Area-51 M15x Windows 7 Setup/Startup

OK well Recently I acquired a 128 SSD drive, as many of the m15x users already know as I probably sold you parts off of it or offered you parts for your systems. So I tried to install windows 7 on it and I kept running into problems getting OSD to work properly. I don't know what th deal is, sometimes I get it to work and sometimes I don't. Basically I Got everything to work properly but Fn F7 would never work properly and reboot to switch out the current GPU, so I basically gave up and went back to my 80 gb INtel SSD. And now I'm actually worried, should I ever down the road need to reinstall stuff on this system in fear of a possible virus down the road or a HDD failure. I mean let's be honest here, I'm on my 4th SSD, as they do have problems and things happen, So I might have to RMA it like I've done in the past.

So my question is, can I just mirror the drive? onto another drive to keep the settings/ windows, bootup and not lose anything, onto another SSD, or another drive to keep as backup? I'm in so much fear right now of this, that I see no problem with picking up an 80 gb drive and just using it to mirror my stuff, lol. And if anything we can all agree that installing windows 7 on this system isn't as easy as advertised there are alot of side steps that Need/Must be taken. By making a backup of all of it I'd be saving myself a MAJOR headace down the road.

Any input or advice on the matter would be great appreciated. Right now my 128gb SSD will go on my M17x-R2, if this doesn't work out I'll be selling it for 128 dollars on the forums, which should sell fast at that price point. I hope I can get everything going though exactly how I want it to, so far I find myself making alot of detours.The Sammy SSD works, it's just that I never did get OSD to work properly and just ultimately gave up after contacting Alienware Support, I did the CMOS battery thingy to reset the MoBo, I just can't get FN F7 to work properly on it.

 

darkloki, have you checked out this thread?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=424159

Dhoang has posted a step by step guide to get everything to work on the area 51 m15x with windows 7 there.

For the problem with switching cards, try running OSD utility under Vista compatibility as dhoang suggested.

 

I swear I did this but I didn't get the FN f7 to work properly, I'll go over it again in greater detail. But thanks. Also doing all of this is alot of steps, I mean call my LAzy, but I think I'd much rather make a backup of all of this rather then go through these pain staking steps/tasks again. I can't even begin to tell you the number of trial and error's I went through just to get my current system where it is right now running perfectly with Windows 7. Granted the first time I had a Motherboard failure, and had it RMA'ed out through alienware (Thanks Alienware for swapping out and not charging me $400+ dollars, lol) And then got it all working once I did a Motherboard reset by taking out the CMOS battery. I'm telling you I ALWAYS have issues with the FN F7 button to work for some reason. But right now on my intel SSD it's working just fine. But I never got it to work properly with my Samsung 128 GB SSD, even with an Alienware Tech on the other end.

The tech eventually agreed that it would be better just to go back to my intel SSD and use that to run my system, as it was running perfectly.

 

I don't know if this will help you but this is how I have my OSD manager properties set.