From what I have read, it seems like a monster system is going to be needed for any kind of eye candy in FSX, Like a beefy SLI and more than 2GB of RAM.
Man, I feel your pain bro. I just had my storage HD take a big ol dump a few weeks ago. Im talking over 40 GB of MP3's, a few gigs of pics and almost all of my music/photoshop projects.
From now on, I am using my old PC as a RAID...
Try E-Bags. They have a pretty good selection. And you can search by Laptop Model #, so You will be sure it will fit.
http://www.ebags.com/laptopfinder/in...nter_Link=GoTo
Yeah, you know, I thought MCE was pretty cool. Before I used it as an OS. I reinstalled XP Home after a couple months of messing with it. Seems pretty buggy and tempermental.
Sounds like you might need to contact Dell and have them overnight you a new OS CD. Unless you have another Dell OS cd laying around you can test with.