Upgrade Capability..

With my laptop in production had a few questions?

Is it fairly easy down the road to swap the drive out for a blu-ray drive, and if so point me to a link where I can pick one up?

Next question does the M17X r3 have a spare bay to install and additional SSD drive?

I had asked a question about the WIRELESSHD I have the transmitter but where can I purchase just the reciever portion, I had a thread open and it got closed and I was directed to the other THREAD but couldn't get a straight answer where to get the reciever?

 

It actually is not easy IMO to swap the optical drive. It is on the other side of the mobo, so you can't get to it from the bottom, it is quite a bit more involved than say swapping the GPU or a HDD.

There are 2 drive pays with all needed parts included with every system. You will be able to add another SSD.

The receivers are sold all over, just google wirelesshd receiver. Amazon, Best Buy, Dell, heck maybe even Walmart.

 

Yoda thanks perhaps an external blu-ray player will suffice hopefully they will keep coming down in price....

I will definetly add another SSD and put the Windows 7 on that drive and use the 750GB for storage, is that typical what people do? I know getting everything restored can be intense and there are detailed walkthrough's on this website. Next ? at BOOT that Alien shows up at POST will that still be there on fire up, reason I ask is because its cool....

 

The Alien at post will always be there, it is in the bios. However, things like the Alienware windows welcome screen would be gone with a clean install unless you go out of your way to add it again.

 

I will live without the Alienware windows welcome screen, if I want to add it I am sure I will get around to it...

What about the SSD put the O/S on there and Games, and leave the 750gb for data like music and pics?

 

That's the easy part. Just make sure you update the firmware, and change the bios settings from "RAID" to AHCI so it functions properly. I would also recommend you go to A08 bios, because the A09 bios claims to "Fix" the sata speed issues, but all it seems to do is downclock the speeds to sata2.

 

Roger that on the A08 bios..does doing that void the warranty?

 

It doesn't if you use the one from the driver site. Just make sure its A08.

 

It really doesn't no matter what, the unlocked A08 shows just the same as the regular A08 from windows, and Dell techs can't remote into the bios. Thus, the only person that could tattle on you would be an in-home tech, and one thing that the remote techs will do every time before authorizing a service call is check your bios and flash it to A09. Thus, you can really run unlocked A08 all the time and they will never know and will in-fact reflash it for you before a service call.

Just never admit to ever using anything not found on the Dell site, but in reality use whatever you want.

 

Just search replace optical drive m17x r3 on google and you will get the first link there. Thats what i did. Once you did the swap, you will feel like you have seen everything there is to see in your lappy

 

I tried this bit, but my system just BSOD'ed on restart, anyway of fixing that, otherwise I'm stuck at Raid.

 

If you are on raid, you may need to change to ahci and then do a fresh windows install...

 

NO....... - is changing realy worth it? A re-install would take ages....

 

Open up an elevated (run as admin) command prompt and type:

Hit enter and restart.

Then in bios change RAID to AHCI.

Restart a few times and then re-install the latest Intel RST. Sorted!

Also run -> msconfig and disable startup entries that are not related to drivers, etc. Stuff like Word/Adobe/Apple can be disabled.