Page creation : 01/08/2023	Installing Windows 7 on a Dell Vostro 1500 computer	Last update : 01/08/2023
Back to title page Go to software page	A tutorial by Pierre Albou

The Vostro 1500 PC was never qualified by Dell for running Windows 7 but is quite able to do it. I kept my old Vostro on its original Windows XP OS as long as I was able to find a compatible browser able to open modern Web sites. The temporary shut down of the myPal project in 2021 induced me to try and install Windows 7 on this old but still usable PC. Here is the procedure (supposing your Vostro working under Windows XP SP3 and your having another PC in order to download from modern Web sites and burn a DVD).

Note that installing a Windows 7 64 bits edition failed so I stayed 32 bits. My Vostro 1500 is equipped with 4 Gb RAM (I'm not sure that all versions of this computer have such an amount of RAM : if yours has not, the installation might fail).

1.	Update the BIOS of the PC to the last version available (download 1500_A06.EXE from here, under OS = BIOS and execute it from Windows XP).
2.	Purchase or find and reuse a legal licence of a retail version of Windows 7 32 bits (I bought one from this site and was able to activate it immediately with Microsoft on the Internet).
3.	Download a disk image of a corresponding distribution support (the above mentioned site provides a download link with its licence) and burn it. In my case it was a Windows 7 pro DVD (image size : 2.32 Gb).
4.	Load the distribution disk on the Vostro and execute the installation of Windows 7 under Windows XP (this will allow you to keep your files if your XP system disk was NTFS formatted -choose not to format it during the installation!). At the end of the installation procedure you get your Vostro working under Windows 7 but not all peripherals work optimally (for instance the graphics).
5.	Install the following Dell device drivers, downloaded from here (under OS = Windows Vista, 32 bits) :   R140135.exe   R141246.exe   R153997.exe   R175658.exe   R228666.exe
6.	Install Intel_multi-device_A06_R171132.exe (which you can find here).
7.	Install windows 7 compatible device drivers for your additional peripherals (in my case for instance a Wifi USB adapter).
8.	Install at least the following Windows 7 updates (which I downloaded from Microsoft web sites):   Windows6.1-KB3020369-x86   Windows6.1-kb3125574-v4-x86   Windows6.1-KB3138612-x86
9.	You may try and get additional updates from Windows Update but avoid updates for the nVidia graphic card. They supersede the old but correct Vista driver from Dell and do not function properly, so that the system falls back to a VGA mode after their installation.
10.	(Optionally) reload a proper version of the Dell QuickSet utility (download R163012.exe from Dell web site)

At this stage you get a fully working Vostro 1500 under Windows 7 and you can install and run modern software:


(I've been dusting since!)