Installing Windows 7 on a Dell Inspiron 1521

A friend of mine has a Dell Inspiron 1521 laptop that he wanted to wipe clean and start over. We thought we'd try Windows 7. The Dell Support page didn't have it listed as being Windows 7 compatible so I searched to see if anyone else had done it. It looked like some people had and many of them were having minor driver issues. I decided to try it anyway. It went quite smoothly all things considered. Here's how I did it:

• Install Windows 7
  • I opted for the 32bit version since he doesn't plan to install more than 4 gig of RAM.
• Get Windows updates
• Install AVG
• Install Firefox
• Get the touch pad update from Dell
• get Ricoh R5C833 driver from Dell
  • tell it to override the newer driver
• No yellow triangles!

The Ricoh R5C833 is a Flash Memory Card Controller. It was the hardest thing to figure out as it wasn't properly identified. When installing the driver it told me there was a newer one installed. I told it to install it anyway and the final yellow triangle disappeared.

The built in microphone seemed to be the main issue people had after installing Windows 7 on the Inspiron 1521. I didn't have any issues with it.

My friend is happy with his laptop, and it seems faster than it was with Windows Vista. Since we didn't run any benchmarks, it's impossible to tell if it actually performs better, but he's happy.