Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide

Oh

I would make your secondary partition and create a backup image of your OS partition. That way you can always revert back to a clean install setting if you need to.

After doing that, I installed all my programs, did all the tweaks, and then created a backup image of both partitions (I have it all on an external hard drive).

 

Haha! No worries, I'm one of the rare few who like to sit and hoover up info FIRST before asking away.

Ah right, so plough on with my plan then. Partition off, make image and then tweak away.

Is 8 GB enough? EDIT: No! I'm using 17GB after a clean install anyway! Looks like about 25GB...

Gah, I've got no DVDs left, I'll have to put this on hold until I scrounge one up. OH actually, I'm being an idiot, I can make an image on the big partition and then burn to DVD at my leisure.

 

What I would do

I personally have my OS partition set at 35 GB, but I also have Office 2007 Ultimate installed on it. Those 2 things together total to be 20.4 GB currently, with a few more to be used by SP1 and future updates.

 

reinstalled vista and did all the tweaks for my vostro 1500, thanks op. My only problem is that I can't get my wireless going. under other devices network controller has the question mark to it. i downloaded the 1390 wireless driver is there something else that i am missing. when i go into the dell wireless utility i get the error "the wireless network adapter could not be accessed". the switch is in the on position. i had it on my network before i uninstalled, i know i am missing something, please help. thanks!

 

thanks it worked!

 

Interesting, vista 'drive' sits there at about 19GB full.... I did an Acronis Image and that shows up as 5.34GB. I wonder if it compresses it?

May get some DVD9's, get a 'fresh install' disc and an 'install with steam and ableton and fave programs' disc.

 

Excellent to hear.

 

Hi

One final thing...

Do you need to install the Intel Matrix at the end even if you use the Dell OS disk?

Ta

 

Second time I've tried now.

I follow the steps, and when windows boots up, I insert the dell media direct CD. Nothing happens. So I open it manually, open the dell kit folder and attempt to execute the dell kit program.

It takes FOREVER to load, and then comes up with an Error message stating "Data Cyclic error, D: something something"

 

That might occur if the original installation of MediaDirect was not completed.

Can you confirm that you followed the steps by initially creating the partitions through the Mediadirect disk first, then reboot and install Vista, and only then put the mediadirect disk back in and find and execute dellkit?

 

I can confirm these exact steps:

Insert Dell Media CD
f12 - Boot DVD
Option 1: Allocate all available space to the C: Partition
Partition Completes, and it tells me to switch CD's.
I do so as promptly as I can for a man that is working at 4 am with a 7 week old puppy in his lap. I can't imagine going faster will help, but illl see if I can pawn puppy onto sleeping partner.
Windows installs fine.
Windows boots up and I have the issue I described.

 

How about the AHCI driver at the point of allocating the partition?

 

Didn't know I needed that, thought it had to do with people running 2 hard drives. If it's that I'll kick myself, because I had thought about that, but in my stupor was to puppy distracted to try.

NOTE TO EVERYONE: 7 week year old PUPPIES MAKE TERRIBLE CLEAN INSTALLATION BUDDIES.

For your Sanity's sake Les, I'm running on a 1530, 1 200 GB hard drive.

 

LMAO! Im laughing so hard its incredible!

K...

Go to Intel, download the latest AHCI driver and install it to a flash usb drive.

Start the installation and when you get to the 'select partition' page, insert the usb, and select 'Install Drivers' bottom left.

Direct it to the file on the usb that says AHCI on it; there will be two.

Accept and continue the installation.

eheheheheh ooohooohooohooh aaahaahaaahahahhhah eheheheheh

 

I wish I could now say that puppy ate my USB key, but I can't, cause the truth is I lost it. My flat mate however does have a external hard drive. Will steel that ASAP.

EDIT:

Maybe I downloaded the wrong file, but vista won't recognize the .exe file on the external hard drive in order to install the drivers.

Ok I get now, that I have to extract the files from the .exe file.

Problem is, it says this computer doesn't meet the minimum requirements?

 

You download it and expand the executable onto the USB. It will create 2 directories, one of which is your AHCI driver.

We'lle get there, trust me.

 

Haha, I hope so =)

It won't let me extract anything at all.

I double click the exe, it loads, I go through the jargon screens, it then says I do not meet the system requirements to do this.

I didn't know extracting had a system requirement to be honest.

Its rather silly really.

EDIT:

Much thanks to Les for showing super patience. Problem is half solved (got the driver issue sorted out, It was as USER SHOULDN'T BE DOING THIS AT THIS TIME OF THE MORNING error. Hopefully this resolves the rest, otherwise I'm pawning puppy over to mommy and taking one long nap for the rest of the day.

EDIT 2: If everything works, I promise to post a photo of the little terror, for anyone's curiosity.

EDIT 3: Holy mother of all heck.

It still won't work!

The exact error message is such:

D:\DellKit\Dellkit.exe

Data error (cyclic redundancy check).



I'm going to bed to tackle this later.

 

Ok it's been about 24 hours now...

I've had sleep, and combed through this entire thread (yes, all 77 pages) to make sure I haven't missed anything.

I've inserted the Dell Media CD.
Hit F 12, selected to boot off DVD.
Hit option 1, everything runs fine.
Screen comes up detailing to remove Media CD and insert OS CD. I do so, and strike "any key" to commence the reboot.
Hit F 12 again, select to boot off DVD. Press "any key" very promptly.
Windows does its thing.
Upon being offered to choose my partition for installation, I can visibly see Part C:, Part D: (the 3 GB Media Direct CD).
I plug in my external hard drive, then choose to load the driver. I successfully load the driver on both partitions (I've also just loaded the driver on the C: partition, if anyone thinks this would be the issue).
I continue with the Vista installation until I am at the point where I am loaded up and free to re insert my Media Direct CD.

This is where it goes wrong, as I've already described.

Browsing the CD takes AGES. I've inserted other CD's and they all open promptly.


When I hit "Dell Kit" the application (the only one I can see worth installing), it as described before, takes a large time to "think". The window itself often goes "Not Responding" at some points, then flips back. I then get the error described in the post above (by myself).

If no one can figure it out from here, I'll assume I'm just unlucky and have a bad Media Direct CD.

Sucks if I do, because the OCD in me won't be happy installing everything but MD, and then having to do it over when Dell finally sends me a proper CD =(.

I'm a sad panda right now.

 

You only install the driver before you select the partition to install the os to. I don't recall having the choice where to install it to only, to install it once it has been found on the external medium.

You are doing everything correctly; I just don't know what is wrong. Can you give me your system exact specs and MediaDirect version as well as Vista version?

EDIT: In your third step when you hit option one, is there an opportunity to install drivers there, while the mediaDirect DVD is still in intitially?

 

System Specs:

Windows Vista Home Premium 32 Bit
2.4 GHZ T7700
200 GB 7200 RPM DRIVE
2 GB Mem
Nvidea 8600 GT 256 DDR3

Dell MediaDirect 3.5

For the last question, I'll take a look now and get back to you in 30 seconds.

Definitly no, only can allocate all available space, or specify.

EDIT: After checking to see, I now can't boot into Vista. I swear I did not reformat. It just says NTLDR missing press any key to restart. Which it doesnt do.

Looks like I need to restart from scratch now anyway. So just waiting on any ideas before going ahead.

 

When reinstalling Vista what's better:

the Recommended installation or

just the Important files???

 

If you have to ask, most probably you should go with the recommended installation.

 

I just wanna know what the differences are.

Basically, will using the recommended installation slow down or have unnecessary processes going on in the background?

 

Sorry, I would advise recommended.

 

Why, just cause you think I don't really know what I am doing?

 

No....because its the safest. I KNOW what I'm doing and I still go with the recommended installation. By the time you follow my tweaking thread, you will have it tuned and around 9Gb in size in any case. Oh...and it will fly...

 

Haha ok thank you. All I wanted was some kind of an explanation.

 

Might be a dumb question.. but after downloading and installing some drivers off of Dell.com, they show up on the desktop. Do I have to keep them there? Or can I delete them after they're installed?

Thanks

 

Gfresh404, the driver files that you download typically start with an 'R' and then a bunch of numbers. After you install the driver, you don't need the original installer anymore. You can safely delete the original installer as well as the extracted folder that usually goes to C:\dell\drivers.

 

After the drivers are installed, you can delete them. In fact, if you look in c:\dell\ you will find a drivers folder that contains all the installed driver packages unpacked. Delete them. Don't delete the MediaDirect files though.

 

Ok, I thought I was all set. I was connecting to my cell phone using bluetooth and all of a sudden I got the blue screen of death. I restarted and now I'm fine or at least I think I am. Is there any explanation as to why I would get this.

Also, could it be because my laptop has been on for about 36 hours?

 

No...I cannot guess at that. Can I ask...did you follow the tweaking thread?

 

No not really. I think the only thing I did was stop my hard drive from indexing files.

 

Everything was going great, all drivers installed and super quick, until I connected to the internet...

I had chosen to automatically install updates so when I connected the first thing I tried to do was download and install antivirus. It didn't like trying to update both windows and install antivirus at the same time and died.

Do people here switch off automatic updates to start with? It also said it had found a solution to my "problems" of not finding Wifi drivers etc, even though I installed the Dell ones.

 

Everything has to be done 1 piece at a time. I am going to guess that you may have installed some drivers, failed to restart as they required and then jumped into internet downloads.

Is this possible?

 

All the drivers had been installed and restarted. I think the problem was that I wanted to install antivirus, but Windows wanted to install updates and the 2 didn't mix.

I just wondered if you went for recommended auto update option or wait for updates to install before doing anti virus.

I think the "problems" vista tries to solve are form when it first installs and doesn't ahve the right drivers on the Vista CD

 

Thats what I do...OS/Driver/Update/AVG Antivirus

 

Noob question - I am just about to re-install vista home premium to get rid of all the dell bloatware.

I dont want dual boot with xp, and I dont want mediadirect.

Looking at the computer, I have 2 partitions in my computer. C, and D-recovery.

What software would be best to back up C and D partitions simultaneously onto DVD's ? Acronis, ghost ? I have access to both of these.

Afterwards, how do I delete all the partitions ? Any that I should NOT delete ?

R

Mehul

 

Acronis will do a complete backup.

 

Afterwards, how do I delete all the partitions ? Any that I should NOT delete ?

 

hey
i have done so at fifth day that i bought my laptop now im f... up becouse these dell f...ers were updated all my hardware's and im totaly f....up with this sigmatel sound card at first i could add my headphones to playback devices but now i cant do anyone have any idea what to do ?

 

Well i've just started this clean install process on an m1330 thats soon to be going back to dell and after re-installing media direct, I got to where you have to select what partition to install windows on. I deleted the 15GB recovery partition and the windows partition but it won't let me merge them into one big partition, even though both state they are 'free unallocated space'.

The only difference is what was the recovery partition has 'extended' after it.

Any idea how I can make just one big partition of these two?

 

Thanks OP.. I got my Vostro 1500 (2.2 gHz, 256 Nvdia video, 4 gb RAM, 120 gb harddrive, WSXGA, Intel Pro wireless, 9 cell, Vista Home Premium) on Monday (3/3/08)...

I happened to run into this site yesterday morning and read your post and other posts for about an hour. Wenthome and implemented on my new Vista.

Everything went well... although it did not load few things like my Nvidia video driver, intel pro driver, Dell quickset and some...I went to dell support and loaded them all.. I upgraded BIOS to A05.

Thanks much... Now I will start working on the TWEAKS (Your vista tips guide).

I have a question though: The laptop out of the box had very nice look and feel.. I mean the visual appearance once the windows came on was very appealing; bright with beautiful fonts...
I don't get that appeal after the clean install; understandably I removed bloatware and so did the settings it came with...
Any idea what the default setting would have been? when Dell shipped them out?

Thanks again.
-Sam

 

Hi goitsme48, welcome to NBR. Most probably Vista has defaulted to a vista basic theme. Right-click the desktop, click personalize. Then click on Windows Color and Appearance. At the bottom, click Open Classic Appearance Properties for more color options. In the new window, Select Windows Aero, Apply, and click ok. It should change to the better graphics you saw before.

 

darthsat, Thank You. I will implement it tonight.
Also, forgot to mention in my earlier post. This process installed everything on C drive... and the other drive I have is the CD/DVD drive (drive D). I selected option 1.
Is that OK.. I read few posts where people were installing media direct on different drive, etc... Thanks!!

 

I posted this on another thread but have not received much response so I was just wondering if anyone of you guys who did a clean install experience any BSOD's when using Dell Media Direct from start up i.e. when the laptop is powered off.

 

Alright, so I followed Les's guide for reformatting last night, and everything is working great! Very easy to follow! I do have one quick question. When I was choosing my partition options, I chose option 1 (where it implies that it will make a 3gb partition for Media Direct, and the rest will be allocated to the C: drive) Well I did this, and upon Vista's installation it looked as though there is 2 partitions, but once the installation is complete, there is only one partition, and no 3gb partition. Upon closer inspection it looks as though the partition is there, but it is included in the C: drive and is not accessible. Everything is working perfectly, and Media Direct still works. I actually tried this twice last night with the same results both times. I tried once using the second partitioning option and I ended up with 3 partitions. Just wondering if this is normal?

 

Check this out Leo:
http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/

It's a partitioning utility, should solve your problem.

 

Thanks OP This is a great thread and now my 1525 is now bloat free and my Aero score back to 3.5. I will Image the Drive on a removable and all is good. Will have to reinstall roxio later and then I am done.

 

Jeremy79, I did the exact same thing and have everything on my C drive... which is OK.. would like to know how much drive space you saved... from what I can see it saved me just a bit... probably took out all the bloatware.
BTW, I have Vostro 1500 with 120 gb.. out of the box it had 90 gb free and after clean re-install, I have 92 gb.