Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide

That is the correct way to do it and there is a great guide on the net for this. The extra partition in Vista is for data. I ran this on my m1210 for about 2 months and it worked great. You need to find the guide and another program I seem to recall being named mbrfix.com. It straightens out your master boot record so everything is smooth on selection.

 

Noob question of the day...

How do you know if you have Mediadirect?
-I don't have my notebook yet by the way.

 

There is a button on the outside of the computer that enables you to start and use mediaDirect without using the entire operating system

 

Thanks again! for pointing me in the right dir , I will look up that program and do some more research.

 

Why this doesn't have a sticky I have no clue

 

This question has probably been answered before... what contains in the mediadirect CD?

 

"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"


What do you mean 'no choice but to go with 3'? Isnt it 2 partitions?
1 - Vista Partition
1 - MediaDirect Partition

 

thank you so much. i just followed your directions and the reinstall was a snapped

 

With my system, it suggested and tried to force me into two vista partitions, one for Vista files. It is when you elect to size your own partitions.

Again, I went to option 1. which is to allocate all to only one partition but, initially it wouldnt let me.

It eventually did but was a bit contankerous.

 

I started the vista install. The only problem I am having right now is that its taking a very long time at the "Completing Installation" phase. 20min now. (first time installing Vista) Is this normal?


Edit: It looks like this is common. Nothing you can do but wait it out.

 

Has it completed yet??? It should take a bit but since its 11 now...thats a bit long..

 

Ya I restarted it. Trying again.

Expanding Files 8% atm

 

I did 2 things differently the last time, and it WORKED!

1. Manually installed my Sata drivers. After reading about Vista Stalling at the "Completing Installation" phase from Vista specific forums.

2. I selected option 1 in media Direct to use all available free space for C:.

My conclusion... it was the dead pixel I have on my screens fault or user error, shhh.
No bloatware for me.

 

hey i received my latop today. im using it atm. Not quite confident to reformat, flamenko, can u go thru the steps again with me... the part where i delete a partition and add a partition.. confuses me

 

The easy way for me to go through it again is just to read it again lol.

But... when you first boot the MD3.3 disk, it will explain that you are deleting all partitions. Dont worry. it will walk you through putting everything back together. In the end you will have a new masterb boot record (which you wont see), 2Gb or 3 for Mediadirect and your Vista drive. You can make smaller partitions if you want to (ie Vista = c: data = d

 

Like which partitions should i Remove and which ones shouldn't i remove.

 

When you get the laptop, doesn't it come with 3 partitions? OS, Recovery, Media Direct. Therefore, why not just put in the vista disc and reformat only the OS partition? Also, has it been proven that recovery won't work if you do this the way you described?

 

Unless I can do this and have both the recovery and media direct work flawlessly, I'm not gonna risk it.

 

ok. il reformat it tomorrow. shouldnt be that hard.

 

Its simple... and bmnotpls...the purpose of doing things this way is to get rid of the restore partition. We want as much space, clean non-bloated space, as we can get.

 

maybe i shudnt reformat. im pretty happy with what dell gave, besides d google stuff which i removed. What other bloated space?

 

I would rather have a recovery partition in case something happens than some extra space i'll probably never fill up.

 

yeah true... iv got a 500gb external anyway.. will ust be using ths laptop for uni.. and a few games

 

well I reinstalled today, I tried installing vista ulitmate (home premium came with my system) it went through the install but then all it did was flash a blue screen that there was no way I could read and kept rebooting so I went back to home premium and the install went good, I just had to get the fingerprint utility off the dell website but all went good, thanks flamenko

 

hey flamenko.. what type of bloatware was removed after reformatting.
Didnt it all come back after installing all the Dell cds and downloads?

 

I thought all went well with the fresh install but I don't have any sound in windows, I do have sound if I boot right into media direct but not once I am in windows with anything, I have reloaded the drivers, is there something I am missing?

 

did you install the sigmatel audio driver off the disk/dell site? i know when i reformatted the audio driver was not checked

 

wat differnce did the fresh install make? faster boot-up?

 

Mr. Chiew...

You have to read the thread. i was going to respond to the last question then realized it had been installed earlier and likewise with this one. Im not trying to be grumpy and am trying to help you.

It seems that you really dont want to do the install. if thats the case don't and be happy. The clean format is pretty much only for those of us who want the perfectly set up system with no garbage on it such as time limited offers and dell registry settings and so on.

It is a simple process if you follow the instructions. Good luck.

 

ok, sorry for being a pain in the head.
thanks for the help.

 

Thanks Raven I thought that I had installed the drivers off the disk and when that didn't work I downloaded it off the dell website but it wouldn't install, so I tried again with the disk and it installed and worked so thanks

 

So, any way to do this without losing recovery and media direct?

 

The reason you are doing this is to lose recovery (and all the trial programs/registry settings etc) and your MediaDirect is reinstalled as in the procedure.

 

I thought that I would have alot less processes running once I did the fresh install but I was still running about 55 and this was before I put anything of mine on. Is there something that I can get rid of?

 

Feel free to work through and shut unneeded process off...

Start here:

http://www.speedyvista.com/services.html

The how-to on shutting them down and other tweaks are found on the site.

 

Flamenko, thank you very much for posting this very helpful information, and for continuing to answer people's questions.

I have one for you, or whoever wants to answer. Would it be possible to do a clean install of Vista, on its existing partition. That way it is free and clear of the bloatware, and you can build it back up (drivers, software, etc.). After doing that and making sure everything works okay, could you then delete the recovery partition (by right clicking on "Computer" and clicking on "Manage" and then going to "Disk Management"), and "expand" the Vista partition, so that it can now make use of the 10GB formerly allocated for the recovery partition?

This way you would be able to start building from a clean version of Vista, and if anything goes wrong you still have your recovery partition. But if you get everything working just fine, then I think you would be able to delete the recovery partition and expand Vista's partition to make use of it. But perhaps the recovery partition is not next to Vista's, so this wouldn't be possible.

What do you think?

 

Good question and one I havent got an answer to...and thats because I use Vista Ultimate. The first thing I did when I turned my system on was a full disk backup which can only be done with this edition. Its tucked away just incase and if i ever decide to sell.

 

I did a clean install of Vista without deleting the restore partition. How do I access that partition? My remote doesn't work now and I want to just restore it back to how I bought it. Anyone know a way to do so? ctrl + f11 at startup doesn't seem to work.

 

Your remote doesnt work because you havent reinstalled Quikset again either from the drivers disk or Dell site...

As for resetting your system, it will be in the manual you received.

 

Thanks for the quick response. I installed Quick Set but it's still not working. Maybe I have to restart..As for the manual, it says to press ctrl+f11 at startup, but that combination doesn't seem to work.

Edit: Still not working, after a restart.

 

We had discussion earlier as to whether system restore would work if one reinstalled just windows and nobody could answer that as they hadnt tried it.

It may be necessary now to do a complete reinstall of the software which is the preferred method in any case. My instructions are below.

 

Google "dsrfix" and try following the directions to repair the ctrl+F11 startup feature....

 

Thanks for the help. I followed the instructions in a youtube video that I saw in someone's sig..I'll try to figure it out.

 

Nevermind.... Apparently, systems that were sold with Vista pre-installed do not have the ctrl+F11 function (only XP)

 

Yea, I used that on my 700m, but it doesn't work for Vista.

 

You can only restore from inside Vista by running the pcrestore utility on the recovery partition.... Oh, well!

 

Flamenko, is it your experience that Vista Ultimate runs more processes/uses more system resources than Vista Premium? I have a Vista Ultimate that I want to install whenever I receive my m1330, but am worried that it will be more of a hog than Vista Premium is.

 

Not at all.... In fact, my full Vista Ultimate installation with all the extras is only about 8-9Gb.

My system, right now, is fast as heck and, for the most part, it was because I took the time to shut down unnecessary processes and tweak the heck out of it.

My advise as you have a similar system is to upgrade your Vista Premium to ultimate as it stands. When you do this, your system recovery ability remains intact.

From there, run a complete system backup of your computer with Ultimate; save it all to DVD as I did.

Now, if all else fails you can restore those disks and then hit system restore to return your computer to how you first got it with Vista Premium and the bloatware.

In any case, now I would follow my clean install procedure below. You will see a marked increase in startup speed right away. After that take the time to tweak and reduce resources.

There is one more benefit for you here. You can run bacups from Ultimate regularly and completely shut off system restore. This will free up a great deal of resources, a great deal of disk activity and a great deal of space.

Many dont realize that every time you make a change or add a program or anything small (ie delete a file), system restore hogs background activity while it is creating another restore copy. This increases required storage space as well as RAM whenever it is active.

You will see there are many that get very frustrated because of background proceses always running; this is the main culprit.

Detailed enuf answer???

EDIT: I have included a picture of my desktop. The background is a shark which continuosly swims around the pool; this because of Ultimate Dreamscape and a free program from Stardock called Object Desktop. Great program with lots of video backgrounds!! At the top is a menu called ObjectDock, again from StarDock and free. This setup right now flies and garnishes alot of attention. Objectdock is very easily configurable and fast as heck when you move the mouse over it.

 

Good tips there. In installing ultimate, would it not be the same if I were to perform the steps in your guide with the Vista Ultimate Disc that I have, and then to create restore discs of that configuration?

 

If your Ultimate disk is the Dell oem version yes. The rsult here, however, is that you wont have that original system restore backed up if you ever decided to go back.

If the Vista version is not Dell, it should still work exactly as I detailed; I havent done it that way however.