>It will not let me upgrade because of those. They aren't just warnings - they stop the upgrade and your choice is to cancel.
>
>OK, another dumb question....can you simply do a complete reinstall? I'd be more interested in a fresh install than an upgrade anyway. Am I missing something?

Yes of course. I was hoping not to do that yet because it would take me days at least to reinstall everything and get the machine back to some sense of normalcy.

My intent was to do a reinstall sometime in the fall with the 64bit version (I wanted to do Vista 64bit since Vista came out but never got clear answers on hardware or software compatibility). Of course, my loathing of Vista has increased to the point that it is coming off this machine (period).

I have attempted to find information from Dell or Microsoft re: hardware compatibility for my Dell E1705 (9400) laptop running 64bit Windows 7 and find nothing but a black hole. I'm not seeing much of anything out of dell re: win 7 except upgrade promises if you purchase certain new machines.

If I have to reinstall I need to know I will be able to use my hardware w/o spending hours or days hunting for solutions with a crippled machine. XP is looking like the answer (as it has been for years).