Hi all mum and dads laptop is playing up a bit, so thought i would do a format on it. Trouble is they dont have any discs that came with it. Now itsa Vistabasic and presumme its OEM as it was installed on there Toshiba laptop. Now is there anyway i can reformat the machine with another disc?
Quick question regarding Vista
- Thread starter Iceman
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Yes, any disc will do, provided you have a valid licence and product key to go with it. Vista is particularly accommodating in that regard - no retail/OEM difference to worry about as in XP, or ei.cfg as in 7. 
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Better to do a clean install with a vanilla Windows disc IMO, rather than reinstate all the original crud helpfully preinstalled by the manufacturer.
Hardly a massive problem is it, just a case of uninstalling the "crud" once you've got the OS back on
Hardly a massive problem is it, just a case of uninstalling the "crud" once you've got the OS back on
...Plus all drivers should be intact too.
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It depends on the supplier and what junk they've loaded the machine up with, much of which autolaunches at bootup or logon. Getting rid of it all can be annoying and time-consuming in my experience, but it's up to you I suppose... "shrugs"Hardly a massive problem is it, just a case of uninstalling the "crud" once you've got the OS back on
There, that's better.
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Sorry if you thought it was a "smarmy" comment, it wasn't meant in that spirit.
The way I look at it is that pre-built PCs rarely if ever seem to be set up optimally out of the box in any case - even when they're brand-new the first thing I'd do is blow the whole lot away including all the preinstalled crapware, which may leave behind lingering traces of itself to cause annoyances even after it's been uninstalled. On a new PC with no user data it hardly takes any more time to do a completely clean install (including the most up-to-date drivers available) than it would to sort out the pre-existing setup and get it running the way you want, minus any helpful startup processes, extra toolbars or popups reminding you that your trial subscription to (whatever) has expired.
You can also get rid of the recovery partition entirely and use the space reclaimed for something more worthwhile, although admittedly it's probably not a major issue these days.
The way I look at it is that pre-built PCs rarely if ever seem to be set up optimally out of the box in any case - even when they're brand-new the first thing I'd do is blow the whole lot away including all the preinstalled crapware, which may leave behind lingering traces of itself to cause annoyances even after it's been uninstalled. On a new PC with no user data it hardly takes any more time to do a completely clean install (including the most up-to-date drivers available) than it would to sort out the pre-existing setup and get it running the way you want, minus any helpful startup processes, extra toolbars or popups reminding you that your trial subscription to (whatever) has expired.
You can also get rid of the recovery partition entirely and use the space reclaimed for something more worthwhile, although admittedly it's probably not a major issue these days.