Quickset, Media Buttons & Windows Mobility Center

Having problems with your media/function buttons after installing, reinstalling or upgrading win7?

What Dell doesn't make clear or how to save 3 or so hours looking for an answer.

I upgraded my home premium on my inspiron 1558 with my Univ Ultimate W7. Had to do a clean install since MS is a reasonable facsimile to a certain area.

I updated BIOS, CD/DVD Firmware, and installed the drivers, including Quickset. Rebooted then I couldn't eject the CD with the eject button. How annoying to have to open explorer and eject. Also I lost my on-screen icons for all the media buttons.

So I repaired Quickset, worked great until I rebooted, no eject & no icons. Downloaded Quickset from my Dell Laptop page and reinstalled/repaired. Same issue, worked and did not work when I rebooted.

More internet research and a better explanation and solution: Dell Quickset is no longer standalone & integrates into Win7 Mobility Center (wmc).

One may not have to do all of this, ie the reinstall dance. I would check wmc and verify that the function key row is set to multimedia and that there is a Customized by Dell area (essentially quickset). Jumping from XP to W7, I did not know this existed before doing the repair/unistall/reinstall dance.

One can access the wmc by pressing the windows key (next to left Alt key) and the X key at the same time.

I did a complete uninstall of Quickset and then installed it again. Works on reboot and I get the icons back and the cd eject function. A good webpage for info is:

www.question-defense.com/2010/01/06/windows-7-dell-quickset-or-windows-mobility-center-hotkey-combination

General rant on Dell lameness for the obvious:

Really sad this info is not available in my Dell support, studio setup guide, searching the Dell Site, etc. Hope this saves someone else unnecessary frustration and time. Seems like a fairly significant area of instability & problems by the number of posts in the forums and on the net.  Why Dell wouldn't address this or even have a simple explanation on how to fix, I do not know.   I only spent a little over 3 hrs looking for an answer until I hit upon a thread that discussed Quickset and windows mobility center.   A quick addition  of win7 mobility center to the google search solved the problem in a few minutes.  Because there doesn't seem to be a clear or concise answer on Dell's site.