Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
My advise is to stay away from the free trialware such as McAfee. There is nothing wrong with it but I strongly suggest AVG as it has a very small footprint and does not grab control of your system. In addition to it being free, I believe it is the easiest to understand and learn and also updates almost daily.
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The point is not that it's trialware, but that they have a subscription that they don't know how to activate after the clean install.
My 1520 came with a 3-year McAfee license and a McAfee reinstall disk w/serial key on it that I assume will activate my license. I've never tried it though because as soon as I got my laptop I did a clean install and never saw McAfee again.
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if you get the newest AVG 8.0, you should be fine. never had any problems with AVG. The new version looks brilliant and includes anti-spyware as well. Plus it improves system performance.
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no worries, glad I could help
jtb, you dont need to install everything. just go through the list of drivers and install what you know you have on your system. so if you've ordered built-in bluetooth you need to install the bluetooth driver etc. also I would advise for you to install Intel Matrix Storage Manager. that's the actual program not just the driver, you can download it from the dell driver website below. it will improve your hard-drive performance I believe. once you've done if you go to Device Manager via Control Panel and any hardware which still isnt running properly or is missing drivers will have a yellow triangle next to it. you need the drivers for those as well. these are available from either the CD or Dell's website.
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads/index.aspx?c=uk&cs=&l=en&s=gen
chunkie, if you use acronis or CompletePC Back-Up (available on higher end versions of Vista) to back up your system, they'll create an exact image of your entire system. including any hidden partitions such as media-direct. so yes it backs up all of your partitions if you tell it to. if something does go wrong during the install which is very unlikely, and this is a good moment to say that you can't damage any of your hardware if you are re-formatting. the back-up will restore your system to exactly how it was on the time of back-up. so you wont need to restore it from the recovery partition because everything will have been restored already. just a quick note, when you are backing up your system you need to do it on DVDs or an external hard-drive because if you do it on the hard-drive you are formatting that will get wiped as well. for a data partition as well, you are right you need to select option 2. regarding the size of C: drive, personally I would allocate at least 50G because you never know what programs or games you might need to install in the future. so with 50G you are less likely to run out of space. Giving it more won't hurt you, it all depends on the size of your hard-drive and how much data you are planning to keep on it. if you do chose option 2 you'll get 3 partitions, C: , D: and the media-direct one. although only C: & D: will visible in My Computer (or just Computer in Vista, I preferred My Computer lol) because the media-direct partition is hidden.
hope this helps.
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hmm, that's odd. because that usually happens when you install one windows over another without formatting. but if everything is running as normal and you are happy with performance I see no real reason for doing it again. Unless you enjoyed it. lol
dynamo, yes acronis will talk you through everything. and DVDs should be fine, you might have to use a few though to back-up everything.
As for the disk, you just treat it like ordinary Vista disk, and since it will be a different version therefore a different serial key, you probably will have to activate it once you've got everything up and running.
SP1 is downloaded from the microsoft website so after the re-format and once you've got your internet connection ready.
The drivers look quite comprehensive to me. After you've installed everything you can always check if something is missing, by going into Device Manager via Control Panel. Any hardware missing drivers will have a yellow triangle next to it. And you will need AHCI driver just before the Vista install so make sure you'll be able to access the driver from a USB drive, or a external hard-drive you can hook up to your laptop. As for nVidia drivers, I just use the one from the Dell website. Everything looks brilliant and I'm happy with it. But I'm not totally sure about the problems with the XPS since I'm using an Inspiron.
Again for the Lojack, I'm not completely sure since I've never used it. But I do know you need to register it before re-formatting otherwise you have to phone Dell and various customer services which is never good, because you just waste time. For any other software depends on if you have ordered any from Dell and it is advisable that if you have that you register it to make thing a lot easier. only 2 days before you get your system
lol Happy Re-Formatting!!!!
chunkie, don't know if that's going to work but I see no reason why it shouldn't. Although if you were to restore your system that way it would just bring back all the bloatware you're trying to get rid of. For me I saw no reason to back-up the condition in which my system came because there was nothing on there that I wanted I couldn't get back easily. So I just wacked in the media direct disk and wiped everything. But if you want to back-up certainly do so.
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yep, they still work perferctly fine.
are you re-formatting today?
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cool, i wouldn't worry about it too much. it's really quite easy
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My new Studio 15 shipped with Media Direct 4. That's why I'm asking.
Now where is the AHCI Driver? On the OS disk? I tried looking on dell.com, not sure what i'm looking for. I feel like such a noob.
Now i'm having 2nd thoughts of doing this, and leaving it as is. -
No worries. Depends if you are going to use it afterwards. If they are just trial software, there's no point installing them for a few weeks and then getting rid of them. I would recommend AVG 8.0 over Norton/McAfee anytime. But if you have actually paid for them and are planning to use them, you better register it before re-formatting to save yourself trouble. But if you are sure you're not goin to use them then there isnt much point. I dont know about Roxio, but as I said if you're going to use it, register it.
Do it now lol Doesn't take long and let us know how it went.
Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide
Discussion in 'Dell' started by Les, Aug 18, 2007.
