Hello,I only have an older notebook DELL Latitude C600. But I cannot use the buildin soundcard. It is the ESS Maestro 3i.May it be, that this soundcard will not be supported. The soundcard is supported in Win XP. Can I extract the soundcard driver from XP to Win 7? And how is it to do?

YIKES! Just had a look - that hardware is pretty ancient. I mean, Dell has NT 4.0 and Win 9x/ME drivers for it... Windows 2000 is the last OS Dellsupports. Somehow, I have a feeling you're gonna be out of luck finding drivers that would work with Vista or Win 7 for that card. ESS only made the chipset that Dell or whoever put the sound system for that laptop together. As such they have only the most generic drivers that are only available up to XP. Dell doesn't seem to have drivers for Vista or 7 that match that bit of hardware. As far as using an XP driver goes - keep in mind that Windows Vista and 7 have an entirely different driver model and older style Kernal Mode drivers may not work, may cause more problems than it's worth and may trash your Win 7 installation all together. That said, you can find XP drivers floating around on the web - Google is your friend. Just be careful and be sure to scan the file for viruses and such before you install them.

Yes, your XP drivers should work with that sound card. With it being a Dell, you will have to run the RXXXX.exe file so that it extracts into the C:\Dell\Drivers directory. Navigate to the c:\Dell\Drivers\Rxxxx folder and set the compatibility of the setup.exe file to XP. Once that is done, execute and the drivers should install. Since these are older drivers not adhering to the new WDDM 1.0 and 1.1 standard, you may lose some system stability.

@ DarienHawk67where do I find that file/these files? For some years ago I bought that notebook used with no disks only with installed win2k.

First you can look in the C:\DELL folder tree. Dell ususally sticks specialty drivers in there. If you no longer have access to that folder you can Google for them - mind you, Dell doesn't have any drivers listed for XP - but other sources DO claim to have drivers for that particular bit of hardware. As I said before - be careful - scan any and all downloads fully before installing them. As it's not an official source, you should be wary of any and all downloads as some people are less honest than others. Good luck.

irisches-bier said: @ DarienHawk67where do I find that file/these files? For some years ago I bought that notebook used with no disks only with installed win2k. Here you go. Although it fails to make any mention of Windows XP drivers, you may still be able to make use of this one for Win2K. Click the image for the link to Dell's support page.

Hello,it is the last days, when I was looking for drivers of the ESS Maestro 3i. In internet I found a driver which seems to be designed for XP. I take that and the soundcard is running now. It has the mark M3XUA14I.EXEMay be that there are newer one, but it seems, that this driver is working and is the latest one.One of many download options is:http://dell.driversdown.com/dell-drivers-downloads/ESS-Maestro-3i_5789.shtml