Good God Almighty, someone help me out with CC/AlienFX !!!

Ok, so I completely refreshed my area 51 m17x with windows 7 (64 bit), and got all my driver setup and in good shape... The last item is Command Center, so we are all in the clear right???

WRONG !!!

I have been attempting to install CC various ways according to alienware, and folks on this forum, as well as other forums...

After a million different attempts, I actually get my cc system seemingly working with the lights (including the 4 zone keyboard)... During this time I had reintalled different things in a million ways, so now that I had all my software and my order of instructions, I decided to do one final refresh and have everything nice and clean (yes I am anal)

So I was all excited and got through 7 setup and all the drivers, now for the final hurrah, the cc. Well I installed it, and my lights ended up with lights working everywhere, except what I think is keyboard zone 1, 2 and possibly 3 (left side to middle).

Huh?

Well I go into the alienfx, and there are no errors about detecting keyboards and such, and I think I am ok, but the alienfx only lists 1 keyboard zone. So thinking: "fine, I will just use a single color across my keyboard" I set the whole thing and it only seems to set the lights for the far right side (the left to middle still remain dark.

Here is my driver installation and method to install cc:

01 - Alienware m17x Chipset Driver
02 - Alienware m17x ATK Driver
03 - Alienware m17x ATK Hotkey Utility
04 - Alienware m17x Video Driver
05 - Alienware m17x Audio Driver
06 - Alienware m17x Remote Control Infrared Driver
07 - Alienware m17x Smart Bay Driver
08 - Alienware m17x Touchpad Driver
09 - Alienware m17x Media Card Reader Driver
10 - Alienware m17x WebCam Driver
11 - Alienware m17x Command Center

11a - M17_CommandCenter_Win7_x64_1.0.41.exe (restart)
11b - m15x_CommandCenter_Win7_x64_2010.exe (restart)
11c - lighted_kb_reg.reg & lighted_keyboard.reg (restart)
11d - Open alienfx and close existing profile and create new


Most of my drivers came from this thread: http://www.notebookforums.com/thread232499.html, except for the video driver whose version seemed off and the webcam driver which I had to istall from alienware because my webcam was showing me upside down

I am just trying to get a good install method from fresh windows 7 install...

Can someone help me please?? I am about to tear my hair out!!

Yeah I had already attempted that route... with no luck

Also, what about the various keyboard fixes? between what I am seeing in my hive, what is in aliwnare's drivers, and various other driver sources (like the one I listed above), there seem to be various ones... I am not quite sure which is the right one.

Who is dave?

ok so after a million different procedures, I came up with the following:

1) Completely uninstalled Command Center

2) Cleared all Alienware References to Command Center in registry

3) Shutdown the system fully

4) Unplugged the system, removed the battery and held the power button to discharge anything. Reconnected everything and powered back on. (after this, all keyboard lights came on.

5) Ran the System Identifier (throws your model in your registry)

6) Ran the registry item for Alienfx keyboard... Note: there are a couple of these around, the one you want has 4 entries, you don't want the one with just 2 entries. Restarted my system

7) Installed the Command Center from My Hive (1.0.33 - 64 bit) - Note: Windows comes with dot net 3.5.x so it is not necessary to run that file provided in my hive

8) Tested the Command center and it worked perfectly... no need to close the existing theme or anything - all 4 keyboard zones worked perfectly. After this I restarted the system.

9) Install the latest Command Center (2.0.10 64 bit) - there is a reference to it in one of Alienware's kb's about windows 7 drivers. Restarted.

10) Tested everything, all seems happy!!!

I decided to start everything from scratch (reinstalled windows and all the drivers). I then performed steps 5 through 10, and everything is working perfectly.