Would you reformat a new laptop?

retribution

retribution

retribution

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Hey all

Received a nice Dell Inspiron 640m today, with XP Home preinstalled. I say XP preinstalled, I mean XP plus a load of trash: various broadband companies diallers, McAfee security centre, cd creation - loads of stuff I don't want. I can uninstall it all simply by going through add/remove programs, but if it were your laptop, would you just reformat and start again? Will the gremlins of this excess software come back to haunt me?

Another spanner in the works: Dell doesn't bother giving its customers an XP cd anymore, you're supposed to use the "Dell OS Recovery Utility" (which from what I gather, is basically an XP installation CD, but might it have all the bundled software on it already?)

So, what would you do?

Thanks,

Rob.
 
As above.

First thing I did when I got my dell - before I booted into windows actually was to format it. Used a copy of XP Home from another pc with the serial on the underside of the laptop. Had no problems activating etc....
 
with me working in a corporate environment I get most Microsoft products under staff agreement so I stuck pro on it, saved me 80 quid. Alough I would never use illigal products though. I would have bought a copy of pro if I did not work in an environment that licences are ok.
 
I generally take all the crap off and don't reinstall, it seems pointless to me. Its only AOL and Norton stuff, it doesn't to any harm to the laptop.
 
I always always always do a format reinstall on any new laptop. They put on so much junk, much of which is totally redundant. You get a massive speed/resource boost taking all their crap off.
 
Phone Dell and ask them for the Windows CD (they usually charge you £5 for it when ordering). Tell them that you expected it to come with a CD, that other brands come with a CD, and that you damn well want the CD. Chances are they'll send it to you for nothing.

I've got a 630m, and to save time when I got it (seeing as it was the end of my first year at Uni and I was moving out) I didn't bother formatting, I just uninstalled all the crap, went through the various program directories and cleared those out, and then ran a few driver cleaners to get rid of the excess at a later date. There's no real trace of any of the rubbish pre-installed stuff left now (although a recent registry scan revealed a few sneaky AOL reg keys, damn thing!), but I still plan to do a full format and re-install with the CD soon, once I've got my PC back again.

Just make sure you have all the drivers, apps etc from the Dell website at hand before you do format. Don't forget stuff like QuickSet and the Intel software pack that installs the CPU driver.

The other nice thing about having the CD is that it means you can delete the restore partition. It's 3GB, so it chews up a hefty amount of hard-drive space.
 
retribution said:
Hey all

Received a nice Dell Inspiron 640m today, with XP Home preinstalled. I say XP preinstalled, I mean XP plus a load of trash: various broadband companies diallers, McAfee security centre, cd creation - loads of stuff I don't want. I can uninstall it all simply by going through add/remove programs, but if it were your laptop, would you just reformat and start again? Will the gremlins of this excess software come back to haunt me?

Another spanner in the works: Dell doesn't bother giving its customers an XP cd anymore, you're supposed to use the "Dell OS Recovery Utility" (which from what I gather, is basically an XP installation CD, but might it have all the bundled software on it already?)

So, what would you do?

Thanks,

Rob.
Click to expand...

Yes, if I had a copy of normal XP I could use. Custom edited XPs with programs and stuff are absolute .....

And they're buggy.
 
My sisters laptop came with one of these recovery cd she said she was having problems and slowdowns with it so i checked it over, would you believe it absoloutly loads of just total rubbish from HP installed on there, a swift reformat and fresh clean install solved this the windows xp cd also provided all the drivers necerssary for the laptop which was handy :D.
 
BloodWolf said:
Damn Dell and their preinstalled crap. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

It isnt just Dell, it is all the main vendors. For some reason they insist on loading up their hardware with junk. Last year i had to go through a number of my friends laptops because within a month of use they became unusable due to the resource hogging waste of space apps. For isntance somebody please tell me what exactly 'shock protection' does. If you have dropped your laptop onto a floor of rusty nails = shock i dont think that utility is going to make a damn bit of difference!
 
Biohazard said:
obtain another copy of home and use your legit key with that no?
Click to expand...

He'd need to find the right version though. Often the CD key on the side/bottom of the computer doesn't work in a normal OEM copy of XP
 
My parents PC came from Dell pre-installed. They had an XP cd with theirs, it was on the maron coloured disc if I remember correctly.

TrUz
 
Thanks for the replies, reformat seems to be the order of the day :)

Exactly what sort of XP Cd am I looking for? I've only got an XP Pro and another Dell's XP CD, but will that have all the rubbish on it too? I might ring dell at a later date, but at the moment I just want to get it sorted and up and running - you know how it is :p

Thanks again,

Rob.
 
ive got the problem on my HP nc6000 laptop, with the HP install none of the quick launch buttons work, i cant get the bluetooth to work. Do you think if i format and start again it may help?
 
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