If you are looking to waste lots of your time I suggest you try to download drivers from the Dell website.

I had a friend call me today. He just did a format / reinstall on his Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop and needed drivers.

He said that every time he tried to download from Dell, it didn’t work.

Smugly I thought I would have this problem fixed in 5 minutes flat.

2 hours later I still could not understand why every driver I downloaded turned into this:

Let me take that back. I knew exactly why it looked like that – I needed to have the Dell driver download manager installed. But the big question was, where in the hell was it?

I searched for hours, and finally came across an amusing blog post. The short version is Dell is making the driver manager optional.

Here are some of my favorite comments from it:

1. Currently utterly scuppered by Download manager. Just get rid of it. The basket of download links was useful but now Im currently stuck trying to locate the huge number of dell cookies on my system to remove the one thats stopping me from having a choice in a download. Restarting the browser and repicking the drivers is a pain. The job of downloading drivers has gone from a 5 minute task to 60 minute distraction. Where can I send the bill for my time that the clients are not going to pay ?

2. I wanted to download one driver today. In the past, that would have taken less than 5 minutes. Today, because I clicked on the DM link, it took almost four hours to figure out what happened to my system, fix it, and then get the driver.

I suppose Dell has invested too much in this travesty to discard it. Too bad — it would have been better if you used that time and money to improve the ability to diagnose problems and find solutions rather than complicate the process of downloading.

If nothing else, give us the ability to opt out of DM forever. I do not want to keep seeing the dialog box asking how I want to download files. I never want to use DM.

Also, please be kind to those who have not yet used this thing and warn them it is fundamentally different — and make it eash to opt out if the person makes the unfortunate decision to use it.

3. Can anyone explain how to get the option back to download via the web option? After installing and uninstalling the Dell Driver Download software program, I no longer have the option to download via the web either.

So where did I make my mistake? The download manager is optional, but I could never find a link to download it, nor could I find a way of switching back to download without it.

In that same post I found out that the trick was to delete the Dell cookies from my web browser.

Then, I went back to the downloads page and picked the standard option:

Just look at that window for a moment. See how easy it would be to click that first option? If you did, you are now stuck.

How nice.

When I picked the second option I could then download drivers without any issue.

Still I was curious. Did I miss something? Did I blow past a prompt to install a download manager plugin for FireFox? Or was Dell’s website so inept that it had no working download manager for FireFox?

I cleared the cookies, and started a new download.

I chose the Dell Download Manager option.

Same thing as before. No prompts, no FireFox plugin, I was simply directed to the drivers page.

From that point on there was no way to download a driver without:

1. Digging through my cookies

2. Removing the entries for dell.com

3. Choosing the second option when a download started.

What about IE? I fired up IE for the first time in 3 months and went to the Dell website. I picked the Download manager option.

Sure enough it installs an IE plugin (Requires a 53 MB install of .NET 3.5 – Whoo Hooo!)

So. What is the lesson? Make damn sure you pick that second option the next time you are on Dell’s website.

Update: After more digging I discovered that if you install these two updates from MS you can get it to work under FF:

Microsoft .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1

Microsoft .NET Assistant version 1.1

Still. That is a huge amount of crap you need to wade through to just get some drivers.

• [ Kill the Process, Use Killbox if your Access Denied ]

[In Windows Vista Run As Administrator, After Execution System Will Restart]

• %Windows\System32\dllcache\cdaudio.sys
• %Windows\System32\uret463.exe
• %Windows\System32\lhgjyit0.dll
• %Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp\huwesa.exe
• %Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp\843wee0.dll
• %Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp\uret463.exe
• %Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp\lhgjyit0.dll
• %Root of Windows Installed Drive\otf.cmd
• %Root of Windows Installed Drive\h0ti1de.bat
  [ No Exact Information about Files, search above related files in Program files Folder ]
  If you have any of these files in running process from task manger, end the process before removal.
  Note: if task manager is disabled, Download the following file, Click to Download - Enable Registry.reg [ Right Click - Save Target As/Linked Content As ]
  Open it with Regedit.exe [%system32\regedit.exe], then it Confirms Add to registry Yes or No, Confirm Yes, then click Ok.

• [ Kill the Process, Use Killbox if your Access Denied ]

[In Windows Vista Run As Administrator, After Execution System Will Restart]

• %Windows\System32\dllcache\cdaudio.sys
• %Windows\System32\uret463.exe
• %Windows\System32\lhgjyit0.dll
• %Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp\huwesa.exe
• %Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp\843wee0.dll
• %Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp\uret463.exe
• %Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp\lhgjyit0.dll
• %Root of Windows Installed Drive\otf.cmd
• %Root of Windows Installed Drive\h0ti1de.bat
  [ No Exact Information about Files, search above related files in Program files Folder ]
  If you have any of these files in running process from task manger, end the process before removal.
  Note: if task manager is disabled, Download the following file, Click to Download - Enable Registry.reg [ Right Click - Save Target As/Linked Content As ]
  Open it with Regedit.exe [%system32\regedit.exe], then it Confirms Add to registry Yes or No, Confirm Yes, then click Ok.

The enthusiasm about the Windows 7 operating system is building as Microsoft provided RTM (release to manufacturing) code to OEMs, like Dell, on July 24th. As a company, Dell has worked very closely with Microsoft during the development of the platform. In fact, Dell has spent thousands of hours testing hundreds of systems with Windows 7 and will continue to test leading up to general availability in Oct 22nd. So far, we have found this newest OS to be very solid and see tremendous value for our business customers.

Dell believes that there are a many opportunities to help customers not only upgrade but get the most out of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. In addition to customers looking to upgrade from Windows Vista, many customers who are still on Windows XP will be looking to move to Windows 7 as well. With many of our customers expecting to upgrade their hardware, there are some specific ways that Dell can help customers see a better return on investment tied to an OS refresh.

Today, many customers find that migrating to a new OS can be complicated and risky without the proper planning. They have concerns about data migration, hardware limitations, integration of existing applications and licensing issues. By engaging at the very beginning of a customers’ evaluation of Windows 7, Dell can be an important resource. Both to determine if they will have specific compatibility issues or if their environment is ready to be upgraded. In addition, Dell gives customers a specific roadmap to ensure migration is fast and reliable.

Dell does this through a unique set of services for assessment, design and deployment which can reduce the time and risk of migration, utilizing proven reference architecture with field tested operational models. The company helps customers understand the business potential of transitioning to Windows 7 and/or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Upcoming offerings that can help optimize and manage customers’ infrastructure, include:

• Application Management Services: Application compatibility is a key concern for many customers. Dell has developed a suite of services to efficiently identify, test, remediate and deploy applications. Dell can also help customers inventory and rationalize their application portfolio before initiating the remediation activities to focus resources on the most critical applications.
• Migration and Deployment Services: In order to ease upgrading to Windows 7, Dell offers readiness assessments and optimized OS deployment services.  Dell’s deployment services help customers with all migration aspects including organization, infrastructure, hardware, software, image and deployment.  By leveraging Dell’s global deployment capabilities and tools, customers can more efficiently upgrade to Windows 7, while decreasing deployment time, mitigating risk, and reducing network traffic.
• Image Management Services: These provide fully functional images built by Dell consultants according to the customers’ specifications that are ready for deployment of Windows 7 on Dell client systems.

Today, Dell is already helping early adopters transition to Windows 7. The company is also evaluating all of its services to make sure that Dell offers the right solutions to help customers manage through this transition. Over the next few months, with the earliest beta customers, Dell will continue to help customers transition in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. 

Jim Ginger
Global Practice Leader of End User Computing
Global Infrastructure Consulting Services at Dell