SSD Installation? DONE!

So, finally after flooding the forum with thread after thread after question after question and about 8 hrs of sweat, tears and joy. I successfully finished my Clean install of Windows on an SSD.

Was it hard? No, frustrating? Hell yeh. Thankfully, Baboy and Jywangs guides are a masterpiece, helping even the newest noob stumble from one step to the next with relative ease.

I would like at this point to put out a special thanks to Jas, Valkyre(spelling)
and all the other guys who had the patience of Ghandi helping me when i ran into issues. If i could Rep you more i would but my +1 rep button just broke

So which setup did i go with.

Firstly, i installed my SSD in the free bay (Port1 i think) restarted Windows and entered Bios. There i Swithed my boot order to:

Secondary Hard Drive (SSD)
CD/DVD/BD
Primary Hard drive
USB

At this point i also changed my config from Raid to ACHI, for no reason then it seemed more people where using ACHI.

I rebooted, double checked again in Bios that my setting had been saved and rebooted again.

On reboot Windows tried to boot from my SSD, failed and moved on to my CD/DVD drive (i had already inserted the Windows install disc) and booted from the Install disc.

Installation went flawlessly. ABout half way through, i got a asked what what drive i'd like to use to install windows on, selected SSD, and everything went swimmingly

After the install ahd finished. I followed Jywang's optimization guide, doing everything except disabling system protection. Still not sure if that was a wise thing to do, but disbaling system protection prevents windows from creating restore points, i thought better of it and kept it. Prehaps someone could explain futher about disabling system prtection and its benefits?

With all the above done, it was time to move on to the Driver installation.
I decided, on the advice of Jas, that i would use Batboys guide for the Install order. had downloaded all of the drivers the night previous form the Dell Downalods and drivers page on to an external hard drive but i also had the Alienware recource disc just incase.

All driver install went perfectly and i restarted everytime when prompted EXCEPT for the WLan 1501 wireless driver. Once it had extracted it wasnt allowing me to install; there was no installaion file. Thankfully, again, Jas came to my rescue and pointed out I could install the driver manually by going to Computer management\ device manager and looking through the device for my wireless network card. its was simple and solved the problem.

Once complete i initiated Windows Update and updated everything it could throw at me, this proccess took atleast 2-3hrs.

Once i finally had Net Framework v4 i installed Alienware command centre. I then installed all the apps from the Dell web that came with my laptop and the Webcam of the recource disk that came in the box.

SO that was the fresh install of windows complete and my comp was back to the out of box state wheni first purchased it. Now to get that Alienware look and feel back.

This was probably the most frustrating part of the proccess. I followed the guide and came stuck on almost everystep from the img not showing up to putting the img in the correct folders and them not doing anything.

At this point, i have the Red glyph login wallpaper in place but for some reason, it randomly reverts back to the windows login screen and i have to go back to Regedit to enable it again.

Also, the same is with my desktop background. Every now and then, Windpws aero package is unavailabe and it reverts to windows basic colour and changes the layout of windows. Its totally random, and alittle bit annoying.

But, that is just about the bulk of my issues after the frsh install. Windows is running beautifully and my boot time to the login screen is 21 secs so i probably need to to work on getting that time down.

Anyway, thanks for all your input, i wouldnt be at this point with out the help of this forum and its users. Thank you.

Just finsished Winows score its jumped to 7.5 from 5.9.

 

Grats Joe! Thanks for posting your story! Shows this forum is very helpful for those in need of help!

+rep to NBR Forums!

 

Cheers fella, i would have give you a mention as youve been great but i forgot your name lol

 

Good info Joe, I will be making the move to SSD in the near future

 

Nice, did you disable pagefile?

7.5, mine got 7.9, you sure its not a typo?

Run crystaldiskmark for some numbers.

 

Yeh i disbaled pagefile. My SSD score is actually 7.9 but my proccessor gets a 7.5

 

I see, nice work.

SSD's are worth the money.

 

Congratulations on getting everything working well! I was glad I could help you. I would also like to add that it was Brabostaan that helped me with the WiFi card driver the day before, so a thank you goes out to him.