Dell Vostro 220 question

My niece gave me an old Dell Vostro 220 PC to tinker with. At the moment it has 1 GB of Ram. I read it can take two 2-GB chips for a total of 4 GB ram, then I read somewhere else it can take two 4-GB chips for a total of 8 GB of Ram. Are any of you guys familiar with these machines? I'd like to max out the Ram, install Mint 17 and replace an older tower my wife is using. Thanks

If you're able to go online with it, go to CrucialdotCom, they will scan it and tell you exactly what you can put in it. You can buy there or use the specs to shop around.

I doubt that it could go with more than 4 GB of RAM. Looking it up on the internet, it looks like it was in the Win vista era, is that correct? If so, I don't see it able to go up to 8 GB of RAM. It does look like you can pick up RAM for it for a decent price on amazon. I don't have any personal experience with the Vostro, but it looks like a good computer.

Edit: Looking some more on amazon, it looks like it is more likely that 2 GB is the max it can take. I see some 4 GB RAM sets for a Dell Vostro 220 Mini, but that seems to be a different computer.

I have a Vostro 200 that has 8GB of ram. But mine is 4x2 GB.

demarpaint - How many RAM slots are there in the computer?

According to Crucial, the 220 can take a maximum of 4GB RAM (2x2GB).

Originally Posted By: Miller88
I have a Vostro 200 that has 8GB of ram. But mine is 4x2 GB.

Interesting. I was told by Dell techs on their community forum that 4GB was max for the 200.

Everything I see online says it only supports 4GB of RAM, even the Dell tech spec sheets.

I would install a trial copy of Win8.1 -- I bet it would work pretty well. But yes, Linux Mint or ElementaryOS would be nice too.

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Miller88
I have a Vostro 200 that has 8GB of ram. But mine is 4x2 GB.

Interesting. I was told by Dell techs on their community forum that 4GB was max for the 200.



From what I gathered, there are a few different revs of the motherboards. One supports 4GB, one 8GB, one quad core processors another only dual core.

Mine supports up to 8GB of ram ... but only a dual core processor.

It's overclocked too

If OP is going to install Linux, I think 4GB is sufficient.

I haven't opened it yet, I got it late last night. I read it only had two slots that supported two 2 GB chips. Then I later read that two 4 GB chips are a direct fit for 8 GB Ram, and that's why I asked.

I think the max is going to be 4 GB. That will work great with Linux Mint. Are you going to put Mate or Cinnamon on it?

Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
I think the max is going to be 4 GB. That will work great with Linux Mint. Are you going to put Mate or Cinnamon on it?


I have to decide which will be better, I think it will support 64 bit.

Do you know if there is a way to back up my printer? It took a good friend and myself quite a while to get it working properly. I'd rather not go through all of that again.

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Then I later read that two 4 GB chips are a direct fit for 8 GB Ram, and that's why I asked.

The chip pinouts are the same, but the motherboard may not be able to recognize more than 4GB. That's the case with my 200 at least.

I went online and checked Crucial update said it can handle 4 GB of Ram, two 2GB sticks. I guess that's all she wrote. Now if I can figure out how to backup the printer I'll invest a few $$ and have a machine with twice the Ram, and a faster chip.

I'm not sure how to back up the printer, maybe uc50ic4more has an idea. Just out of curiosity, what's the CPU size on it?

Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
I'm not sure how to back up the printer, maybe uc50ic4more has an idea. Just out of curiosity, what's the CPU size on it?


According to Crucial's site it has an Intel Dual Core G-45 chip whatever that means.

Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
I'm not sure how to back up the printer, maybe uc50ic4more has an idea. Just out of curiosity, what's the CPU size on it?


uc50ic4more is confused, unfortunately - What OS is on there now? If it is Windows, backing up a driver configuration isn't going to serve you well at all after a migration to Linux. Mint has the capability to back up all of the currently installed packages on the system and can restore them in a new install so you could try that; backing up the installed packages from the current system and "restoring" them to the Vostro.

If, after labouring hard to get the printer working on an existing Linux (Mint) installation, I think all you'll need to do is take whatever driver your downloaded and back *that* little sucker up. Re-running that on the new installation ought to put you back in working order.

demarpaint, I think I had found the driver provided by HP for your printer, so if you have any trouble at all duplicating whatever steps ended up working last time just grab the driver from that URL I sent you and install that. (It may be a file that needs to be installed via the command line; and if so, definitely let me know either here in this thread or via PM and I'll walk you through the installation of the official HP driver.)

Also, demarpaint, what happens when you go through Mint's Control Panel and use the Printers dialogue? I am surprised that Mint wouldn't find your printer, know what model it is and automatically choose and install a driver for you; especially since it's an HP, who are usually very accommodating with providing drivers to Linux distros.

I am not familiar with that model and therefore do not know whether $50'll make it any better than your current model; but I cannot imagine a 64 bit-capable system with 4GB of RAM being anything but satisfactory (any system built to run Windows'll perform well using most Linux-based OS's). If the Cinnamon edition of Mint ever gets feeling "laggy", the MATE versions features exactly the same complement of software and only differs in the User Interface, with the MATE edition being much less demanding in terms of graphics horsepower (and commensurately less flashy).

Lastly - and I CANNOT guarantee this will work because I do not know what kind of graphics chips are in either system (but Mint *might* be able to figure it out and adapt accordingly, depending on the driver you're using) - you could consider closing the drive to an image, "restoring" that image to the HDD in the Vostro and just boot the darn thing. Unless you were running proprietary graphics drivers Mint may well "see" all the new hardware during boot and load all of the appropriate hardware drivers automatically. If you already have some backup images kicking around it might be worth the time to take a kick at the can. That way the printer driver is already installed.

^^ Thanks, if I run into problems I might take you up on that driver link. PM sent.

As it turned out all I did was swap hard drives and booted the Vostro PC. It booted and is working perfectly without doing anything other than installing the HDD. The 4 GB of Ram is on the way. Thanks for all the replies!