Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide

Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide​

by Les Tokar

~~~Introduction~~~

This guide is intended for use on Dell systems which contain Dell MediaDirect and the Vista Operating system. It has been put together through a consumer need to reformat Dell systems as simply as possible and to remove the vast amount of bloatware contained on newly received Dell laptops. Unfamiliar to most, newly received laptops, not only contain an unnecessary amount of useless programs but also, contain unneeded alternate language files as well as registry entries created to serve the benefit of Dell and not necessarily the user. This ' bloatware' will, not only serve to slow your system a great deal, but also take up needed and valuable space.

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At the end of this guide, you will find a link to another popular article entitled 'Top Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide', this article being recognized as one of the leading tweaking articles available on the internet.

The combination of both threads will result in a blazing fast laptop that will amaze you!

The change in your startup and shutdown times alone will attest as to the success that can be had.

~~~Instructions~~~

NOTE: Please follow these word for word and, should you encounter a problem, review the steps. 99% of problems experienced are a result of someone not reading this carefully and fixed only after a certain step is brought to their attention.

AHCI Concerns: On new Dell systems, they are set up to run in AHCI mode which will give you a 15% system performance boost. In many instances, the AHCI driver MUST be installed during the initial installation process for the installation to work. Those not installing it are finding that their system may BSOD or hang during the installation and saying "Completing Installation Process". One must find the driver specific to their system either on the drivers disk that came with their laptop or at www.Dell.com in the drivers section. Download and expand it to a USB drive or disk; the USB is prefered but it is important that you expand it on the media you just saved it to. Once done, put it aside for now.

UPDATE: If your more the visual type, Bamaster has put together a photogallery of the steps on Pg 130, Post 1291 here!!! He has put alot of work...and I mean ALOT of work into this. Don't be afraid to show him your appreciation by throwing him a rep on his post (scales bottom left) Great job Bamaster!!!

1. Place MediaDirect 3.3 in drive;
2. Restart/Hit F12 at initial screen/One time boot/Boot Dvd;
3. Follow instructions to change your partitions. This will delete everything. (Note, I got my system to accept two partitions which are the 3Gb MediaDirect partition and the main partition but sometimes you will have no choice but to go with 3;
4. When it says, remove MD3 disk and replace with your Vista disk;
5. Restart/hit F12 at initial screen/one time boot/Boot DVD;
6. When "press any key when ready" comes up make sure you press this right away. On mine, if you dont in the first few seconds there will be no reaction;
7. Follow the instructions/select complete install and, in the select partition screen, click bottom left to install the AHCI driver, insert the driver medium and direct it to the file which will say AHCI. There may be two files identified, ensure you select the AHCI driver. Once you have completed installing the driver, select correct partition to install Vista on;
8. On completion and windows is running, reinsert MediaDirect 3;
9. Run "DellKit" and press enter to complete installation of MediaDirect;
10. Change disk to your 'Drivers and Utilities' Disk and install 'Dell Resource Application;
11. Let it open and press extract for all that are checked. Install them. (note: Dont reboot after each installation of appropriate driver or it will take forever.);
12. Look at the unchecked drivers carefully. NOTE: There are a few that may be unchecked that are on your system. For example, my fingerprint reader doesnt come up checked as well as Quikset but they are there; and
13. Go to the Dell website/support/drivers and downloads and enter your service tag. Look for drivers that arent on your disk. I am aware that there are a few such as a DVD update.

THAT SHOULD BE IT!!!! Now, I will concede that this is an enjoyable project if you arent scared and take your time. If your a real 'nut' like me, you will end up doing it several times until all works exactly as you want it. If something goes wrong, throw the MediaDirect disk back in and start over again!!!

Good luck all and click on the scales bottom left of this article and leave me a note if this helped you along.!!

AND PLEASE...make comment at the bottom of the post so it gets bumped to the top of the section for others to find.

and last but not least... improve on what you have just done by now jumping into my Top Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide which contains the BEST tweaks available for your systems performance.!!!

 

Sounds a good and easy set of instructions - Well done.

Added this link to my bookmarks - don`t rely in easily finding it here in the future

 

This is good to know I will do this with my new system

 

should this work with inspirons too?

 

A moderator should make this a sticky so I can do this when I buy my M1330 next year.

 

Thanks for the thread!

I'm still debating whether to uninstall what bloat I can or do a clean install - so, what can go wrong and how annoyingly wrong can it go?

 

Technically, nothing can go wrong because you cant hurt the hardware. You may just have to reinstall the disk and start the installation over if you run into any glitches which are pretty much uncommon.

Your system requires no special hardware and will boot once it is bare and formatted from the Windows vista disk.

 

i just want to know if it will work with the 1720.thanks

 

It will work with any Dell laptop with Media direct. Its even simpler without. Just insert the OS disk and follow the directions

 

What's the advantage of using the Media Direct CD?

Why wouldnt I just want to reformat and use an actual copy of a Vista DVD then go to Dell Support and download drivers?

 

MediaDirect allows you to turn on your computer to use just that program to play dvds music or view pictures. It is a totally different OS that saves battery power.

If you install vis any normal Vista DVD you still need to reinstall the drivers specific to your system. For instance I require drivers for Dell Wireless N, my NVidia graphics adapter, bluetooth, soundblaster and so on...these dont come on the Vista disk.

 

Ya it makes sense and also i think u cannot be sure wat the best size extra partition to make to re-install mediaDirect and i think the Cd wud probs not waste too much space. of course i cud be wrong as i aint gt me laptop to try it yet. lol

You shoud post this in Dell forum directly and make it more generic for Dell computers. Change your sig to make the name of this thread more obvious like: "Clean install instructions (get rid of your bloatware)
"

 

Followed your instructions and my mediadirect now works after a clean reinstall. Many thanks!

I'm still having a very slow boot problem. It seems to happen just after one of the windows update and I'm not sure which. After reinstallation before setting up the network settings for the internet, the system boots in under 1min 30 secs. After the OS installs all the updates, the reboot slows to a crawl to 3 mins 30 secs. Any of you guys experience this?

 

I would figure it out by another reinstal then install the updates one at a time to se which ne is responsible...

It could be something as simple and unnecessary as quikset.

Hey my 1000th post!!!! Im officially a NBR Geek!!!!!! hello this is Les Nesman with your Pork Report!! (sorry old show)

 

and now stay tuned for Johnny Fever here on W....K....R ...P!

congrats, Flamenko!

 

i will have to try this when i get my system

 

Are all the necessary drivers for our system (m13330) found on the resource CD? I saw some posts saying you had to download the Intel Matrix Storage Driver and use a USB key. Are there any others that I need to download? I realize it's config dependent, but any ones i should know about, nVidia? Bluetooth?

TIA!

 

All the necessary drivers are on the CD but remember...the web camera is a separate disk.

The Dell site may have some upgrades but these will download in any case if you automatic updating is on.

 

How does one set drivers to search for and update automatically?

 

Your windows updates and certain drivers will update automatically.

If you are signed up to be updated with the drivers section, they will send you an email stating that new drivers are available and listing the new drivers available.

You should have a prob with just the disk though...in fact you wont. Ive reinstalled 4 or so times now.

 

Good post!
A bit scary to attempt but as long as you take your time and read everything...

It may sound like a dumb question but what exactly is all that bloatware? Trial software and stuff like that?

 

Its a combination actually of a number of things but yes, trial software is included as well as a number of system and registry configurations that are set by Dell to benefit them most.

 

okok but since it's a reformat do you have to install to complete thing first and do all the updates?

 

Yes..... when you install MediaDirect, it will wipe everything. You then reinstall Vista clean, finish with the mediadirect disk and follow that by throwing in your system disk to setup your drivers once again for hardware such as wifi/bluetooth/graphics etc.

 

now would media direct wipe the recovery partition that allows us to restore to factory settings or would that stay put?

 

Good question. When you reinstall MediaDirect, it allows you to change your partitions or install within those set. It will not get rid of your restore partition unless you format it as such to delete that partition.

Now, having said that, I cant promise that the system restore will work effectively only because I havent done that. In theory, it should work fine though as there are other instances of where mediaDirect requires reinstallation for other problems directly related to MD.

Ive used this thread, for the most part, as a means for eliminating all the bulk that Dell packages with your system.

In the case of this installation, one would do a backup of the newly created Vista environment or, very least, utilize system restore if they are not fluent with the importance of backups.

 

The restore to factory will no longer work once you repartition your HD.......the extra partitions that Dell installed in the factory will get wiped out.....

 

i think this is true. The 10gb restore partition has disappeared after I repartitioned the HDD using the mediadirect CD.

 

Hey Flamenko I am going to do the clean install of the os but I wanted to use Vista Ultimate version that I have (my dell came with Premium) will I run into any issues using that os when doing the install or is the prcedure the same?

 

Nope...I use ultimate and did when I made this.

 

Thanks for the info, it might come in useful someday, if Dell ever gets around to building my farking machine.

 

Good luck...it will come sooner or later.

 

So if i do the clean install, the 30 day trial anti-virus will be removed?
How can i get back all the bloatware, not saying i would want it back, just curious.

 

If you wanted to do a clean install but don't want the dell factory image removed, make sure not to delete the D: partition as it contains the image. it is around 10GB.

The clean installation removes everything, even your dvd decoder and cd/dvd burning software. make sure to have all the cds when attempting to do a clean install.

 

So how many partitions are there when i first get it?
And whats in the partitions

 

In relation to partition, after doing a clean install, do yous just have one partition, or create another one for backup.

 

You should have four partitions, but only two are user accessible in windows. the C: drive which contains the OS (also the partition that contains bloatware), and the D: drive (also known as the recovery partition which contains the image restore). the other two partitions are the media direct partition and the diagnostics partition. when doing a clean install, it is suggested to reformat just the C: partition only.

 

Hey,

Excellent guide ... thanks for putting together.

A stupid question though ... why not just reinstall vista using the vista disk in the o/s partition? - i.e. Install it in the C partition; leave MD partition and recovery partition intact. Then install MD software in Windows, etc. as well as drivers, yada. Surely that will remove all the bloatware and leave you with fresh windows but without losing the recovery partition.

Or am i missing something here?

 

You could do That I believe...but if you ever restored...the bloats back.

 

Very good thread. Repped Flamenko

 

Used this guide last night on my new 1520. Worked well. Had to go to Dell's site for the video drivers. Thanks for taking the time to write out the directions

 

Good point flamenko ... i'm obviously also forgetting about the 10 gigs down the drain so starting afresh is likely the best way to go!

Out of interest you mentioned reinstalling a number of times - which of the Dell drivers, utilities etc. did you put back in for optimum performance?

I'm a bit of a newbie to all this reinstalling stuff and don't want to screw up my 1330 --- took way too long and too much money to mess it up!

Thx.

 

I put all the original ones from the disk back in and then there were one or two from the site...roxio I think.

Its all new so there arent any real updates that wont be picked up when windows updates again in any case...

 

Thanks flamenko ... i'm going to give this a shot in the morning when i'm somewhat more awake ... wouldn't want to sleepily make a mess of it!

 

This guide is excellent

Does anyone know if you have to install the following drivers because I get a tick by them on the driver CD:

Intel Matrix Storage Manager A01
Intel Matrix Storage Manager A02
Intel Turbo Memory

I don't really have a clue what they are. Also Intel Matrix Storage Manager A02 I think doesn't seem to run as an install, do you have manually install it for a device in the hardware manager?

Thanks

 

No you dont have to install those. To know whether you require something, go to devices and se if there is a yelow triangle/exclamation there still....If its all clear, you are good to go.

 

Thanks flamenko

 

Flamenko, is there a particular order you install the drivers or does anything go?

 

I install all my drivers from the disk and dont restart my computer until Im finished with them all. There is no order. It takes alot longer if you restart after every driver installation.

 

I'm about to do a install of XP/Vista clean install (duel boot) From what I have read MediaDirect direct might be a problem. Partition wise. I want to keep MediaDirect intact.

I have done some searches on the subject. I know I read info on this somewhere but atm nothing is coming up for me. Sorry for leading off topic a little.

So lets see if I have this right:

Delete Partitions - Format
Install MediaDirect - 1 partition
Install Vista - 2 Partitions
Install XP - 1 Partition

This is the 4 partition limit correct?