UK Tech Support provided the OEM Windows 8 DVD and I have no more problems. It's a great pity that I had to struggle with an issue that was so easily resolved and could have been avoided by including the operating system DVD with the new computer. I will have to weigh up such aspects when considering my next laptop computer. Thanks for your help.
I've seen a number of posts relating to people who want to add an SSD to their system and there appear to be a number of different scenarios. I have installed my 120 GB SSD in my brand new (arrived last night) 17RSE, originally in the spare HDD slot, but having cloned the original HDD, I moved it to the first drive bay hoping that it might be picked up by Windows boot as the primary drive (but it wasn't). No matter what I do, I cannot get the SSD recognised by the computer.  After trying every which way without success, I decided to do a clean install of Windows 7 followed by an upgrade to Windows 8 which I had bought for my old laptop.  All went well until it came time to activate windows. This failed and I was informed that the windows 8 key embedded in my Inspiron cannot be used with a retail version of Windows. I have tried all I can to get the SSD in and working, but the combined efforts of Dell and Microsoft have been very successful in spoiling my day and wasting many hours of my time. Does anybody know how to get this sorted please?   
New Inspiron 17RSE and a new SSD