Got Tech? Will Hack.
I noticed that Dell had finally released updates for some of their drivers on their support site for a Dell Studio XPS 1640 on Windows 7 x64. I immediately started downloading them and after a reboot noticed that the update for IDT sound driver causes a freeze in any application trying to do anything related to sound. No updates on their track pad drivers it is so we continue to use Windows Vista drivers.
Speaking of IDT drivers causing serious woes, I would suggest to every Dell Studio XPS 1640 user planning to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 manually (ie. not using a ghost image provided by Dell) that you kindly DO NOT DO SO. Drivers such as the ones for IDT consume 40-50 CPU constantly for doing nothing of essence in the background. A simple “remove driver” wouldn’t work either. If Dell plans on shipping drivers like the current one, I would not even go to Dell for an upgrade to Windows 7.
Dell better come up with a fix quickly. I think I’ll call up Dell’s premium tech support just to tell them about this issue and hope its fixed quickly. On a side note, for some reason, side scroll on the track pad doesn’t work on Windows 7 in the current version of Firefox :( It works fine for every other software. Weird.
Update: Just talked to tech support. Seems I’m the only one who has issues. Weirdly enough, a reinstall of the driver seems to have fixed the issue. ¬¬ Some odd quirk I guess.
Created: 13th September 2009