Windows 7 Clean Install - what do I loose?

Thank you Naomi for the (double) reply!

I've looked at the video and had a quick look at the list of drivers and the video on how to install them. 

Do I understand correctly that the Alienware 17 disk (not the OS recovery disk) does -not- have the necessary drivers on it and they -must- be downloaded from the internet? I'm asking because I have read elsewhere that the SATA drivers will be needed prior to the installation of Win 7. So, I'm wondering if I need to burn a number of drivers to a disk first and only then perform the Win 7 installation. Can you confirm?

Thanks again for the reply!

Kind regards,

Manu

Thank you again Naomi for your reply. 

I just wanted to mention a few things for posterity. 

1) The video you posted about installing Windows 7 does not mention issues such as UEFI/secure boot. I managed to find my way around those issues not knowing much about them but it'd be nice if a new video was made with those aspects in mind.

2) The windows 7 installation from scratch went smoothly but left the computer with no network adapter. As such, short of using another computer to burn a disk with all latest drivers, the resource DVD seemingly is the easiest way to get the drivers in after installation despite them being not quite the most up to date.

3)  The "index" software coming with the Resource DVD does not list any file at all if Windows 7 64 Bit (the currently installed OS) is selected among the search criteria. Only by selecting Operating System "All" or "Windows 8.1 64-bit" a list of files, including drivers, becomes available. Hovering over each link provides a tooltip confirming that those are Windows 8.1 drivers. However having faith in your initial reply, I have installed the first few drivers in the list (chipset, management engine interface) and the requested reboots went fine. So, I hope the rest of the drivers will install correctly and that the index software could just use some debugging. The whole procedure is a bit cumbersome (extract, install drivers, reboot, restart index software, reset criterias, select new driver from alphabetically ordered list, loop over) but I should be able to survive through it.

I hope this will help somebody else in my same situation.

Kind regards,

Manu

The forum seems to have swallowed a previous post for moderation reasons: the driver for the Intel Dynamic Platform & Thermal Framework could not be installed because of unspecified minimum requirements. I imagine this could be due to the OS being Win 7 instead of Win 8.x.

The Broadcom BCM4352 + BT driver fails to install because the OS is not compatible with it. This seems to be a Bluetooth driver and I'm not too concerned about it. Furthermore, the bluetooth device seems to be the only network device the Win 7 installation had already recognized and installed a driver for. However, the DVD doesn't seem to provide the Bigfoot Networks Killer Wireless-N 1202 driver mentioned in the Alienware 17 driver list. A SiBeam Wireless HD (Gen 3) driver is provided but turns out to be some kind of wireless HD video streaming application that works on top of an established wireless connection. I am therefore forced to connect the laptop via ethernet cable. Internet access has been established right away and it should be smoother sailing from now on by downloading the Win 7 specific drivers.

The Qualcomm LAN Network Killer E2201 driver triggers an error as something requires .NET 4.0.3x. The installation procedure seems to stall for a while but then continues and eventually declares it has been successful. Troubleshooting the network connection after a reboot seems to confirm the successful installation by requesting to plug in an Ethernet cable instead of failing to find an adapter.

First casualty of the driver installation process: the Intel Dynamic Platform & Thermal Framework Driver says its minimum requirements are not met. I imagine it refers to the OS -not- being Windows 8.1.  The next listed driver's (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) installation seemingly went fine.

Another issue: there seems to be no "USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller" driver on the CD. However, this might be consistent with the fact that the list published here hints that there is no Windows 8 version for it.

I have eventually installed the Intel Centrino Wireless drivers and those work. While no other WiFi device seems to be available, a couple of devices in the Device Manager remain unknown and I wonder if one of them is the Qualcom/Broadcom network adapter it is advised to install the drivers for. Might check more in-depth tomorrow to see if the drivers provided through the support page are different than those listed by auto-detecting the system/service tag number.

Sorry for the many posts. I didn't realise I could edit (but not delete) already existing posts. I hope my account of the experience will eventually be helpful to others.

Go to the Dell Drivers and Downloads page.

1. Enter your Service Tag or select your computer from a list of Dell products.
2. Click the Arrow next to the driver category to expand the list of available drivers and applications.
3. Next to the version you wish to install, click Add to My Download List.
4. Download and install the drivers in the following order:

Please provide the hardware IDs for the unknown devices and also video controllers and network controllers which have variants.

See my instructions here:

My Windows Reinstallation Guide/A Clean Install of Windows may help you out a good bit: