed the ISO file in its own folder and then used WinRAR to extract the contents. I then copy and paste into the flash drive root directory.
The Latitude e5430 supports UEFI, which is the replacement for the old BIOS system that most computers have used for multiple decades. We want to take advantage of EFI booting later, so we need to have the flash drive boot with EFI. This requires a different boot file to be in a specific location on the flash drive. The ISO does not have this as default for Windows 7.
From a Windows 64-bit machine that you are already using, there should already be the file file you need.
Look for bootmgfw.efi under C:\Windows\Boot\EFI and copy it to the flash drive here:
\EFI\BOOT\
The file then must be renamed from bootmgfw.efi to BOOTX64.EFI in order to work.
You now have a flash drive that you can boot from in EFI mode.
If you need further details on the flash drive steps see Creating Windows UEFI Boot-Stick in Windows.
More helpful links:
- Installing Windows 7 on UEFI Computer
- Creating UEFI USB Boot Drive
- BIOS or UEFI Boot
- Disk Mode MBR or GPT
Part 3: Windows Setup With Factory Recovery Partition
What I do like about OEM computers is that they come setup with a hidden partition to reimage your machine in case you want to reset Windows back to a zero ground state. However what everyone does not like about this: is that the OEM image is usually filled with crapware that no one wants and it is not a clean setup of Windows. But how about if you could setup your own? In this section we will cover how to do this. If this is too complicated feel free to skip to the next section.
RecoveryTools 4 uses Microsoft tools to setup an OEM image and recovery tools for a new install of Windows. This software is free, but it is complicated process if you are not coherent with software setups.
- Download RecoveryTools 4.05
- Place the self extracting file into a separate folder and doule-click on it.
- Download the the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7
- Place the AIK ISO file in its own folder and then use WinRAR to extract the files to the same directory
- Next install the AIK Tools
With the AIK Tools installed, we follow the directions from RecoveryTools for Windows 7. From the Windows 7 AIK, you will need the following files:
- IMAGEX.EXE (32 and 64 bits version)
- OSCDIMG.EXE (32 bits version)
If you installed AIK, these files will be located here:
- C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64 (for 64-bit)
- C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86 (for 32-bt)
Copy IMAGEX.EXE (32 bits version) to the RecoveryTools 4 folder path:
- \Windows 7\Windows 7 Recovery Tools\ImageX\32bits
Copy IMAGEX.EXE (64 bits version) to the RecoveryTools 4 folder path:
- \Windows 7\Windows 7 Recovery Tools\ImageX\64bits
Copy OSCDIMG.EXE (32 bits version) to the RecoveryTools 4 folder path:
- \Windows 7\Windows 7 Recovery Tools\OscdImg
Next we want to copy the entire RecoveryTools 4 folder to the root of the flash drive we setup earlier. There are two more files we need.
Under RecoveryTools 4\Windows 7\AutoUnattend\GPT\ there is an AutoUnattend.xml file, copy this to the root of the Flash Drive.
Under RecoveryTools 4\Add-On\ there is an Ei.Cfg file. This file must replace the current file that is under the SOURCES folder on the root of the Flash Drive.
Part 4: Add-ons for Flash Drive
In order to save time, it is best to go ahead and create a DELL folder on the flash drive and add some more add-ons that you will need later on. I will cover these under the Updating Windows section. For now here is the list of recommended installers:
Microsoft:
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 (Offline Installer)
- Internet Explorer 11 (Offline installer)
- Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB3102810)
Dell Specific Updates for a Latitude e5430 Laptop:
- Intel Chipset Drivers: Chipset_Driver_CPNKY_WN32_9.3.0.1019_A00
- Intel Management Engine 9: Chipset_Driver_GJVHD_WN_9.5.15.1730_A02
- Intel USB 3: Chipset_Driver_THK45_WN_1.0.8.251_A05
- Intel 4000 Graphics Driver: Video_Driver_DCG08_WN32_10.18.10.4425_A18
- HD Audio: 3330_Audio_Driver_C6HVR_WN_1.0.6491.0_A08
- Ethernet Network Card: Broadcom 57xx Network_Driver_PGHX7_WN32_17.0.2_A00 (maybe different depending on your machine)
- Wireless Network Card: Dell 1530 Network_Driver_5RHDN_WN_6.30.223.215_A02 (maybe different depending on your machine)
- Conexant D330 Modem: CONEXANT_D330-HDA-MDC_JF0K3_A01_SETUP_ZPE, CONEXANT_MULTI-DEVICE_A03_R207060
- Memory Card Reader: Chipset_Driver_D7TG2_WN_3.0.07.44_A04
- Freefall Sensor: Chipset_Driver_V6681_WN_4.10.0046_A06
- Dell Multi-touch Touchpad: Input_Driver_YXX3D_WN32_10.1207.101.109_A03
One more installer will be needed. We are going to install a specific version of Intel Rapid Technology drivers. These are not on the Dell site. The reason for this is that this specific set of drivers work best for this laptop. These are the Intel Rapid Technology E Drivers version 12.9.4.1000. To read more about this topic you can read this Win-Raid.com post. You can download the drivers from Intel or from Win-Raid.com: Intel RSTe Drivers.
Part 5: F2 & BIOS Setup
Take note of what version of Dell BIOS your machine has. If it is not the latest, I recommend you download the latest BIOS (in my case the non-vPro version) and upgrade your BIOS first before continuing.
At this point we have gathered all our software on our flash drive and are ready to almost install Windows 7. We must however make some changes to the e5430’s Setup.
- Restart the laptop and press F2 to enter the BIOS Setup.
- Under General – Boot Sequence: change to UEFI
- Under System Configuration – SATA Operation: change to AHCI
- Apply Changes and Exit
Part 6: Hard Drive Setup
This step is optional and only needed if you want to wipe the hard drive. It is included here, in case you need to redo the setup of Windows. To manually wipe a hard drive and convert it to GPT:
Turn off the PC, and put in the Windows installation DVD or USB key.
Boot the PC to the DVD or USB key in UEFI mode. For more info, see Boot to UEFI Mode or Legacy BIOS mode.
From inside Windows Setup, press Shift+F10 to open a command prompt window.
Open the diskpart tool:
diskpart
Identify the drive to reformat:
list disk
Select the drive, and reformat it:
select disk #
clean
convert gpt
exit
Close the command prompt window.
Continue the Windows Setup installation.
We are now ready to start installing Windows! Continue reading Setup for Dell Latitude E5430 – Part 2.
On the Windows platform there is a memory wall that many people are experiencing. Namely, that Windows does not utilize all of your physical memory once you have 4GB or more of RAM, unless you are using Windows XP 64-bit or Vista 64. Instead of letting that extra memory go to waste, I thought why not utilize it in some other way. A long time ago we had the opposite problem with computers, where processors were slow and we tried to speed things up in any way possible. Today, we have a lot of processing power and abundant memory and now it is the software that needs to catch up to the hardware. Given this, I thought why not use a some of that extra memory and load it as a RAM disk. Then if you think about it, the most often used application in today’s computing is the web browser, which uses your hard drive to cache content. This sounds like a perfect opportunity to use a RAM disk and speed up your browser’s disk caching. IE and Firefox both make it easy to modify your disk cache directory too, so the biggest problem seems to be trying to setup the RAM disk in Windows. There are multiple commercial solutions, but only one free solution that I could find that works well.
