Reinstalling Windows 7 on L501x

Hi,

I am just about to take delivery of a L501x. In the past I have always formatted any new laptop and then reinstalled Windows in order to remove bloatware and just to get that nice clean feeling. Firstly, is this necessary on the L501x? And if there is a benefit, what is the easiest way to put the correct drivers back on? Can I just put Windows on and then install the Dell Support Center on it and leave it to do its thing, is that possible? Or is it best to manually download drivers? The only thing with the manual method is that I hate installing incorrect drivers for items that aren't present in my system.

Many thanks

 

There is a little bit of bloatware on it, but it's not overkill. I didn't bother with a format and reinstall, just removed what I didn't want. It ships with a Dell "drivers and applications disk", that contains everything you need to get it back to it's "from factory" state, but there were a few things that had been updated, like video drivers, that I got from Dell or Nvidia.

 

Generally Dell have the least amount of bloatware compared to HP, Acer/Gateway/eMachines.

I would keep your recovery partition in case something gets messed up and make recovery discs.

 

There is not a bunch on there, so if you don't mind a little bit, just remove it. I immediately swapped my hdd for an ssd, so I killed two birds with one stone. Look online for the latest drivers, except for the nvidia drivers which you need to download directly from nvidia.

 

That's great thanks guys!

 

I thought there was waaaay too much bloatware crap on it. I formatted mine (had to anyway since I got an SSD to put in it) and can't be happier.

Just install and go to the Dell support page and type in your service tag. Check device manager before you reload and make note of each device that way you know which you need and which you don't.