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Dell 15 7559, Windows reinstall and HDD upgrade to SSD
Hi,
I need help and information with the following things I would like to do, please.
1. I live in Germany and ordered my dell laptop via dell.de. The windows edition is obviously German. I logged in and changed the language and keyboard to English. However this is obviously not a total change as some applications and system messages (especially during a crash) are still in German.
So I understand that I need to re-install Windows.
How do I do this so that the entire system is in English, and even in the future,
i.e. even updating the windows system image, provided by Dell on the Hard drive, for future re-installs, recovery etc etc. I also do not wish to lose my product key of course.
Is this possible?
2. I would like to swap out the 1TB hybrid HDD inside with a Samsung 850 Evo 1TB SSD.
I plan to use Macronium Reflector Free edition, because I think the Samsung Migration tool did not work well for me. If you have done this could I please email/chat with you?
The questions are
a) Has anyone done this and have experience to guide me?
b) Any advice on issues faced at boot time with AHCI setting and boot device not found and how to fix this?
c) Any issues with the Dell installations by doing this ?
d) Will this in any way affect my Part one question above, regarding OS re-install?
I plan to do the re-install of OS first and then do the clone and swap of HDD.
Any link to detailed steps for both will help. I have checked online and found some resources but not found information on some exact points.
makdt
7 Posts
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February 2nd, 2016 04:00
Due to the overwhelming response and my weekend experimenting I have decided to answer my own question.
1. For language change I called Dell support on a Frankfurt number. They redirected me to the dreiver downloads page at http://www.dell.com/support. After entering your service tag you can get a list of downloads.
Here download the OS installation image and then follow the instructions that follow after the download is complete. It tell you how to partition your installation USB, copy over the install image, reboot and options to select for a re-install.
At the time of install the languages used become enforced.
The only thing I was unsure of was selecting to overwrite TPM module keys, during installation.
I could accept or reject the overwrite. I selected to overwrite. And it looks like it worked ok. Not sure what rejecting would have done.
2. I checked the BIOS settings before hand and the SATA mode was AHCI already so that helped.
I used Macrium reflect free edition to clone the hard disk. For Laptops I recommend NOT using the Samsung Migration, which works fine for desktops though.
Once the HDD is swapped in, it boots up just fine and then you install the Samsung Magician tool to optimize test etc.
Thankfully with this series of laptops they have simplified greatly the opening and accessibility of the hard disk, unlike my old one which I ended up wrecking.
I hope someone finds this post useful in the future.