Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide

yes, but changing the settings is a workaround, not a fix. i for one use sleep all the time - or would, if i could.

 

I understand....

 

after my reformat (4 times now, flamenko's way), my sleep works perfect. i think things work better now then when i unboxed it

 

You formatted four times my way??? I knew creating your own system was fun but wow!!!

 

i got bored and tried different partitions and settings, etc.

 

Im the same...I have reformatted 8 times now. Actually, Im just doing my first run of PCMark05 full test....

 

thing is, i didn't really try it for long enough before my clean install to know if the problem occured before as well.

for the record, i think the problem is that when you close the lid to make the computer go to sleep a second time, it never actually goes to sleep - it just hangs trying to get to sleep. hence it not being able to come out of sleep, 'cause it never reaches sleep.

which is consistent with my other observation. i.e., if it's slept once, the next time you try to shut it down, hibernate or sleep, it will hang indefinitely.

what sort of a problem do you think this is? video drivers? vista being stupid? i'm stumped.

 

Not a clue...this has been recognized in a few systems and, without being able to tackle it head on, its hard to guess at.

Also someone was wondering here about my PCMark score...attached.

 

is this good, i scored 5757 with 1280x800 (my native resolution)

 

amazing guide...my 1520 runs a lot faster then when i got it from dell. knowing that it is 100% clean feels so good haha. i used a bunch of your vista tweaks and damn that shut down time one is awesome. thanks flamenko.

 

Tx wohast...nice compliment..

 

Fantastic thread.

For those that have reformatted, what is your security suite of choice?

Regards,
AW

 

Mine is, has been for years, and will remain AVG from Grisoft and a top choice from www.download.com. Its free, uses very little system resource and updates almost daily.

 

I'm sold. Thanks flamenko!

 

+1 rep for a great guide. I just reformatted and reclaimed 13gigs of precious space from my 64gig drive. Runs smooth as silk sans bloat.

Thanks again.

 

Flamenko - is the MediaDirect partition which is created at the end of the hard drive an Extended Partiton or a Primary ?

 

hey guys, I just got this weird error from MSN Messenger:

Failed to load Control 'SocketXCtl' from socketx.ocx. Your version of socketx.ocx maybe outdated. Make sure you are using the version of the control that was provided with your application.

Any deas how I might fix this problem?

 

Re: the media direct partition...good question and one in which I cant answer. It is a bootable partition so must be primary yet it has no drive letter assigned.

 

Help!

After I reinstall the blutooth drivers, my Creative x-fi sound card gets bricked. I've tried looking for the chipset drivers in "Programs and Features" so I can delete and reinstall...but for some reason it is not listed there with the other drivers. Very frustrating.

Any ideas on how to get me sound card working again?

 

Is it Audigy??? Hmmm. I would try installing bluetooth first with all the updates and then the Creative stuff... Or pull back to the last bluetooth version update.

Is that the new bluetooth update that an optional download??

 

Its a Creative x-fi card that shipped with the m1330. I can't blame the bluetooth anymore...I reinstalled again w/o loading the bluetooth drivers. I installed the chipset, memory card, and nvidia drivers only (after installing the audio card drivers, to ensure those work).

The audio was working until I rebooted after loading the above three drivers. After the reboot the card was dead again. The device manager shows a "!" next to the device with an "error 10". I haven't been able to get it working with the options given in the device manager.

AW

 

flamenko, how is the vista ultimate 64 running on M1330 with 2 gig of ram? Do you have any problem finding all the drivers?

 

No all the drivers are available through Trebuins thread. Even with 2Gb ram, it everything runs about 10-15% faster and i have very little compatability issues now that its set up. It runs 32bit priogs like a charm.

Search "trebuin 64 bit" If you cant find it ill chack and find it for ya when i get home tonight.

 

ok...so wow i jus finished reading all 33 pages!! haha it has turned into a book!

I have vista home premium installed now, and just finished downloading and burning the free copy of vista ultimate i get through my university. From what i have read, you can't do an OEM copy of ultimate (or any version) with the media direct, correct? I have yet to use media direct, but it sounds very cool and wouldn't mind keeping it. But if i do a fresh install, i want to be able to have the backup resource available on the Ultimate.

So what exactly are my choices?? Ultimate without media direct yet with the complete pc restore or Home premium with media direct but with no backup??

 

I cant answer that one. Have you tried to reinstall mediadirect than the new copy of ultimate?

 

i have yet to try, but i was trying to figure everything out everything before i started. I'm a newb so i need to get everything straight so i have no problems...i will be trying it eventually though so i can report back.

 

I can vouch that Acronis disk image works as advertised. I rolled back my reformat so I could get my sound card working again.

 

Is it possible to resintall vista without wiping my data on the 2ndary partition?

 

well just an update from my side...

i got a non-oem Ultimate installed with media direct and everything seems to be working fine. I have had a few problems so far, mainly with drivers and such, but things are finally starting to fall into place. I do have a couple questions though.

- My smartcard reader doesn't work, and i can't find a driver for it...i guess thats the problem??
- Lojack will not install back on this computer. I do everything it says to do about cancelling and re-installing, but it locks up when the installation bar is 1 tick from being done. I have tried doing it 3 times now.
- I use firefox, and there is always something loading when i am browsing, especially on NBR...It says it is always loading "googlesydication.com" or something like that, and it doesn't stop until i hit the stop button. It is just kind of annoying because the loading circle is always by the mouse cursor.
- Since my drivers have yet to show up checked on the dell resource cd, how do i know if everything is back and up to date??


I'm sure i have some more problems, but if someone could get me going on these problems i would really appreciate it. Thanks!

 

Lets start with your smartcard driver, You are missing the ricoh drivers which are available on your disk or at Dell.com.

Dont go into shock but look in your device panel and you will find all kinds of triangle/yellow exclamation marks. these are drivers that need to be reinstalled.

They are all on your driver disk but may not be checked. You just need to tackle them one by one. You also have to reinstall the webcam from its disk.

Your problem with Firefox is most commonly encountered with the 64bit installation. I could not fix it so I got rid of it. An easy fix is just to change the icon which does that. Still seeks but you dont see it through the icon.

 

I'm about to order the M1330 but not sure on which version of windows to choose. On the ordering site, the home premium edition doesn't say it comes with "DVD media" like the ultimate edition... if I get home premium, can I still do a reinstall?

I also read about turning off this auto system recovery feature thing in vista, so that I don't have to have background processes running. if I get home premium, will I still be able to turn this off?

I tried searching on the forums but there's too much stuff on the M1330....thanks for your help!

 

Personal opinion...Get Vista Ultimate. I wouldn't go back myself strictly because of the completePCrestore function of this OS alone. There have been so many instances of people seeking outside programs for this.

There is also Dreamscene which is a great desktop background as you can simply take a home movie and make it into a sound background if you want or just use their standard backgrounds.

On top of that, you have bitlicker which allows you to encrypt any file or directory in 32 bit mode at a very secure standard.

There is also multi-language support if you can use that.

 

Im a total newbie to this so this may sound like a stupid question but i still need it answered.

Im doing the reformat as flamenko's guidelines, ive done steps 1,2 and 3 and now there is just a blank screen, the blue lights and the dell screen is turned on but it is just black, its been like this for about 45 minutes so far. Im hoping that this is normal and just the computer deleting everything but am a little worried, can anyone tell me if this is normal??

thanks

 

It shouldn't take that long.
Try rebooting and starting over.
Also, how did you interpret this step:
"Follow instructions to change your partitions."

 

Its all fixed but tx Chelet. I was able to fix the prob through pm.

 

Glad to hear it.

 

So i've dont the whole reinstall and most things are running good. One problem i did have is that most of the drivers didn't install correctly, i had to manually install the drivers. So far im hoping that all the ones i installed are the correct ones but truthfully i dont know. Can anyone explain what all the communication drivers on the dell m1330 drivers disk are and how can i tell if i need them?

also,
When you do a reinstall is windows media player 11 standard on the system or do i have to download it seperately?

Also, for some reason my dell wireless isnt picking up my home network. I have my two computers (old and new M1330) sitting next to each other and my old one picks it up fine but the new one cant see my network. help anyone???

 

separately..its on the web.

Thats also because you havent reinstalled the wireless drivers.

Go to Dell and download the drivers for yr system.

 

I've downloaded the wireless driver for my system. It can find about 5 other wireless networks (neighbours) but for some reason cant find my own one, wheras the old computer next to it picks up all the networks including my own.

any ideas??

 

Yes, unhook your wireless and plug it back in. It is not transmitting the signal if you are recognizing yours but not others.

 

With Instructions in hand... You know what I'm doing tonight!

 

All my wireless drivers are installed correctly. I can see available wireless networks when im sitting here but for some reason i cannot see my own wireless network. I have already tried turning my router off for 20 minutes and turned it back on but somehow my m1330 still cant see it.


(as i said before i have my old comp 10cm next to it and it is perfectly able to see all networks including my own one)

please help?????

 

Thanks Flaminko... 1-2-3 all done with no issues! Reps to you!

 

I want to delete the mediadirect partition and just have one large partition with vista on it. How do I go about doing this.

 

Thats an easy one. Simply do a complete clean install and don't reinstall MediaDirect. Ensure, ofcourse that you reinstall the drivers.

If you elect to follow the route of deleting media Direct, you wont have just one partition and you may find difficulties as mediadirect is intertwined with Vista once installed.

So...

1. Restart
2. Hit F12 at Dell screen
3. Select Boot from Cd
4. Put the Vista Disk in and press any key to continue when asked.

Follow the instructions.

When done, whip out your reinstall disk for drivers as long as any separate disks such as your camera software.

 

As a goodwill gesture dell shipped a 250GB 5400 rpm Hard Disc to replace my 160 GB HDD. I could follow flamenko's installation instructions perfectly. However, as it was a new disk, the restore partition was lost as well as the cool dell xps m1330 wallpaper. I had to download Dell support utility. Otherwise the installation was fine.

 

Thanx for the support qtfan1.

 

Thanks again. By the way, your instructions were more lucid than the tech guy who came to fix the replacement HDD. He did'nt have a clue about the preparing the HDD by the Media Direct disc. http://forum.notebookreview.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

Flamenko,

Hi.. I just bought a Dell Vostro 1400... and wanted to partition it so that I have this setup : C:-40gig, and D:120 gig for my music files, pictures, personal files etc. At first I was able to shrink C to 76gig, and E for 60gig (since I have a 10gig recovery) which Im not satisfied. I dont wanna waste much gig just for th OS. I tried lots of partition software but with no luck... When I read this thread last night, I was planning to to the same with my vostro, here are my q's.

1. Is this applicable to vostros? - I have the OS CD, drivers, etc.
2. Also, when you do partitioning via media direct, Is there an option there to add, delete, create partition? If possible, I want to retain my recovery partition, if not, its okay since I have a complete set of installation CDs..

I'm planning to reformat my laptop tonight, wish me luck but i hope you could answer my questions first.. hehe..

thanks in advance and nice thread...

 

Yes. it is applicable to any Dell with mediaDirect or if someone wants to install mediaDirect.

You will lose your recovery partition, to the best of my knowledge, when you repartition through MediaDirect.

I always suggest one gets the free 15 day trial version of Acronis Disk Image to make a free disk set of the original disk. It has no time limit on the original set you make.