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    Win 7 "Alienware" backup from Home (64bit) to Ultimate (64bit)

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by TechnoWhore, Oct 5, 2011.

  1. TechnoWhore

    TechnoWhore Notebook Evangelist

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    Hi guys, I'll soon be in possession of my new Alienware m17x R3 and I have a query.

    The R3 is coming with Win 7 home premium installed, but I want to transfer everything (drivers etc.) from the premium edition onto win 7 Ultimate. Will it work if I make a Win 7 backup image from win 7 premium and restore it within Win 7 Ultimate? Both are 64bit. It doesn't come with an Alienware respawn disc.

    Ideally I would have liked to keep my Win 7 ultimate hard drive my Sager (with all my current programs) and then update all the drivers needed for the Alienware and AMD card (I have Nvidia drivers at the moment on the Sager drive). But I don't know how the Alienware hardware would react to all Sager/Nvidia drivers at first bootup.

    I hope that makes sense. Any advice would be helpful thanks?
     
    TechnoWhore, Oct 5, 2011
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  2. SlickDude80

    SlickDude80 Notebook Prophet

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    This sounds like more trouble than its worth however, theoretically, if you were to swap the hard drive and boot the alienware with the sager drive, you will be able to boot into safe mode. All your devices won't work but you can reinstall from the driver disk that comes with the Alienware. Make sure to wipe the sager drive clean of anything nvidia. You'll also need to clean references to hardware in your registry or you'll might have some weird and nagging issues
     
    SlickDude80, Oct 5, 2011
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  3. TechnoWhore

    TechnoWhore Notebook Evangelist

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    Thanks. Your right it does sound like a lot hassle.

    It might be easier to try and restore the Alienware Win 7 premium image on an install of Win 7 ultimate, but I don't know if it will work. Has anyone tried this?
     
    TechnoWhore, Oct 5, 2011
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  4. inap

    inap .........................

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    inap, Oct 5, 2011
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  5. TechnoWhore

    TechnoWhore Notebook Evangelist

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    Thanks for the link :) I think that is what I may ultimately do. However the thought of having to reinstall all my apps and games from scratch fills me with no joy.

    As an experiment I'm going to stick my Win 7 Ultimate hard drive into the R3 and see what happens. At best the screen will default to VGA and I should be able to update with the dell drivers/apps. Worst case scenario would be a no boot.

    Looking at the link you provided I can't see were the app for keyboard etc fx lighting. Is that in the Control centre app?
     
    TechnoWhore, Oct 6, 2011
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  6. inap

    inap .........................

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    yes that the command center app. make sure to install that last.
     
    inap, Oct 6, 2011
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