Reformatting a New Laptop

panthro · 2 Nov 2007 at 16:22

Just got my Vostro 1700 through today

Do you recommend that I reformat and reinstall Vista to get rid of all the preinstalled crap on there? I will download the latest 8600 drivers onto my external HDD first to install afterwards. Is there anything else I would need before doing this? Thanks

panthro · 3 Nov 2007 at 18:08

Some help please - my 1700 has been stuck on the final stage "completing installation". Its not done anything for the last 45 mins. The mouse still moves and I can still click on the cross, but it wont let me exit. What shall I do?

panthro · 7 Nov 2007 at 09:01

Aidoscuz said:
I presume you've sorted this out by now, but it could be something to do with AHCI drivers for Santa Rosa laptops like your Vostro. Have a look at this thread if you're still having problems.

Hi, yep sorted it out, I just changed the HDD settings in the BIOS from AHCI to ATA. Ive left them on ATA, do you recommend I change them back to AHCI?

panthro · 8 Nov 2007 at 09:06

Aidoscuz said:
Well AHCI gives you better performance as it uses the onboard flash memory, and can apparently give you better battery life as well. Here's an article about it. You can only swap back to AHCI from ATA if you do a reinstall of windows though, you have to install the driver as part of the windows setup. I'm not sure if it's worth reinstalling Vista again but if you don't have too much on there already you may as well go for it.

I reinstalled the AHCI drivers after I reinstalled vista. Surely this should be fine for swapping back to AHCI? I dont really mind too much tho, as my laptop spends most of its time plugged into the mains.