Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide

Using my new dell now, will prob do this procedure tomorrow at work, how long does the typical vista install take? same as xp?

 

Give yourself about 3 hours for everything including driver installations.

 

kool thanks.

 

I just received my new M1330 the other day & I have already completed the Vista ultimate completePCbackup & I have just done the complete clean & reinstall.

Many thanks to the starter of this thread, as you mentioned following the steps word for word you shouldnt have any problems, so I did this & it has worked perfectly thus far, I have only really finished doing the whole cycle about 2 hrs ago.

So for a complete noob & I mean complete noob it worked a treat

I only have 2 small questions though & trust me I have just about read this whole thread word for word as you could say I like to research things before I do them;

How do I know that I have downloaded all of the correct drivers. I did as you said I went through using all that were checked & then I went through a second time trying to remember all that were there before & with a little help from this thread I have installed some others, but how do I really know if I have them all??

Also, if I have the soundblaster audiology thingy, do I need to install the Sigmatel audio driver?

Thanks & sorry for the extra long post.

 

As for the drivers, go to control panel/system device (I think but am at work on an XP (yuk) system) and check there. It will have a tree of all your hardware devices. If any have a triangle with yellow exclamation, that is a hardware item that doesnt have a driver or the driver is not working correctly.

If your smart, you can go right into that and ask it to seek out the driver itself from the net...works sometimes.

Soundblaster Audigy....lol. Yes, install the Sigmatel driver... Actually wait... you can still install that again as you are still 32 bit but you may need the sigmatel first.

Oh...dont forget to follow the tweaking thread (in my sig block) next!

 

Thanks for the Help Les, I appreciate it from a total total noobs point of view !!

Will give that a go & check the drivers.

I have now installed the sigmatel driver but havent bothered with the SB yet.

Already onto the tweaking now , just taking my time.

Cheers

 

Sorry in advance for the newb questions:

1). After installing all the drivers off the CD they still aren't ticked (as in only 3 or 4 of ~15 are ticked). Is something wrong with this process? Should they all be ticked?

2). I can't get the wireless network card on the XPS 1530 to be detected no matter how many times I reinstall the driver. The network card did work before I did the clean reinstall. What can I do about this?

 

Nevermind, it's sorted. Apparently I needed to install the items with a tick - I assumed the tick ment they were already done.

Sorry about that.

 

Hey guys, is it normal for the Dell screen to keep popping up with the load bar during this process? It's been doing this over an hour, the dell screen will show then the white load bar with fill up. I'm currently installing Vista or trying to.

**Update**
No that wasn't supposed to happen, I chatted with a Dell Tech who was cool and nice and he helped me out and we got it take care of.

 

you thought the rig was fast??? wait till you clean out all the bloat and run thru the tweaking thread....then she will fly!!! boot up like a light switch baby!!!

 

okay.. I started reading this guide on Page 1 and found it very helpful...

...till I realized I had over 100 more pages to go.

So, I'm sorry, but I just cannot read all 100 pages, but are the steps laid out by Les on page one still valid and/or currently edited?

Or somewhere in the 100 pages was there an amended version written by Les or others?

Thanks in advance,

Evan

edit: ahhhhhh nevemind, I see the original post was in 2007, yet the bottom says: " Last edited by Les : 02-11-2008 at 03:23 PM."

Guess that's my answer.

Can I rep myself for answering my own request?

 

The guide is current. You only need page 1 but...I think I will make a mention of that on that page. Tx.

 

Stupid question: After doing the clean install is there any way to recover the little extra bits that come with the Product Red laptops?

 

question.

I ordered a lappy with 1gb ram installed and plan on adding 2X2gb from newegg.

At what point should I add it? Before doing the steps on p1 or afterwards?

thanks in advance

Evan

 

Add it at the start. It shouldn't really matter but it will make the install process faster.

 

question: There is a 8400 nVidia driver available on the disk, but not an 8600.. I have an 8600... do I install the 8400 or can i find the 8600 somewhere?

 

Tendril...only from Dell.com in the drivers area.

runboxrun, There will be a driver in the dell.com drivers section or, better yet, try www.laptopvideo2go.com.

 

thx a million Les. you helped me out so much. i also had the RED edition and found this guide to be EXTREMELY straight forward and useful.

 

Thanks, mate. I found the drivers. Thread was a fantastic help. +rep left.

I'm on to the tweaking guide now.

 

Should I at least boot the computer up once first as-is, in case something obvious is wrong and I have to return it?

I heard if I upgrade RAM myself, it voids warranty - does it mean I can't return it, too? Or if there is something wrong, so long as I put original RAM back before returning, nobody knows nuthin?

 

Yeah, fire it up first and make sure the stock RAM works.

If there's no problem then replace the RAM and do the clean install. It doesn't void the warrenty because if there's any issues you just put the stock RAM back into the machine before the Tech shows up.

 

wow... thanks for the fast reply.

I guess I'm all set, only thing left to do is strip down, don my loincloth, paint my face with ox-blood and start my ancient Native American Ship-The-Damned-Thing-Already dance.

 

nah - just keep your restore disc's close by!

 

lol....

Just completed a set of restore disks. I am switching my OS to another ssd and then taking the jump. I am going to try SP1...and even I am not to sure of this.

Wish me luck...

 

Ha...GOOD LUCK LES!!!!!!!



P.S. I did the x64 AND SP1 upgrade in one session, and I am very happy with the results.

 

Done.... So far I have notced that the internet seems to be a bit faster but Ive only had it up for about 20 minutes now.

Before this, I encountered a problem I cannot figure out which I brought up here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3165733#post3165733

For some reason, on Ultimate, I cannot get my complete PC backups to restore. I went to switch disks and when I try and restore a disk set, it says the backup set cannot be found in the catalog...

This really disturbs me as I wholeheartedly have made copies of my system as I continued to build...now I cant use complete pc backup.

I heard somewhere that backups may rely on shadow copies and the system restore partition/pagefile which I have all shut down and eliminated.

I had no problem prior and after completing all my tweaking though so...why now?

 

If having bloatware on separate partitions can adversely affect performance, will having another OS on another partition also be bad for your Vista performance?

 

I would say only if Vista can see the other OS partition would it possibly have an adverse effect. That is pretty much because Vista might try to index it.

 

Sorry to be a pain, but how would you know if Vista can see it?

 

Is the partition hidden or readable? Vista can't really understand a mac and some linux partitions. Thus it can not read/access it.

I can't think of the name off the top of my head right now but Symantec bought the company that I am thinking of. At any rate they had a boot loader that would automatically hide/unhide partitions based on criteria you choose when you select the partition to boot from their boot menu.

For example I could have linux and windows on the same machine and when I pick the windows OS boot the boot manager was configured to set the linux partition to hidden. I I would not hide windows from linux. It could read the NTFS partition but not write to it.

 

I have looked through here - but maybe not COMPLETELY - Les, will MediaDirect install on Ultimate 64-bit? I just followed the "system", but used my 64-bit Vista disc instead of the Dell provided one - but MD would not complete. I also seem to be having problems finding the Intel Wireless-N card too.

Can I install MD w/o reinstalling everything again?

 

It should work as i have seen others use it without problem in the past. As far as the card, you may have to find the driver...said it before...have drivers already downloaded and ready to go.

 

I guess I was not clear - I am not even seeing the Intel card in sevices - I did dl the driver beforehand but the card is not even showing up in network adapters. I have four "yellow triangles" - three say "Base Controllers" and one is "Network Controller". If figured the last was the Intel card but it will not recognize the driver to update. I'll try to force it.

Can one go back an reinstall MD by itself - or does it have to reformat the whole drive?

 

If one was planning on doing a Vista 64-bit install, would you still do this method of reformatting and then do the fresh install of Vista 64-bit after all the partition and bloatware mess had been sorted out?

 

I have an m1330 on the way and will definently be using this guide when it arrives Since it will have 4 gig of ram I am considering the 64 bit upgrade. However since i just paid for a 32 bit edition of vista ultimate through dell, am I goting to have to shell out another couple hundred to have a 64 bit edition of ultimate?

 

No, I just bought 32-bit from Dell and upgraded legally to 64-bit with the license code on the bottom of my computer. Now, getting the 64-bit disc might be a little bit of a challenge - but there are ways to do this if you search around.

 

Finally got the Intel WiFi card working - took a bit, had to load, uninstall and then reinstall the driver. Not sure if my resolution is the same as it was pre-clean. I installed the nVidia 169.09 driver - might try 169.12 next. The fonts look slightly smaller.

Got MD re-installed too.

 

BTW - thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread - I read through just about all of it. Followed the instructions - but had to start over twice at thr 4,5,6 part cause I did not "press any key" fast enough! But as Les said originally, it was easy just to start over. And as many of you consider the move to 64-bit, just take some time and find your drivers and all should be ok. As I said above, I had a few bumps last night but all is running well this morning.

 

is this process really worth it? can't i just delete the bloatware manually?

 

That's a personal decision - but you will never get it all off manually. It probably takes less time to do a complete reinstall than trying to find all of the bloatware and associated files!

 

As someone who did remove the bloatware first and do a complete reinstall later I can tell you that it is a significantly longer amount of time to re-install the OS Drivers and your app than remove the bloatware.

The problem is you really have to know what you are doing to remove everything.

In the end, I would up with a little more space than I did before re-installing.

It is much easier to be sure how clean your install is by doing the clean install than searching the registry and file system.

 

I don't understand how "you have to know what your doing to remove everything"...or maybe I am reading this wrong.

Simply reinstall the MediaDirect, the OS and then drivers.

Many have come back very very happy with this thread.

Is it possible you never followed something?

EIT: And I would NEVER recommend the computer novice, much less educated, go hunting through the registry file. There have been tons of isasters through that method. It takes much much longer to do that in any case.

 

Les,

You missed something I think. I was stating that you really have to know what your doing to remove the bloatware vs clean install. My last sentance even advocates the clean install as the sure fire method over removal.

I was responding to redyukon a couple posts up.

 

Oh sorry...been a long day.

 

I would like to hear just how faster systems are after format and reinstall. Boot times / inprovements. Encoding time faster? Photoshop loading faster?

I have a brand new Vostro 1500 on its way and will be here tomorrow.


Thanks Les

 

Yesh! Now I've finished this and everything worked like a charm and my computer is clean and fresh!

Thanks for all info/help here

 

No, I read it the same as you did! Or maybe it was a long day for me too!

 

I guess I need to work on my sentance conjugation more...... Subject... object... predicate.... It made sense in my head

 

Hey Les... one more question...


I think I'm all set with the bloatware removal guide and the vitsa tips guide, but do you have any recommendations of what software to get?

I declined all extras from dell (maybe the free trials), but after the bloatware removal, what's your recommendation for: virus-scan, spyware, firewall, MS OneCare, Norton ghost, Google Pack, etc type programs? Free software is ideal, but i would pay if necessary - my main goal is to have all the bases covered in a simple and non-redundant way.

Is this covered somewhere in a guide I may have overlooked?

Is the free stuff offered via the "Google pack" sufficient?

If not, what's the best/simplest next-step for a non-computer professional to do before I start loading MS Excel and Warcraft and just using the thing?

Thanks,

Evan

 

Evan, software is really subjective to your tastes. For example, different people use different AV software and spyware. I use the paid version of ESET Smart Security to cover all 3 security fronts in 1. In the Windows OS forum of this messageboard, there is a security subforum with lists of the top software.