Alienware new owner. Some questions

i got my Alienware 15 R1 like 5 months ago. I was super excited but one month later a chkdsk loop happened and i took it to the it crew in my office because Alienware was not available in my country. They said it was hdd failure and forcefully Changed my hdd. I was forced to do with a cracked win 10 enterprise instead of my genuine win 10 home. My laptop originally came with 8.1 home but I upgraded it to win 10 home and I deleted the Windows.old folder. Current boot mode is legacy. I want to test whether my old hdd that came with the laptop really failed so since the original boot mode was UEFI, I have to change it to UEFI before plugging in the hdd, right? If the hdd really worked, I plan to use it again. If it works and I was able to boot Windows 10, then I want to set it to factory defaults since I don't really remember the contents inside. So if I reset to factory will it return to 8.1 or stay 10? If it returns to 8.1 I will upgrade it to 10 using a win 10 iso burned to usb drive. Windows will become official again right? Before I test this hdd, I am also going to clean install win 10 on my new hdd, will Windows 10 activate with factory bios oem key and will it still activate if I use old hdd?

Also
My current BIOS version is A01 what advantages does A06 have? If I am going to update to A06 then in what order? What are the risks?
Is a 240W PSU needed for my laptop with Intel core i5 and 965m?
Does Alienware On Screen Display app work on Windows 10? If so pls tell me how to make it work because it doesn't work on mine.

 

Before beginning my answer, I'd like to suggest you to use bullets and paragraphs in order to have a more readable text.

• If your old HDD which has Windows 10 installed on it works and if you reset it, it will stay at Windows 10 unless you choose the option to revert back to Windows 8.
• If you upgrade to windows 10 manually by a flash drive, you are going to need a key in order to make Windows official, which I presume, you don't have since DELL didn't put a sticker on my laptop (so I guess that they didn't put a sticker on yours too) which has the information written on it.
• Windows doesn't active by its OEM key itself, you need the key information yourself to enter it manually.
• I am not sure about your power requirements since I have the 980m but I heard that a 970m doesn't need a 240W so why would your 965m?
• If I were you I'd use the A00 BIOS since it has the best fan profile. A06 is the best BIOS among the hybrid BIOS revisions but since you don't need the hybrid BIOS, go with the A00.

I hope I was helpful.

 

The product key is baked into the BIOS, when installing Windows and presented with the box to enter a product key, hit the option that says "I do not have a product key", Windows will continue to install and and activate automatically using the embedded key.

 

Wow I didn't know about that. @ghost5225225 I am sorry for misleading information.

 

What I can suggest is that try to restore factory settings on your original hdd and return to win 8.1 and by then you can upgrade to win 10 if you wanted to. As what @sirleeofroy said the key is baked into your bios and try to follow this guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/nbr-windows-10-clean-installation-guide.781178/

For better storage i suggest getting a SSD its way way better: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-50...e=UTF8&qid=1462119544&sr=1-1&keywords=m.2+ssd

As for the bios you got 2 options its either you use a00 or a06. for a00 it has the best fan profile but you will have issue with sleep mode. if your laptop was on sleep the cpu will throttle down and you need to restart your laptop to fix it. for a06 which im using is quite ok in terms of fan profile plus with the fixes from previous bios which i can really explain everything. so if i were you use A06 and do a repaste on your cpu and gpu. try to search for the best paste that is suitable for you. most peopl use grizzly kryonaut or gelid gc extreme. im using gelid extreme. hope this helps.

 

I am planning to buy a new aloenware in a few years so i am saving up for that

 

Also has anyone gotten Alienware OSD app to work for Windows 10?

 

I would prefer not opening up my machine because there is no alienware at my country.