How to install Vista 64 on Dell Inspiron?

I just got a inspiron 1720, with the new 45nm cpu and 4gb of ram. In order to fully take advantage of the ram, i want to remove the Vista home premium on the laptop, delete all the partitions, and start a fresh install of vista 64.
However, i have heard that doing this is not quite as easy as one would do it on a desktop.

My specific questions are:
1) whether i need any specific drivers to load up (via USB) before the actual OS installation? if so, which ones?

2) Do i need to change my hdd setting in BIOS from AHCI to ATA? (What does this even do?)

3) Also, has anyone done this before, or can anyone point me to a nice quide please?

I have never done this on a laptop, and this laptop is my brothers, so any help is greatly appreciated.

I don't know how to install Vista 64 on a Dell Inspiron, but for a Dell Inspiron 1720 and Vista 32 you need, after you created the partitions (using Dell Mediadirect) and formated the drive (using the Vista Reinstallation DVD), to install the driver for the HDD (using the Drivers And Utilities CD) before installing the OS (Vista). You don't have to change the HDD settings in BIOS from AHCI to ATA. Remember that Vista came already installed on your computer and AHCI setting was enabled.

I've tried to install Windows Vista Ultimate on my laptop (dell inspiron 14 2 Gb RAM dual core processor). But the problem is, after booting from DVD I got blue screen death screen.