Hello,
First let me tell you about my system. This is an Inspiron E1705/9400 laptop with the T7400 Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.16 GHZ. It has 2 GB of RAM and a brand new 500GB Hitachi Travelstar hard drive (7200 RPM). It also has the GeForce Go 7900 GS video card. It previously had Windows XP Professional (32 bit) and worked fine. But, I have three computers in my home and home office and would like them all to work better together on my wired home network, so I am upgrading all three to Windows 7. My two desktops (one is Dimension XPS 420 and the other is Dimension XPS 430) seem like they will be no problem to upgrade to Windows 7. But, this laptop was not listed on Dell's Windows 7 Compatibility List. However, the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor that I downloaded and ran seemed to say that it was OK to do a clean install of 32 bit Windows 7 and it only had a few minor concerns, where it said to check for updated drivers from the manufacturer. The laptop originally came with a 100GB hard drive. For my use, that is getting very small, so I decided to get the same exact 7200 RPM drive in the 500 GB size. This will allow me to do a clean install of the 32 bit Windows 7 OS on the new hard drive and not have to wipe the old drive to do it. I can just hold onto the old HD and stick it back in whenever I might need to get something off of it.
So, here is my minor problem. After transferring a few needed items off the old hard drive, I installed the new 500GB drive and did a clean install of the 32 bit version of Windows 7. I'm happy to report that I had virtually no problems with the installation and everything appears to be working fine. It seems a little bit more zippy than it was before and I haven't run into anything so far that doesn't seem to be working. I have gone through most of the features and most everything looks great. But, there is one minor problem showing in the Device Manager. At least, I think it's a minor problem, but maybe someone else can give me some input as to whether it is or not.
In the Device Manager List, there is a category now called "Other Devices" and the icon shows a little white circle with a question mark in it. When you expand this category, you see two identical entries that say "Base System Device" and the icon has a yellow circle with an exclamation point in it. I know from previous experience that it's not a good thing to see items in the Device Manager that have a yellow circle with an exclamation point. I have clicked on both of these and neither one really tells you what the device is or who made it or who's website you would go to for a driver. Under the general tab, it has the following information:
Device Type - Other Devices
Manufacturer - Unknown
Location - PCI Bus 3, Device 1, Function 3
Under Device Status, it says the following:
The drivers for this device are not installed. (Code 28)
There is no driver selected for the device information set or element
To find a driver for this device, click Update Driver.
Both of the entries appear to be almost the same.....but, not exactly. The second one has the location
listed as PCI Bus 3, Device 1, Function 2.........instead of Function 1. That seems to be about the only difference.
I tried the button for updating the driver, but that doesn't seem to work. No matter whether you tell it to look on your
computer or to search the internet for a new driver, it doesn't seem to find anything. As I mentioned in the beginning,
the system seems to be working fine.......but, since I don't know what this device is or does, I might be missing something.
It drives me crazy just to have these yellow circles with the exclamation point hanging out in my Device Manager.
I could really use some help here. Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Bryan Ray (Richmond, VA)