Recommended Dell software on a fresh win10 install?

I just bought a used xps 13 9343 and it came with what looks like a completely fresh win10 install; I don't see ANY Dell software installed (search "Dell" in start menu and nothing comes up). I'm wondering if I'm missing out on anything good? Or maybe this is better?

Are there any Dell utilities you find useful? Personally, I'd love to be able to set battery charge ranges (e.g. start below 50% and stop at 90%) without going into the BIOS. Also be able to play with the webcam and turn radios on/off easier. Are these a part of some sort of Dell package that you find useful? Dell's site doesn't make figuring this out very easy (though it was excellent at updating drivers). Thanks!

 

What Dell software should you install?

Zero. Nothing.

The whole point of a clean install is to get rid of all of that Dell software on a factory-configuration laptop, because it's bloatware. The only thing you need from the Dell support website when you clean install a laptop is drivers.Whoever sold you the laptop did you a tremendous favor, and saved about 2 hours of your life.

If you install Dell software, you're likely to come back onto this forum and complain about all of these junk applications slowing your computer down, and loading your system tray with garbage. And if that happens, the best advice people would give you is to do a clean-install of Windows 10, and not load those Dell bloatware applications; which is exactly what you have now.

 

Ha, ok, thanks, that's what I was wondering. My previous laptop was a Thinkpad and it came without a hard drive, so I had to install (winxp) from scratch and play around with IBM's drivers. Took me a while to get the right balance of utility vs bloat (there was some decent thinkpad utilities that I used, mainly the battery info one), so I was just looking to see if the Dell world was similar.

 

Ah, ok.

If it helps, IBM / Lenovo is notorious for having very confusing IBM / Lenovo apps. Dell is a LOT easier to understand, install, etc those types of apps. Many of those apps are intended for IT departments to manage their fleet of company laptops; such as security, remote access, etc apps. To an individual consumer like you, those apps are bloatware.

 

You should spend a few hours browsing around here to get an optimal set up based on which version of Windoze and the screen you have.

For example, the newest BIOS is causing problems for people with 4k screens. The RealTek driver 6.0.17898 from 2 Aug 2016 sounds better than anything from Dell; and unlike the standard M$ audio driver, RealTek does not try to keep replacing its newer driver. You may not need the Intel RST driver. You may want to update some of your drivers to latest versions at Intel/NVidia. . .

 

you mean you disable this "waves maxxaudio service application" that comes with Dell software?

 

Disable that garbage

 

He bought a used laptop that had a clean install of Windows 10 on it.

If the seller knows enough how to do a clean install of an OS, then the seller will know enough to install the right drivers before shipping the laptop out the door.

If the seller was an uneducated computer user that doesn't know how to install drivers, then s/he would have, at most, just followed Dell recovery instructions, and restore the laptop to factory condition (Windows 8.1, drivers installed, plus Dell bloatware installed).

 

Ok, just a little follow-up... everything is still working nicely w/o me adding any bloatware (though I'm tempted to try a battery manager still). I started to look into saving a drive image for backup purposes this weekend when I noticed something odd: my C drive has 5 partitions (only one normally visible). Is this normal? It seems excessive.. 3 are labeled "recovery" partitions, and are 1GB, 450MB, and 8.19GB in size. Then there is a 500MB EFI System partition and the regular 109GB Boot one. According to Disk Management, all those recovery partitions are completely empty, so doubt they'd be very useful.

What is the standard configuration from Dell? I might try to combine/delete those recovery partitions to simplify the drive and reclaim some space...

 

What you're reporting regarding partitions is totally normal. I wouldn't worry about it.

A true clean Windows install has 3 partitions... recovery, EFI, and main partition. The recovery partition contains data needed if you ever boot Windows into recovery mode, such as a set of tools that may be useful in that Recovery Mode. Thankfully, most people never need to ever use that.

When you buy a system from Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc, they usually put the Windows setup media on a "Recovery" partition of your storage drive (the 8.19GB partition), since they no longer ship Windows media with their machines. If a user ever screws up their Windows installation or configuration, a tech support agent on the phone will tell the customer to hit some keypress combination to trigger a Windows re-install off of that Recovery partition, and restore the computer back to factory configuration. That usually eliminates a significant portion of tech support issues, related to user stupidity.

Your last "Recovery" partition (the 1GB) is probably also related to that. It probably contains a set of tools, apps, drivers, etc that come in handy when a user does need to restore their computer back to factory condition. It's a lot easier to just give a non-expert user the files they need to re-install, rather than telling them to go onto Dell's support website and download drivers / apps that they need after a clean Windows re-install. This is especially the case if you happen to own a machine that doesn't have network drivers pre-loaded by a base Windows 10 install; and can't get onto Dell's support website to download network drivers, because you don't have network drivers needed to download network drivers (Yo dawg...).

So... if you leave your computer alone, you'll be fine. Your machine will work just fine, and you won't suffer any detrimental effects or slowdown by leaving your computer as-is; except that you have 9.19GB of space that isn't usable by you. If you're a bit OCD on getting your computer "perfect" (and many many people on this forum are OCD about that), then you'll want to do an entirely clean re-install of Windows 10 from bootable USB media. And during the re-install process, you want Windows to delete all existing partitions from your storage drive, and do a clean install that targets the 120GB unpartitioned space that you just made available through those deletions. Windows Setup will automatically create the proper partitions, and won't have those two 8.19GB + 1.0GB partitions put there by Dell.

Whatever you do, don't just start deleting partitions and resizing partitions to try and reclaim space. I can almost guarantee you that your computer won't boot after you do that, because of the way that bootloaders identify which partition contains your Windows installation. Best case scenario, that problem is easy to resolve. But worst case, your Windows installation is inaccessible, and you'll need to do a clean reformat & re-install. And I'd give it a 50% - 50% chance between those two outcomes.

 

Oh. And if you find the Battery Management tool useful, then go ahead and install it.

It's not bloatware if you actually use it.

 

Thanks for such a detailed response! After reading that, I probably will only mess with it if/when I change to a larger SSD in the future. This is a secondary machine, so I try not to be too OCD about it (unlike my main desktop) Still seems odd that those recovery partitions were being reported as completely empty, though. Or maybe that's a limitation of the Disk Management tool and they do actually contain the back up files? Eh, I probably won't worry about it for now...

Edit: I should mention I have had experience working with partitions in the past, but I haven't worked with anything newer than windows 7 until now. Back then, it didn't make any extra partitions for you or anything, so hearing that win10 does this is a surprise. I'm not surprised Dell does it, I had a Thinkpad before this and I know they did it too (probably all OEMs do now), but mine was used and came without a drive, so I just used a new drive as a single partition and had no recovery (winxp). I build my own desktops so have always had control of it in the past.