Driver update for Latitude E4300

Hi, I bought 2 weeks ago a Dell Latitude E4300, a small laptop, Win7,
64-bit.

It had a fingerprint sensor and an ID card sensor. They don't have
their software anymore, because win7 was re-installed, but that implies
to me the computer was used in a corporate or government environment.

(It also had IIUC the ability to do a special fast boot that would
enable it only to get email. It used separate boot files that were hard
coded somewhere iiuc, but I'm sure that also required software I don't
have now. That's okay because I'm not some executive who has to read
his email every 20 minutes. And in practice I would never turn the
computer on only to get email. Even if I only planned that, the email
might make me want to check the web for something.)

I probably have lots of questions, but this is the first one.

I went to dell support, entered the tag number, and ran the driver
checkup and it listed 9 drivers to be updated!!!

Gosh that's hard to believe.

Video, Chipset, Video Graphics, Audio, Bios, Mouse/Keyboard, Network,
Network Wireless, Serial ATA.

That's almost everything. (What's left?) Even though the thing seems to
be working fine now. Should I install them one at a time or all at
once?

It says "Auto Installation not available. Please try again later or
manually download nad install individual updates." Is this one of
those times when later will never come? Or should I wait?

This would imply the previous owner never updated drivers at all, and
that seems surprising in a corporate environment. Or not??

Thanks.

micky wrote:
Hi, I bought 2 weeks ago a Dell Latitude E4300, a small laptop, Win7,
64-bit.

It had a fingerprint sensor and an ID card sensor. They don't have
their software anymore, because win7 was re-installed, but that implies
to me the computer was used in a corporate or government environment.

(It also had IIUC the ability to do a special fast boot that would
enable it only to get email. It used separate boot files that were hard
coded somewhere iiuc, but I'm sure that also required software I don't
have now. That's okay because I'm not some executive who has to read
his email every 20 minutes. And in practice I would never turn the
computer on only to get email. Even if I only planned that, the email
might make me want to check the web for something.)

I probably have lots of questions, but this is the first one.

I went to dell support, entered the tag number, and ran the driver
checkup and it listed 9 drivers to be updated!!!

Gosh that's hard to believe.

Video, Chipset, Video Graphics, Audio, Bios, Mouse/Keyboard, Network,
Network Wireless, Serial ATA.

That's almost everything. (What's left?) Even though the thing seems to
be working fine now. Should I install them one at a time or all at
once?

It says "Auto Installation not available. Please try again later or
manually download nad install individual updates." Is this one of
those times when later will never come? Or should I wait?

This would imply the previous owner never updated drivers at all, and
that seems surprising in a corporate environment. Or not??

Thanks.

A corporate environment, would likely not return a lease machine
(three year lease) with the company "internal OS image" on it.

Once a machine comes off lease, a refurbisher may get their hands
on it (Joy Systems). And there's a refurbisher OS placed on it.

This sounds like a SOHO deal, where it could have been a smaller
business, that bought from Dell. And really, it would be an open
question as to how much attention it received. Would the owner
have used "factory restore" before selling or giving it away ?
Who can say. If they were careless, running a copy of Photorec
or Recuva over it, might dig up things better left buried.

Here's a (post) review of the thing you bought. I gather from this,
it's a Vista era machine.

http://www.digitalrig.com/hardware/d...-months-later/

If the previous owner did Factory Restore, then it's quite possible
the restored drivers are not current. And that would be why they're
all listed as needing updates. Nobody would waste the time, bringing
such a machine up-to-date on drivers. Only if they were using it,
would they do that.

If you wanted to do forensics on the disk (Photorec or Recuva),
you'd clone the disk with "dd" or similar, and grab every sector.
And then you can take your time scanning the clone for "gems". In
normal usage, the disk white space will get overwritten by
normal activities, and that will tend to eat away at any
of the previous owners files still sitting on the disk hidden.

When you delete a file, just a single byte is flipped in the
$MFT, invalidating it, but the clusters with the data are
still sitting there. Overwriting large files, on a delete,
would take too long, and people would hate that if that's how
Microsoft had implemented it. And this is why "undelete" utilities
exist - they look for that flipped byte value, compare the clusters
in the entry to see if they conflict with current files, and then
the utility can tell you whether "Good" or "Poor" quality undelete
is possible. "Good" quality, means the clusters listed for the
(hidden) file, do not conflict with any other clusters currently
in usage.

*******

If you want to properly prepare a machine for sale, it takes
a lot of work to make it forensically clean... The Factory Restore
isn't good enough by itself, requiring you to dream up your
own workflow to do it. (On your technician machine "Diskpart"
"Clean All", then restore the factory partition using Macrium
and your backup of the hard drive, move the drive back to the laptop,
boot, and run Factory Restore. It should have a clean background
then. The "Clean All" gives you a clean place to start building
the disk up again.)

Paul

In message , micky
writes:
Hi, I bought 2 weeks ago a Dell Latitude E4300, a small laptop, Win7,
64-bit.

It had a fingerprint sensor and an ID card sensor. They don't have

(What's an ID card sensor - I mean, what sort of card?)

their software anymore, because win7 was re-installed, but that implies
to me the computer was used in a corporate or government environment.

Not necessarily - some resellers do that too. (In fact most respectable
_refurbishers_ do.)

(It also had IIUC the ability to do a special fast boot that would
enable it only to get email. It used separate boot files that were hard
[]
I went to dell support, entered the tag number, and ran the driver
checkup and it listed 9 drivers to be updated!!!

Gosh that's hard to believe.

Video, Chipset, Video Graphics, Audio, Bios, Mouse/Keyboard, Network,
Network Wireless, Serial ATA.

Not to me: the refurbisher (or original owner if they did it) could well
have installed the minimum set of drivers that give you a working
machine. (Can you even get all the video resolutions the hardware is
capable of?)

That's almost everything. (What's left?) Even though the thing seems to
be working fine now. Should I install them one at a time or all at
once?

As others have said, when it comes to drivers, "if it is working, don't
upgrade" - unless you know there's something (a) it can do (b) you want
to do (c) the current driver can't. (That would include your fingerprint
reader and "ID card reader", which I notice aren't in the above nine,
unless they come under "chipset" or "Bios", which I doubt. Or possibly
"Mouse/Keyboard".)

It says "Auto Installation not available. Please try again later or
manually download nad install individual updates." Is this one of
those times when later will never come? Or should I wait?

See above.

This would imply the previous owner never updated drivers at all, and
that seems surprising in a corporate environment. Or not??

If "win7 was re-installed", it's highly unlikely that any original
drivers were left, updated or not.

Thanks.

You're welcome (-:.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

This was before we knew that a laboratory rat, if experimented upon, will
develop cancer. [Quoted by] Anne ), 1997-1-29

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 22 Aug 2017 20:42:21 +0100, "J. P.
Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , micky
writes:
Hi, I bought 2 weeks ago a Dell Latitude E4300, a small laptop, Win7,
64-bit.

It had a fingerprint sensor and an ID card sensor. They don't have

(What's an ID card sensor - I mean, what sort of card?)

The Dell manual calls it a "Contactless smart-card reader (optional)"
but it's not a slot. It's a part of the surface to the right of the
touch pad and it has a little embossed rectangle with a small paren and
a little bigger paren just outside of that on both sides of the
rectangle. I think it's an image of a card that is radiating.

their software anymore, because win7 was re-installed, but that implies
to me the computer was used in a corporate or government environment.

Not necessarily - some resellers do that too. (In fact most respectable
_refurbishers_ do.)

(It also had IIUC the ability to do a special fast boot that would
enable it only to get email. It used separate boot files that were hard
[]
I went to dell support, entered the tag number, and ran the driver
checkup and it listed 9 drivers to be updated!!!

Gosh that's hard to believe.

Video, Chipset, Video Graphics, Audio, Bios, Mouse/Keyboard, Network,
Network Wireless, Serial ATA.

Not to me: the refurbisher (or original owner if they did it) could well
have installed the minimum set of drivers that give you a working
machine. (Can you even get all the video resolutions the hardware is
capable of?)

Good question. So far everything looks nice, but I'll find something
that benefits from greater resolution.

The vendor was pushing the frame around the screen down and I think she
said they replaced the screen. I bought this at a hamfest, in
Berryville Va. and she came all the way from Michigan. She was some
place else in Virgina the previous day, and she had a lot of laptops,
though only one of this model.

That's almost everything. (What's left?) Even though the thing seems to
be working fine now. Should I install them one at a time or all at
once?

As others have said, when it comes to drivers, "if it is working, don't
upgrade" - unless you know there's something (a) it can do (b) you want
to do (c) the current driver can't. (That would include your fingerprint
reader and "ID card reader", which I notice aren't in the above nine,

Good point.

unless they come under "chipset" or "Bios", which I doubt. Or possibly
"Mouse/Keyboard".)

It says "Auto Installation not available. Please try again later or
manually download nad install individual updates." Is this one of
those times when later will never come? Or should I wait?

See above.

Right. Only one at a time, if that many.

This would imply the previous owner never updated drivers at all, and
that seems surprising in a corporate environment. Or not??

If "win7 was re-installed", it's highly unlikely that any original
drivers were left, updated or not.

Oh, yeah.

Thanks.

You're welcome (-:.


I'm not going to try to fix this, for fear I wont' be able to uninstall
it later, but I've included this for the curious:

"Hi Rick,

Thank you for your reply. It turns out that the fingerprint reader on
the Latitude E-Series is controlled by the Embassy Security Suite, which
is embedded in the Dell Control Point. After stumbling around --and
locking myself out of the system completely -- I managed to find someone
who could explain how it all fits together. I was very lucky that I had
a day-old image that I could use to reload and start over.

There is no real manual for this and the support material for the E4300
completely ignores it. You have to know to use "Embassy Security" as a
search term in the Dell Knowlege Base then read through all the
disorganized papers to figure out the steps. If you don't do things in
the proper order, you essentially trash your system.

Bottom line: the software is on the system and it does work but the
user documentation is unacceptably disorganized."



This guy can't uninstall something or other:

"There is, however, a left over of my attempts to setup fingerprint
scanner, which I can not get rid off. Hence my questions to someone who
may have encountered similar problem."


And this:

"I have resolved the issue. Here is what I had to do.

I reinstalled Dell Control Point Security Drivers

I reinstalled Dell Control Security Manager Software (including Wave)

I configured Wave software for preboot management including enrolling
fingerprints.

I then removed fingerprints previously enrolled.

I removed BIOS system password

I uninstalled Dell Security Manager Software.

Setting up BIOS system password results in password request at
boot/restart and no sign of Biometric security. "

Wow.