Intel BIOS for Dell Dimension B110 or 1100?

bizzybody · BIOS Rookie Joined: 20 Oct 2007 Posts: 36

I have a Dell Dimension B110. Dell issued one BIOS update for the B110/1100 and most of their drivers date back to 2005.

Newer 'generic' drivers will not install because Dell fixed their BIOS to only allow Dell's drivers to install.

Is there any possibility to force the Intel BIOS for the motherboard onto it? The board has E210882 printed on it and is a Socket 478.

cp · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:59 am Post subject:

are you sure you got the correct drivers? please post details on your system (mainboard chipset, vga, etc.). there are some tools out there generating reports..use on of them.

bizzybody · BIOS Rookie Joined: 20 Oct 2007 Posts: 36

This is the Dell box http://tinyurl.com/33329g

I got the last version of the video driver for this chipset, "Springdale", from the Intel site and it would not install. Nor would the chipset and IDE drivers.

I searched Dell's forum for E210882 and found that boards with that number on them have been used in several of their systems, and mentions of BIOS revisions as high as A09. What's odd though is some of those same threads contain claims of those boards having one or more of these: AGP slot, RAMBUS memory, SATA ports, more than two DIMM slots, various AMD CPUs and other things this simple micro ATX board doesn't.

It's a Socket 754 board with 3 PCI slots, 2 DIMM slots, onboard Analog Devices SoundMAX, onboard 10/100 ethernet and unlike so many OEM boards it is 100% populated with parts. There's absolutely no empty solder pads where any optional features could fit.

Sooo, I posted on Dell's forum asking if there are other systems with this same board that a newer BIOS and drivers can be downloaded for. I don't care about not being able to reinstall the OEM XP Home because the first thing I did after making sure it wasn't "DOOBE" (Dead Out Of Box Experience) was wipe it and install XP Pro- that's where I ran into being forced to use only Dell's old 2005 drivers.

I got it on a sale in late 2006 with the upgrade to almost 2x the hard drive space, 512M RAM, speakers and 15" LCD.

Edit: Belarc Advisor says it's a
Dell Computer Corporation Dell DE051
Board: Dell Computer Corp. 0WF887
Intel(R) 82865G Graphics Controller
Intel(R) 82801EB Ultra ATA Storage Controllers
Intel(R) 82801EB USB
Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection

cp · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:46 pm Post subject:

vga
sfx
chipset
LAN

bizzybody · BIOS Rookie Joined: 20 Oct 2007 Posts: 36

The video driver will not install and the sound driver extracts then says it can't find the driver file.

cp · Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 8:20 am Post subject:

bizzybody · BIOS Rookie Joined: 20 Oct 2007 Posts: 36

The video driver can only be installed by running its setup program because it doesn't have an .inf file.

The message it returns is

This driver cannot be installed on this computer.
Please contact the computer's manufacturer for further information.
Setup will exit.

For the sound driver, I run setup and it puts up the splash screen goes through the Install shield, the EULA, says it's installing, shows it's copying all the files, then;

Driver not found! Reboot your system and run this setup again.

(Yeah right! Makes no difference!)

Trying to install the drivers with Device Manager and letting it look, it claims it can't find a better driver. "Twisting its ear" and attempting to manually select the driver gets me a list with seven entries that all say SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio with no dates or version information.

Dell (and all other OEMs that do this sort of crap) needs smacked in the head repeatedly with a cluebat. Razz

I've posted the motherboard info on the Dell forum, along with noting that the exact same board was used in several other models, and in my searches of the forum I noticed different BIOS revisions.

So what does some ya-hoo (that's a long a there) reply with? The latest BIOS for the Dimension B110/1100 is A01.

Hello? Apparently the person is incapable of READING and COMPREHENDING what people write. I've worked with computers for 25+ years and that's the number one thing that really irritates me- when I write what I know about an issue and what I've done to attempt to resolve it, and some numbskull replies with a suggestion that I try EXACTLY what I just said I already did.

Anyway, it appears the only way newer video and sound drivers will get on this particular Dell will be to find out which other model that used this same board has a newer BIOS revision AND Dell has specially twiddled the latest drivers to install on it, or that Dell *hasn't* monkeyed with the BIOS to block drivers not-from-Dell from being installed.

cp · Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 8:24 pm Post subject:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results....mp;ProductID=1049

there is a .zip file of the graphics driver. after decrunching you'll find the .inf file in the win2000 directory. there are no subvendor ids listed so the driver should work for every intel 865G vga. vendor and device of your system shoud read PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2572.

bizzybody · BIOS Rookie Joined: 20 Oct 2007 Posts: 36

That's the chipset drivers, not the video driver.

There's no 2000 folder, just All, Vista, x64 and Lang. The first three have .cat and .inf files, Lang has localization files for the setup.

Upon closer inspection, there's no drivers at all in that- just files that set the information for Windows to use its own drivers and display the Intel names in Device manager.

I ran the setup anyway and it said it installed but was suspiciously quick about it and didn't insist on a reboot.

Intel is really getting, I dunno, lazy? about all this. Why bother creating actual drivers eh? Just use whatever bilge Microsoft provides and make a simple .inf that just replaces what Device Manager displays.

Bleah. Whats worse is they've either pulled from their site or deeply buried their OLD chipset driver downloads for discontinued chipsets- the ones that actually installed drivers for 9x, Me and 2000. All you get now is a notice that the hardware is already supported by your version of Windows.

I'd like to see someone put up a website hosting the old "inf inst" Zip files, the latest version for each old Intel chipset that will actually install Intel's drivers for 95, 98, Me and 2000. Then someone running 98SE on a 430VX chipset could get the final drivers for it instead of being stuck with Microsoft's un-optimized default drivers.

cp · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 10:08 am Post subject:

i meant THIS:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.asp...ame=&lang=eng

it is nr.9 on the list of the link i posted you before. it wasn't that hard to find.

here is a quote from the .inf file that is inside the archive:

viprk24 · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 3:39 am Post subject: Yo man i had same problems

Yo man i had those same problems
with those drivers the drivers u downloaded
from intel are they in zip or Exe format
if there in Exe format use winrar to extract
it and manualy install them
from the device manager or add new hardware then
delete the old drivers before restarting
updating drivers for dell is not worth
anything because they just well dell sucks
lol well anyways hope i can help

Ascii2 · Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 9:27 pm Post subject: Video BIOS may require update

I have found that some intel integrated graphics drivers do not install on a computer using an older version of the VideoBIOS for the integrated graphics chipset.

Try installing the drivers after a VideoBIOS update (if possible).