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Dell Inspiron 1520 and Windows 7 64-bit drivers - Last Modified 2012-12-05 19:51 UTC - Created 2012-12-05 19:51 UTC

This laptop doesn't come with any Windows 7 support from Dell due to its age. Installing Windows 7 covers almost every driver out of the box. After you run all the Windows Updates you get every other device except for two important ones:

"Base System Device"

This is the second part of the SD card reader (Ricoh Card Reader R5C833). I used Dell's download http://downloads-us.dell.com/chipset/R188094.EXE which worked. There are other downloads, but this is suppose to be newer as of today. It is designed for Vista 64-bit, but it works in Windows 7 64-bit.

Dell Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card

Windows 7 during the install will detect and install a driver for this device. After you run all the Windows Updates it may also apply an "updated" driver. I noticed after all was said and done that I was only getting 54mbps connection speed even though I was supposed to be connected over 802.11n.

In short the driver was limiting the device speed. I looked for the latest Dell driver version for Windows 7 64-bit. I found R250808. Upon attempting the install it threw an error that it couldn't find any hardware and exited.

You have to force a driver update and point it to c:\dell\drivers\R250808\DRIVER_US. Once that is done you will have true 802.11n speeds. My driver provider shows as Broadcom with version 5.60.18.8 and driver date 8/21/2009. I looked around on Broadcom's website, but they don't seem to offer wireless chipset Windows drivers.