Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide

Hi, i just brought a Dell Vosto 1700. It has Vista Ultimate and media direct 3.5

Now, looking at this guide it looks like a good way of getting rid of the bloatware. McAfee being the biggest problem.

However, i currently have two partitions C: (OS) and D: (Dell Recovery)

If i follow the steps in the first post will i lose the D partition?

Or will i get a third partions for the media direct?

Are there any know major problems with the guide or using it for the Vostro 1700?

 

Is there a difference between the AHCI and Intel Matrix?

 

The intel matrix driver is the Dell (By Intel) AHCI driver

 

Is there a difference in performance? I dont know which I have, I never went into the BIOS to change or check. When I put in my drivers disc during the vista install it only came up w/ the AHCI driver so I just picked that.

 

See-Fu,

What I mean is that the driver is acutally made by intel but provided on Dell's DL site for your device. If you used your computers driver disc then you should have the matrix driver installed. If our concerned go to Dell download site and get the new one and install it. I have tested AHCI and ATA with correct drivers and the performance difference is truly negligible. However, if you have AHCI on and the wrong or default driver then the performance will be in the toilet.

Check your Device Manager and look under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. You should find Intel (R) .... SATA AHCI Controller. Double click on it and click on the drivers tab and you will see who made the driver and its date.

 

Is there no one here who can help me with my problem on the previous page?

 

Lazy,

If you look at the disk management under computer managemer where is the 20GB tha tyou can't get at? is it after the windows partition or after the media direct one (from left to right) ?

If it is after the Vista partition then you can try to expand the volume with disk management to have your vista partition grow in to that space.

 

I just tried the bloatware removal guide on my new dell Vostro 1700.

Everything went find until i reinstalled windows vista ultimate. during the installation process and after the first reboot the installation seems to hang.

It says 'Completing the installation' although it seems to be working '...' gradually appear indicating it is still working. It has been on this process for 45 minutes with no change in the installation progress bar at the bottom of the screen.

Does anyone have any idea what is causing this and how i can fix it?

 

well, i appear to have sorted the problem out myself, i had to install the AHCI driver during the installation.

May i suggest this problem and solution be added to the first post.

 

I think about 4 or 5 pages into this thread the issue was discussed. THat's how I found the solution.

 

Im going to fix this up in a day or two...in the thread.

 

I just thought that even a link to the relevant page might be helpful, It's a very daunting problem that is so easily fixed.

I found the answer on page 109 in one of les's posts, i read to abut page 20 last night before i attempted this, i didn't think this would apply to me, so i basically ignored it...silly mistake.

Anyway, it's a great guide once i got past that little hiccup, i now have a nice clean(er) windows vista running on my laptop and i am very grateful.

 

Hello,

I just got an Inspiron 1525, and it came with MediaDirect 3.5 software. Since the first thing I do on pretty much all new computers I get is reformat to remove the bloat, I'd like to do it with the 1525. This has probably been asked a bunch of times already, but do I need a Vista DVD to do this?

The system came with an operating system DVD. It says "Already installed on your computer" "reinstallation DVD" "Windows Vista Home Premium 32BIT". Is this just a stock Vista Home Premium OEM DVD?

 

Yes thats the disk...

 

Thanks Les. So when I boot off the Media Direct disc, and get to the partition options, I want Vista on the C:\ partition, then I want all my documents on the D:\ partition. Would it advisable to go with option 2 and say allocate 30 GB for Vista, then the remaining space would go to my documents, etc.?

edit: I got the partitioning sorted out and installed Vista. I got Media Direct installed, then I installed most of the drivers from the Driver DVD. There were a few drivers not installed, but after stopping by the Device Manager, I got the graphics adapter driver installed (currently running Aero without any problems), but while in the device manager, I got a BSOD. I'm not sure what it was from. A check in the Event Logs didn't seem to tell me anything about it.

 

Beanboy, if the last driver you installed prior to the BSOD was the video drivers...it may be due to a driver issue from that. If you get another BSOD, then try to install a variant of the Nvidia driver.

 

I have just followed the guide on my new m1530 and it worked a dream - nice one les!

Gonna do it again tho cos i installed Comodo firewall and it keeps coming up with bugs and won't let me install anything!

When I do it this time... I got a few games (COD4 and Crysis) and will prob get more in time. Also got a fair few mp3's and vids. Would it be best to put all these on the same one big Vista partition (ie option 1 when choosing the partitions) or:

- Games on same partition with Vista and mp3's separate?; or
- Vista on it's own, games with mp3's on separate partition?

which would help run Vista and games the smoothest?

And what about all other progs (firewall, anti vir, MS Office, etc.) with Vista or with MP3's, or no diff?

If I'm going to separate them out, what would be the optimal size for the partitions?

I got the 320GB HDD (so no issues with space), 4GB RAM, and the 256MB 8600M nNvida card.

(By the by: was going to use the free version of Zone Alarm instead of Comodo. What do you guys reckon works most flexibly for online gaming and surfing? and is it worth getting the full commercial ZA Pro?)

 

POST FIXED!!!! I have now completed the AHCI process right in the thread. Apologies for not having done this originally.

stjric:

The free version of AVG from www.download.com is a great free antivirus which updates almost daily, uses little resources and is very user friendly.

As for thepartitions, with a HD that size I would move it to two partitions leaving my OS on one and everything on the other...just a personal pref.

4Gb Ram...Go x64!!!

As for running Vista the smoothest...check out my tweaking thread below.

 

I have finally mustered the courage and installed the 'anytime upgrade' to Ultimate disc, doing a "non-destructive" clean install. After alot of driver searches and installs, a few restarts, etc...it seems to work well. I did not go the full distance and undo the restore partition...yet. I may do it again and see how that goes.

I have a question. Since I did not do a true clean install (or did I?), where did my Dell Media Direct go? It is not in the programs list, and the button does nothing when pressed, except light up shortly. Have I screwed up something? I hope I do not have to start over. If I put in the MediaDirect disk, it says all settings will be lost. Is that wiping the whole harddrive, or just the MediaDirect part? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Randy / Painthouse

 

This is the give and take of doing it by just deleting and reinstalln the OS and not the entire drive.

For mediaDirect to work, you must start the new installation with the mediadirect disk and then complete the reinstallation once Vista is installed.

You have, in turn, deleted the required mediadirect information from the C: drive.

You could install the disk ad run DellKit and hopr for the best but many have not had success this way.

 

I wanted to upgrade my Vista Home Premium to Ultimate without having to lose all my partitions. But many posts say this is not possible.

So I followed Les' advice to do a backup of my hard drive first using acronis before doing the clean reinstall.

I was playing around inside acronis and did a system clean-up (clean your windows activity trace). I clicked scan which I thought will give a list of items I want to delete so I can choose. But I think it went ahead and destroyed my registry etc.

After restarting my notebook, I got a missing operating system error.

So I popped in my Vista Ultimate DVD and did a repair instead of an install.

I managed to get back into Vista Home Premium, but it asks for my CD key. I put in my Home Premium CD Key. It accepts this but asks me to activate. I can't get on the internet because my modem settings are gone. So, I can't get into windows.

After several tries, I gave up and decided to reinstall Vista Ultimate. I thought I might as well try to install Ultimate over the Home Premium without doing anything to the other partitions. If media direct doesn't work, then I will follow Les' guide from post 1.

But to my surprise, after installing Ultimate in the C: partition, and reinstalling all the drivers and media direct (from within Vista), the media direct button works BOTH from within Vista, and while the notebook is off.

 

I went ahead and let Media Direct install from the disk, at the risk of having to start the reinstall process again, and, either you are good, or I am lucky, because it installed and works as it should without any loss of data or the OS. I was mentally prepared to start over, but it seems as though I will not have to. Now, if I want to get back the amount of space on the recovery partitiion, I will have to start over and reinstall the OS, is that correct? Or, can I delete that partition somehow now and re-alocate the space (10 gig) back to C drive?

Randy / Painthouse

 

Bding,

Depending on the location of the installation partition you might be able to add it. The Disk Management tool in computer management can extend the OS partition depending on partition types/locations. The OS partition and the space you wish to extend it on need to be contiguous (meaning touching). You will most likely have to delete the recovery partition so it says "RAW" in the Disk Management tool before it will allow you to even try to do this.

This is not for the faint of heart. Make sure of what you click on because once you delete it......

Edit:
I had to test this to be sure what I recalled is correct. The Two partitions need to be contigious and the space you want to add must be AFTER the OS partition. With the Disk Manager you can shrink your partitions and expand them.

 

I'm doing a fresh install of Vista Premium on my Vostro 1700. I went ahead and deleted all partitions.

My question regarding Dell's Media Direct does it really make a difference in performance?

I had to turn of the flash memory and ACHI in my BIOS because the installation would just hang. After I install Windows Vista is it recommended I first install my Intel Storage (ACHI) drivers before Media Direct or the other way around?

 

RodKnee, the Intel Matrix storage driver should be installed after mediadirect partitioning, and just before vista installation begins.

 

Ok thanks. I think i'm just going to run it in ATA mode and disable my turbo boost card. It's not worth all the hassle for a smidgen of performance gain especially when running off a 5400rpm laptop drive.

I'm actually tempted to install Windows XP, god I forgot how much I dislike Vista.

 

Thanks so much for the guide!

I received my 1525 today and it reformatted like a charm!

Since I couldn't get the AHCI driver onto my flashdrive I decided I would try and pop in the Dell Drivers CD and do a scan and voila! it found the driver.

Total time it took was like a half hour.

Thanks again!

 

Rodnee,

Somewhere (I thought in this thread) I posted how to turn on AHCI after installing Vista. Its pretty easy if you don't mind editting the registry.

Look for this entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci

Set the Value for "Start" to 0 (zero).

That tell it to load microsoft's ahci driver at boot time. Now you just reboot and enter the BIOS and re-enable AHCI in the BIOS. Once thats done when Vista loads you can install the Matrix Driver and your good to go.

 

Thanks Sparky but I just installed Windows Vista from the CD without ACHI or Turbo boost and to be honest I can't tell a difference performance wise which sounds about right when it comes to Santa Rosa and Vista.

It really makes very little difference in overall system performance.

 

Very true, performance differences are negligable. I just wanted to give you the option to turn it on. It works like a charm every time!

 

I appreciate that.

But really ACHI and Turbo Boost is just a gimmick in my view. The system runs just as fast without all that stuff enabled. In fact after installing Vista from my CD my WEI score went from 4.7 (factory install) to WEI 4.6 and it's due to the graphics driver. So I hate to say it all this stuff is pretty unnecessary as it has almost no effect on system performance.

 

Rodknee,

First off, your WEI score is the poorest indicator of performance one can find.

AHCI will give your system a 15% performance boost and has been shown in tests all over the internet. If this is negligible, you must have tons of power in my opinion.

Also, unless you have 1Gb ram or less, turbomemory does absolutely nothing to improve performance and may, in some cases, actually slow it.

 

Les,

I don't know about the internet but I evaluate systems from Dell, HP, Gateway and IBM (Lenovo) all the time and one of the things I do is compare them based on benchmark scores. Two months ago we ran our battery of tests on the machines with and without AHCI on. The difference in their scores was truly negligable. Most of the values changes by 10th or hundredth decimal amounts. I would have to dig up the data to get actual numbers but I remember asking the reps what the heck was the point of enabling AHCI over ATA with such a minimal change in performance. The answer was basically to move towards the latest and greatest thing. or.. "The market expects...."

 

And likewise... when I initially started testing ssds and my Seagate HD, I found there was anywhere between a 10-15% increase in hard disk performance with AHCI vice without.

 

That's pretty much how I see it. My system is just as quick without it and I haven't seen anything that makes me say this is a must have feature for Vista. I think when Santa Rosa was first introduced there was much debate about ACHI and Turbo Boost and that it was more to do about gimmick/marketing as Intel wanted to sell the next great feature.

Les I appreciate what you have done for us but sorry mate i'm currently using a T7250 2.0GHZ cpu with 2GB of memory so I don't have world beater equipment but I just don't see any sizable performance difference using or not using ACHI with Turbo Boost.

 

I found this interesting article that pretty much sums up what both me and Sparky were eluding to.

http://www.geek.com/intels-turbo-memory-provides-no-boost/

Intel’s turbo-memory provides no boost

Intel’s most recent Santa Rosa Centrino platform had one interesting feature that many geeks might find desirable. It incorporated an on-board flash memory card, which is supposed to speed up overall system performance, giving it a boost over hard drive space, while simultaneously prolonging battery life.

Anand Lal Shimpi over at Anandtech.com has taken the platform out for a test drive to see if the Turbo Memory concept Intel is touting has any merit to it at all. As it turns out, not only does it not provide any real speed up, but also there are so few applications that use it that it’s actually being attacked by some OEMs. Shimpi finally concludes that this particular Centrino release seems to have been geared only at making sure a new Centrino platform comes out every year, whether it is needed or not.

There is some interesting information in the article, and it’s worth a read if your curious about modern Centrino features such as Turbo Memory. However, when you get into the pages such as Page Four, entitled “Why did things get slower?” you’ll quickly begin to realize that this technology resembles something canard-like.

 

O.k. So I'm a newbie here. I tried a complete reinstall exactly as indicated in the first post. A bit of a jump for me. Not completely illiterate but not a techie either. Everything went well with the exception of adding the ACHI driver prior to Windows installation.

I downloaded the driver from the Intel website onto my flash drive as directed but when I browsed the flash drive , the ACHI driver was not detected although other files I have on it were visible

When you expand the ACHI driver on the medium (ie, flash drive), does it wipe the files on that drive? I'm assuming when you say expand you mean open and install the file onto the drive? (see, I told you I was a newbie!)

I have my files backed up onto the flash drive but I could dump them onto my work laptop if necessary so that ACHI is the only file on the flash drive

Oh, by the way, my system is...

M1330
T7250
13" LCD
2 Gb RAM
200 Gb 7200 RPM SATA HD
Windows Vista Home Premium, 32 Bit

 

YLU FF, when you expand the file that you download from the Intel website, those should just be copied into the flash drive. It will not get rid of your other files. It is ok for there to be other files on the flash drive.

When you downloaded the file off the Intel website, was it the .exe file?

 

Darthsat

The file I downloaded is iata78_enu.exe.

I'm getting confused by the whole "expand" part. So I download the file onto my flash drive (already done), double click it and install it on my flash drive? What is the name of the expanded file (s)?

Must say that the computer seemings to be running great even without AHCI installed although I was pretty impressed even before wiping the system. The extra 13Gb of hard drive was the primary reason for doing a complete reinstall.

As an aside and knowing this issue has been discussed already, is it worth upgrading to 3GB of RAM? I got a bargain price on the system during Dell Canada Days ($1200 + tax) and it was a big jump to upgrade to 3-4 Gb.

I keep a clean system. Installed software will likely only be OOo, Acrobat Reader, AVG Antivir/spyware/rootkit, iTunes, Picassa and a few other smaller programs (CC, Sandboxie)

 

YLU_FF,

Are you downloading from DELL or where? Dell packages usually start with an R and some numbers. If you DL that and run it it should decompress it to your C drive in a folder called DELL look in there for DRIVERS and then the R+numbers name of the package you downloaded. Copy the contents of that folder to your memory stick.

 

Nope, I downloaded the file directly from Intel as per OP.
I'm sure it's the right file, I just need to understand how to expand it so that the files are accessible when I start the reinstall Vista.

 

If you are unable to extract the exe file, try getting the floppy version of the intel AHCI driver that is a .zip file. You can extract the files from that onto a flash drive.

 

YLY FF:

Download the latest version from Intel on the link I provided in the first page. It is an executable.

Start the executable which expands the application to your media. It will do eveything you need.

Install Vista and when you get to the screen that asks what partition to install to, click bottom left on drivers and direct it to your media. It will find the file that says AHCI.

Install and carry on.

This method is foolproof and exactly as i stated page 1...good luck.

 

Thanks. That's exactly what I did with the exception that I didn't expand the .exe file on my zip drive. I think that was the reason I wasn't able to view the expanded files when browsing for it.

Looks like it's round two for reinstalling Vista tonight. Other than that, it was a snap. I'd say boot time is <40 seconds although that's without any software added.

 

Need help Installing Dual Boot (XP/Vista) with MediaDirect 3.5.
My system:
Vostro 1400, T9300, 2.5GHz, 800Mhz, 6M L2 Cache
4GB DDR2 667MHz, GeForce 8400M GS
120G 5400RPM SATA, 1395 802.11g, integrated WC.

My system came with Vista. I tried to get it dual boot (XP/Vista) and failed. The system I have as of now:
Dell utility partition
C:\ (blank partition)
D:\ (XP partition)
MediaDirect (which doesn't work any more)

Can someone please help me getting dual boot (XP/Vista) and MediaDirect on?
Thanks very much

 

I followed the instructions and everything went perfect. Thanks to all who contributed to this thread....
My question is too anyone with an inspiron 1720 do you have a drivers disc labled resoures cd....I did not and had to download some of my drivers from online...Just wondering if I was missing this disc from Dell?

 

Yes you should have received that as I but, quite honestly, its useless now. I have made my own resource disk with the latest drivers available which is much better.

 

Thanks Les - great guide!

I purchased my M1330 last week and it arrived early this week. Immediately removed Bloatware (exactly as instructed) as well performed most of the relevant Tips & Tweaks (1,2,3,4,6,7,8,13 & 14). Then loaded all the necessary software (MS Office, Firefox, etc.) and finally installed ALL the recommended Windows/Office updates (including Vista SP1).

Some of the issues:

Initially didn't expand the AHCI driver (it wouldn't execute on an older WinXP laptop) but even after I finally figured it out, I found that the downloaded driver was older than the one that came with the Installation disk.

Same thing happened with many of the drivers downloaded from the Dell website (yes I entered my service tag info, first) - it seems that the drivers on my disks (dated July 2007!) were more recent than those on the website

Major problem occurred after installing Windows Updates - Vista would hang up during Shutdown. Searched online and tried several fixes and finally one seemed to work: In the Advanced Power Settings menu, disabled the "Allow the computer to enter Away Mode" settings (under Multimedia settings/When sharing media).

One particular Windows update (KB929777) fails to install - I get a generic error (8000FFFF) every time - researched it online and tried several fixes (including the regedit HKLM fix), but nothing seems to work. Any suggestions?

Still not too happy with the start up times: 60s to login screen and a total of 90s to internet ready state. Any suggestions?. Shut down time is now a "blazing" 25s.

Performance seems ok, though I haven't made any measurements.

Overall impressions:
Sleek design and nice screen.
Not too happy with build quality - feels like the whole thing will fall apart when removing the battery.
Not too happy with Vista - not much improvement in performance or features over XP.

 

ok - much better start up time now!

40 secs boot up (to login) and 60 secs to internet ready


Shut down several programs from running automatically when Windows starts up - see notes below:
Go to Windows Defender in Control Panel, then click the Tools button, and then click Software Explorer - in the Category box, click Startup Programs. Select the program that you want to prevent from running, and then click Disable.

Also defragged using ScuderiaConchiglia's defrag application.
Worked great!

 

i'm using a old dell laptop and its windows XP how am i going to reformat it ??
i don't have a reformat disc or anything.