Dream Machine

[P2O I'm from MO]

The BIOS is not on the hard drive. It is built into the motherboard so changing/formatting
a hard drive does not do anything to the BIOS. The touchpad and stiff stick will show up as
a generic PS/2 mouse unless the driver is installed for it in Windows. If the driver is
installed it would be listed as an Alps Touch pad driver. If it is missing you should
probably go to Dell's website and enter your service ID and get the driver for it. That
way at least you change the settings on the Touchpad for pressure and sensitivity (pressure
to avoid the 'resting palm' problem). After installing the driver there should be a
location to disable the stiff stick pointing device (at least according to discussions
on Dell's web forum).

Regards.