Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide

wow.. that was a fast reply.. hehe... anyway, I would forget about my recovery partition since I have the complete installation disks... I just want to maximize my 160 gig of space. I hope I can have this setup after my reformat :
c: 40gig
d: 100+gig
Media direct partition

my concern for this is if I wanted to reformat my Vista, I would not touch my data partition which has my personal files like music, videos, pictures, etc.

thanks again flamenko... I would be following this thread...

 

That will work...good luck.

 

well be updating you tonight.. thanks..

 

people who have clean installed before, does your CD burner work still?

I have done two clean installs on two different 1520's and burning works before the clean install and does not work after. I have made sure that I installed the CD/DVD drivers from my disk and from the Dell site but nothing seems to make it work. This has happened on two different CD drives on two different 1520's...TSSTcorp CDRWDVD and Optiarc DVD+-RW...so i know its not defective drives.

 

I didnt require drivers whatsoever for the DVD drive. What programs are you using to burn?

 

Hi guys... It was a success!!!
I successfully formatted my dell vostro with the partitions that I want... During the media direct portion, I chose option 2, which is to define a size for the partition for my C. I entered 40gig, then after that inserted my Vista DVD... and thats it.. just follow the instructions... then install drivers... that's it... media direct is running also...Right now Im reinstalling my programs...

Thanks flamenko!!!

 

Question :
I have another unit of dell vostro, which had the following setup before :
C: OS
D: Partition
Media Direct

Then I resize the C partition using Disk Management, then here's my setup looks like
C: 76gig
D: 10gig
E: 60 gig

Question, Im trying to restore my laptop by pressing CTRL + F11 but nothing is happening. I read from one article that if you add, resize, move partition, this key wont work. But I didnt touch the recovery partition, which is located in front of my harddisk.

Here's the article
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/index.htm

 

Its true which is why I recommended the backup originally. Your original config is gone. Ctrl-F11 is dead anyway. There is a new key combination which may be F8 or Ctrl-F8 on start up. Its been awhile.

And your recovery partition is there but you deleted the boot partition which controls system restore. It is several MB and doesnt have a drive letter.

 

I dont want to sound like Im coming at you the wrong way Flamenko. This is a good guid for what it says, but I think its less than what is desired by most of us. I say that only after doing some research last night with my (2) sata 120 drives, one from my laptop and one from my PS3 (which replaced my PS3 60 gig drive). I think everybody would do a back flip if you or anybody found away to do exactly what this guide does, but also allow you to reinstall from the recovery save if need be, without having that 10 gig partition. Simply, can I save that 10 gig partition or 3.9 gigs of data in there to a flash drive or DVD, then format my drive anyway I want, keeping the media direct or even not keeping it, but... If something goes wrong way down the line, be able to somehow put that old recovery data back as a way of getting the laptop back to how it was when delivered.
Because last night I tested and I did pretty much what you have here without even reading this thread. Its in the information that comes with the laptop. I have a media direct cd with a couple of pages on how to reinstall vista and install media direct.

Now, what I was trying to do last night was see if I can copy the data from that recovery partition to a backup drive, then take my PS3 120 gig drive and format everything exactly like the original drive, then copy that recovery data to partition 2 out of the 4, and somehow get that functionality. Even if I wasnt going to leave it like that, I wanted to be able to have that there as a longer way to recover later on. It didnt work needless to say. But the point is, we all want media direct but we all want that recovery too, we just dont want it taking up 10 gigs. Im working on it too. Otherwise I think most can do a clean install with this guide or with the info that came with their dell if they read its all there.

Edit,
As I said, it didnt work, the vista worked, and the media direct worked, but pressing F8 didnt give me that recover line as the first option. So I think the only issue to doing what I want (and I think alot of us want) is to figure out what is needed for that 2nd partition to be bootable if copied from the original drive and saved, and copied back. Its all related to boot sectors and crap that I never understood too much, and the fact that vista hides the boot.ini info that the other versions made easily available to windows hacks.

 

has anybody tried to run the norton ghost from another computer on a dell with this type of partitioning? From my experience with norton at work on our severs, it doesnt care about whats in the partitions etc, it will backup everything and allow you to restore to a unformatted harddrive and it will recreate all the partitions. I just dont know if running the bootup from a floppy will mess up the boot records on the original drive. Again I was going to try to duplicate my original 120 to my other 120, and if it works, then Ill have a ghosted image I can always restore, then Ill just wipe everything.

 

I respect your opinion but the fault of which you speak lies with technology and not I. As for the response to that article, its well documented.

Now to help you...

When you decide on a reinstall, you cannot go halfway and try to dsave the system restore utility. It has been discussed to death but cannot be done. Its because all 3 are tied in, this being restore, MediaDirect and Vista.

Similarly, a week or so ago we had a lengthy discussion as to whether you could just reinstall Vista. It was learned than that mediaDirect is directly tied to Vista so when you delete/reinstall, it also renders MediaDirect useless.

If you would have contacted me earlier, I would have suggested you do a complete backup first and foremost. I could have even directed you to a free utility.

So now where are we...oh yes the recovery partition. If you can find a way to make it effective once again, publish it!!!

 

what are you trying to say? I didnt talk to you a week ago? And I am not bashing what you did, and again , I didnt need your guide, or anybody shouldnt, if they read the info that comes with their dell. I just got my vista, and I know all of this without reading too much. and Im not lost on my vista, my original disk with dell and recover and media direct work fine, and my 120 extra worked with media direct and vista fine. I was just saying, this is a good guide, but we should continue working on the other issue. I dont think its dead. Boot records that point to bootable partitions can be redone. Im betting a tiny lil hack or bit of info will get this to work.

 

I didn't mean to upset you. I, in fact, thought I was trying to help. Nobody, and there are people here well above my level, has been able to change what you are trying to address.

As for the multitude of people who have praised the article alone, they would probably disagree saying this is a very specific article that was needed. I tend to agree.

As for Dell documentation, much of which still reflects f11 as the restore key, that alone speaks for itself.

You seem upset and I just don't know why. If you didnt need the guide, why are you here and not creating a thread which addresses making system restore bootable again?

 

got my burning problem fixed. for some reason just using windows to format the disk and burn files onto a CDRW through the open window does not work well anymore. i used roxio and it went fine and very quick.


!!another question though!!...when i clean installed this time I just did the 3gig media direct and the other 229gig for C. what would be the benefits of having 3gig media direct, Xgigs for vista, and the rest in a new partition? how many gigs would i need to leave aside for vista? and would all this be done at the black screen after you have rebooted with MD disk in? flamenko how do you have yours set up and why did you choose that setup? thanks.

 

For me, this is my setup :
c:40gig OS
d:100+gig data partition
Media Direct

The reason for this is to maximize my space for my data (a lots of mp3s, movies, videos, personal files) at the same time keeping it safe whenever I reformat or reinstall vista in the future. 40gig for the OS, and I think this is more than enough unless I want to install a lot of programs that would cover this space.

The purpose of doing a clean install was to properly partition my harddrive, and recreate the media direct partition which I deleted. As for the Recovery Partition, its one complicated way of saving it... besides I have the complete install DVDs...

So whenever my vista goes down, or doesnt boot up, I just need to reinstall vista or repair vista next time and not to do a clean install and thus saving my personal files which is in partition D... hehe...

thats my point of doing the clean install..

 

Thats actually good. Remember, at present Im only on a Mtron 32Gb SSD.

 

so on your 40gig OS partition, that is still where you would install all your games and programs? or is that only for vista? if you were to install a game on your D would it run slower then if it was installed on C?

so in the end you are just doing this to keep all media/personal files safe? there is no real boost to load times or performance or anything?

 

no... all the programs will still be installed in the C since when you reinstall vista, you will always install those programs.. so there's no point of installing it in drive D..

yeah.. I just want to keep my personal files safe during reinstallation of vista.. instead of having one partition and backing all the files first before reformating your system, then copying files back again. This is assuming you are always want a clean installation of vista every time.. but if you are just repairing it, i dont think there's a problem.. I always make it a point to reformat my system whenever I have a major problem like spyware, virus, illegal operations... I always want it fresh.. hehe..

 

Im working on a solution to the problem.. How to get the 10 gigs back AND keep your restore from dell if you ever want to use it. Coming Coming soon.

 

ah ok sweet i'm gonna try a clean install again and partition it similar to yours. just one last thing...if i ever have to do a clean install of vista again, how do i do it so it will only wipe the C drive and not touch my other drive and which steps on flamenkos guide will be different?


flamenko is there a certain dell driver that i need in order for sleep and hibernation to work? for some reason if my comp goes into sleep or hibernation mode, when i press the power button to return it to normal it just stays at a black screen. the lights on the right will return to normal but screen just stays dead. holding power button to shut off, and restarting is the only way to get back to windows.

 

when every you want to reinstall windows, just put your Windows Installation disk, then boot from CD/DVD.. then it will ask you what partition to use, then select C.. then that's it.. just follow the instructions.. install necessary drivers and you would see that your drive D is still there with all your files...

 

Thanks for the guide. Iwill certanly use it when I am ready to customize my m1330 but I have a question.

Reinstalling VISTA on the original DELL setup, messes up mediadirect. What happens if we reinstall VISTA after we have partitioned our HD with this method (C for VISTA, D for data and mediadirect) ? If mediadirect stops functioning, it means we have to go through the whole thing again, by using the mediadirect CD and loose all data from D ?? Thanks !

 

You must start with the Mediadirect CD if you want mediaDirect installed at which time you can elect to partition. Follow with Vista and you can choose which to put Vista in (C: lol)

 

Thanks for replying so fast. I am a little confused however. Lets say I follow the Clean Install guide to have 3 partitions as many people have allready done (C: for VISTA, D: for data and the mediadirect partition). After some time I want to reformat my C: (VISTA) partition, to reinstall VISTA or change to 64bit. In order to keep mediadirect, I will have to start with the mediadirect CD again, but this time when I get to step 3 I will be able to leave D: partition (created from previous use of mediadirect CD) untouched?

 

im guessing, you don't need to start with media direct since you have a media direct partition.. you just need to install it after you reinstall the OS...

 

Looks like we have to start with mediadirect cd everytime.

 

hmmm... so everytime we reinstall windows, we have to go thru the repartition step of media direct? so all our partitions will be deleted again... I thought if we reinstall windows, we just need to reinstall media direct as to what we have done on the steps.. I thought going thru the media direct steps is just to recreate partition for media direct... hmmmm... if that's the case, i wont waste my time with reinstalling media direct and just focus on saving my other partitions...

 

No if you need to merely reinstall Windows you do not need to start from the scratch..... All you need to do is after freshly installing Windows you need to complete only the Windows portion of the MD setup.... Believe me I have Vista + Linux + MediaDirect booting on my system.... After I initially set them all up I did a fresh install of Vista by merely formatting the Vista partition alone and nothing else and installed MD from within Windows....

The main logic is the DOS step of MD creates the partitions and maps the MD button whereas the Windows version of MD copies the required Windows Xp Embedded files to the MD partition (if required) and installs the MediaDirect on your Vista and maps the MD button within Vista too....

 

nice to know that ash.. i was thinking of this way also thats why i clean install my vostro to repartition my drive, and start from a clean OS... thanks.. hope everybody agrees..

 

Thanks for clarifying that. So you can remove all bloatware and secure your data !!

 

Wow, I just finished reading all 38 pages
Quick question: what if i wanted to go with XP Pro instead of VISTA, would that change anything? Would some functions on a laptop (M1330) not work?
Would laptop be faster with XP on it or is it just a matter of getting rid of bloatware and it will be just a s fast?
I know it's a lot of questions but I would appreciate answers.

 

Im not an XP lover. In fact, I have always hated XP and find it to be so much less than Vista regardless of what gameplayers say but...

XP would work just as well. You still need to find the appropriate drivers of course. It may be faster with XP depending on what specifically your looking for.

You sound like a candidate for a clean install.

 

Sure am, I was going to do it anyway, just need to make a decision on which OS to install

 

Did I suggest downloading Acronis True Image 15 Day trial and making a backup of your original disk system? the diskset has no time limit on it and, if you ever restored the image, you could then restore to factory fresh.

 

This just in. I have successfully reimaged my laptop to the factory windows vista.... Thats nothing new right?

Well, fact is, first I copied the files from that Recovery folder to a USB drive.
Then I took out my new laptop drive (120 gigs)
I put in another 120 gig drive (from my PS3)
I formatted the drive to use all the space with the Mediadirect disk
here's where things get interesting
I didnt install windows with the windows disk which would have taken however long, and wouldnt have installed specific drivers right away...
Instead I just reimaged the laptop using the recovery info which only took about 10 min or so.
rebooted did a quick boot fix
booted up into dells "your new vista" first boot
reinstalled media direct.

Now Im left with 10 gigs free, but the same functionality of the recovery for down the road if I ever need it.

And I have 10 extra gigs free. So for us 120 gig peeps, I have 97.4 gigs free of 108.


What else have I learned..

I can even do a fresh install of Vista and the Media Direct and install the drivers which are on the CD.. And back that up to my USB drive, and use the same steps above to recover that if I want. Its all there, and Ill make a thread about it when I get some time to document, but its pretty easy.
You wont need an extra drive. I just wanted to test without breaking anything. All you need is a USB drive with about 4-5 gigs free or 2 DVDs even.

I am thinking that the info is out there, people know how to do it already. But nobody has documented it on here. Ill do that as soon as I can.

 

Yes Flamenko, you suggested this, but what's the point if I can always do fresh install?

 

The point most would consider is that you are removing alot of unneeded bloatware which slows your system not just takes up space. If your happy with this method though, thats all that matters.

 

What I meant is why back up original configuration with all the bloatware? Is in it the reason why we reinstall everything so to avoid bloatware in the first place plus to gain some 10Gb of space?

 

Yup!!!! .....

 

if you guys are referring to my post, I said I not only restored my laptop from the factory install "fresh boot" without using the recovery partition, I also figured out how to do a fresh install, then back that up to your own personal "fresh install backup" for restoring that whenever you want... In 10 minutes install time, not Disk Swapping Windows install time.

But even so, Alot of people like having that Fresh Boot backup, they just dont want it taking up 10 gigs of space. I freed that Fresh Boot from the Partition, but still allowing the functionality. Are you guys saying that nobody wants to have that as an option? I know they do. That fresh boot is your computer when you got it.

And also, somebody explain to me what all this Bloatware is.. How much space and slowdown is it taking up? I am still testing my test image. I went thru and uninstalled all the Dell stuff, took about 3 minutes. I can uninstall Adobe reader, and a few other programs if I wanted way faster than installing Vista from DVD using my method.

 

I mean how did you reimage the recovery info in your drive? you just copied it? or used a image copy utility?

One more question, If I have more than 1 vostro, can I use one recovery image for all my vostros? Or each unit has a different recovery partition.

OT : I just noticed my other vostro to have vertical grayish faded line less than an inch thick on the left side and on the center of the screen. I noticed this when I changed the background to black, and looking at the screen on the left side.. I tried my other vostro but its not that noticable. Is this a factory defect or problem on the screen? should I have it checked? or is this normal?

 

Ill post the details soon. I didnt copy, I used the built in imager that vista comes with. again, all the info is out there. To backup your good OS partition you would use the same techniques and in your case, you can make a golden copy of your OS drive for whenever you need. And if you needed it, it would take minutes to restore. U wont even have to reformat or touch ur data partition.

And you bring up another point. Microsoft.. You say, u have 2 vostros. U can if you wanted, use the factory image of 1 an put it on the other easily... But, I bet microsoft vista would stop running or give u some type of warning. Possibly. Which makes me wonder about fresh installs. Your key, is it embedded in the CD the same way it is on a factory installed harddrive? or will you have to reactivate possibly. I dont know but thats why I like having my factory backup.

But anyway, Factory or Fresh install, Im still going to post info on how to restore one without the partition, and backup the other for easy 10 minute install without needing to do a windows DVD install. And keeping ur partitions anyway you want them.

 

Oh.. the vista has a built in imager? where can I find it? If they have this, we wont be needing 3rd party tools like acronis to image our drives..

 

Got it.. its ImageX.. sound cool...

So lets put it this way... whether we want a fresh install to prevent bloatware or wanted the factory settings.. What we need to think is, is it possible to create a recovery of our OS from our own baseline... meaning, the first thing to do is to create a baseline, install Vista, install drivers, run windows update, install basic software... after that, we image image it.. then try to do a workaround for recovering it... its a matter of creating something that you can restore in the future... hope you get my point.. hehe...

 

I heard that Dell has taken advantage of using the ImageX concept in their recovery environment.. but the XP are still using the old DSR concept...

 

Last night I made another interesting discovery.

After installing the factory backup of vista and uninstalling all dell support related stuff, I only had 1 gig difference in my files on C compared to a normal vista install.
Then I remembered I didnt uninstall Adobe, or Roxio, or Works. So Im thinking that, there's probably barely a difference from the factory install to the windows install if you uninstall all your factory apps that you dont want. And again the factory install plus uninstall probaby is way faster.

I didnt see a defination of bloatware. Technically this is not an APPLE commercial. Theres not much bloatware on the Dell. All it is is Dell technical support stuff, easily identified and uninstalled in the control panel, Google Desktop and Toolbar, Roxio (something we all probably want anyway), Works (probably a delete) and some of the software that the drivers install. Thats it.

 

@flamenko

hey, I just got my m1330 the other day and had tried the steps you outlined to reformat.

I came across the BSOD (dead screen of sort)... I cannot go back to windows as it just stays there. I tried turning the laptop off a few seconds and boot it again but still it stays as it is.

Please advice how can I undo and revert back to factory settings.
need your elp much...

 

K we need to know what you did. Give an outline please as to exactly what you did...removed or installed...

 

Yesss... I've done reformattiing my M1330... I should say thanks to flamenko... his guide did the trick on mine.

I should stress, the hitch I had with that BSOD was actually resolved when I did reboot and pressing F12 just when the Dell logo came out.

Whewww...

 

I did a fresh install of Vista(32 bit) in my new Dell 1520. I have got 20GB for C: drive and 90GB for D: drive.

Now please tell how to sub partition the D: drive to

E: drive ( 20gb for Linux)
F: drive ( 30gb for music & multimedia)
G: drive ( 40gb for Games )

I have already installed the Vista(32bit) into C: drive.

Please help me out in partioning the big D: drive

Thanks in advance....