New XPS bloatware - need for a fresh OS reinstall or simple uninstall?

People, who have got their XPS delivered, can you kindly tell me what kind of and how many bloatware came with the unit pre-installed?

Do you think a refresh re-installation of OS [Windows7] is necessary [as is the case, say, with HP Envy series], or those bloatware can be, if wished, simply uninstalled using Windows or Revo type uninstaller?

Advance thanks.

 

Good question mate
I hope someone can answer this..

 

It's not too bad, I've seen far worse (Sony notebooks a couple of years back...). Mostly standard Dell stuff, not much real 'crapware', other than the McAfee trial. Everything I didn't want seemed to uninstall with no hassle.

There's a 14Gb recovery partition. Some people may want to reclaim that bit of disk space. I decided that it wasn't worth the hassle for now, as there was no other immediate need for a format+clean install.

 

Are folks keeping the 'Dell Dock'?

 

I kept it on my SXPS but it just annoyed me so much that I've deleted it on my xps15, everytime i move my mouse to change tabs on chrome it pops up. Alsao with windows 7 taskbar its basically obsolete.

 

I hate the dell dock, that went straight away!

The bloatware is not too bad, but I am doing a fresh install anyway this week as I will be installing an SSD

 

So if you had not installed the ssd would you have installed reinstalled the OS on your notebook? Mine is in production now and I'm wondering what would be better for mine...

 

There really isn't enough bloatware to warrent anything near a reinstall (unless ofcourse you're adding a new HD, but thats besides the point )

You can knock out the majority of it in about a minute flat.
I kept the dell dock around just because its nice for some programs that don't play nice with the windows bar. I.E. DR. Java for my programming class opens a new shortcut tab in addition to the one on the start bar. Though, it is admittedly somewhat difficult to justify

 

Thank you for your reply. That's good news because I don't want to reinstall my whole system and get confronted with some unexpected difficulties like missing drivers or something like that.

 

For a week of usage what I did:
1) I moved win7 bar to the right corner
2) dell dock to the left and made latter auto-hiding.
3) Uninstalled McAfee in favor of Kaspersky
And now I'm pretty much done having no annoyance by any kind of bloatware at all. No abuse with pop-ups or infinite strangeware-update requests - non at all! Just some regular Windows / Java updates but that's not a problem really having been set for auto-updates.
Dell is much better than Samsung in this way, whoo-hoo .

 

I did a clean install with Win 7 Ultimate and it was a mess as far as nothing being recognized and Dell's driver disk not working for some reason.

If I had it to do over I would have simply deleted the software I didn't want... as other people have said, there wasn't that much to delete.

 

Yea, like people said, at a minimum back up the wireless card driver somewhere. I really don't understand why Windows wouldn't at least come with a basic wireless card driver so you could download the correct one once you install Windows. I suppose they expect you to do that wired, but does it even include a basic Ethernet card driver?

 

I was planning on doing a clean install with Win 7 Ultimate.
What is the best way if its going to create problems with the drivers? Download them before hand?

 

Simply download the Wifi driver and My Wifi software on the Intel site. The Intel non 'dellinized" drivers are better anyhow.

 

Yes, in case your dell driver disk doesn't work. At least download the wifi driver then you can use your new laptop to download all the other drivers from dell.com.

 

What's the difference?

 

+1 on this and I will be doing the same with the TouchPad if it is made by Synaptics and uses a similar driver as my SXPS 16. I will most likely grab a generic driver off synaptics or HP's website for the XPS 15 as they have many more features and options for the touchpad with an unmodified driver. I have not seen the XPS 15's touchpad driver but if it says Dell anywhere in the driver options then it is getting changed on mine.

If it is a Synaptics touchpad and someone wants to try a better driver give this one a shot: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&softwareitem=ob-88241-1 it is version 15.1.6.64

- Dan

 

I know that on my 1640, if I use the wireless driver from Dell, my wireless adapter will disable randomly. When I used one from Intel, it doesn't happen anymore, although not the most recent one. If I use the most recent Intel driver, the disabling happens more often than with the Dell one.

 

Thanks! I'll make sure to download them before hand.

 

I tried the Dell provided driver, the reference Synaptics one, and the HP one you posted. The Dell one is the only driver that lets me disable the touchpad with the disable touchpad key. The others don't respond to it. Also, once you change the settings to what you prefer, all three drivers performed identically. I'd recommend going with Dell's version so you can disable the touchpad when needed.

 

Is it possible to reprogram touchpad-disable-button for something else? I've got used to having BREAK/PAUSE key so I can press WinKey+BREAK/PAUSE to have MyComputer Properties opened.
And is it possible to enter numeric keypad characters with Fn+... like it was on Emachines or Acers? There's no sign of numeric keypad symbols though :-/

 

The bloatware is pretty small. I really only needed to uninstall Mcafee and the MS Office suite they put on there..

I decided to keep the dell dock for the time being.

 

I reinstalled a fresh OS (upgraded to Ultimate). I did have problems initially getting all the drivers to play nice. But after a little pushing and probing, all is well.

 

Can you install a fresh OS just using the CD that comes with the laptop? Or do you need to have sourced Windows 7 seperately?

 

I did not get any OS CD from Dell. I had a separate retail version of Windows 7 that I used to install.

 

If you go to this link and fill out the request for the OS disc, Dell will send it to you for free along with a driver disc, quickset, etc. I had them within 3 days.

Dell - Support

 

Thanks for that!

 

I think a clean install is the way to go. I got my laptop @ about 5pm yesterday and pondered not doing a clean install but a look at the # of processes had me changing my mind in a sec. 88 processess running out of the box is ridiculous. It may seem like nothing now, but in the long run after you add stuff you actually care about, the processes add up. I reinstalled Win 7 Ultimate and have since then added all the apps I can think of that I normally need. I'm currently running at 74 processes now and thats with all my add-ons. I experienced no problem except for the drivers CD not working. However, the most important driver I needed from the CD worked, and that's the wifi drivers. With that, I was able to get online and download all the other drivers I needed.

Only problem I have now is one USB controller and an unknown device showing up in my Device Manager as without drivers. I can't figure out what drivers they are and auto driver search isnt working either. I think one of them should be the Face scan thingy but I'll figure it out later.

Was it worth it? Yes.

 

Open Device and Printers and right click the Unknown Device and hit "Troubleshoot"

That usually finds more drivers than the auto search method...

It is more likely the built in "Consumer IR" device than anything.

 

I think I had different bloatware installed than you..
After a little bit of tweaking (removed 4-5 programs max) I got it down to 53 processes, with all the software I need on it. Didn't take a look at how many they were before removing most of the bloatware though. But I'm sure it wasn't as high as 88 processes.