E1705 Overclocking, Reformat????

Hello all I am in need of the assistance of your computer genious. I just purchased the rig below(scheduled to ship on the 24th) and I would really like to be able to run games like Oblivion on it with the pretty graphics .
For the sake of eye movement, it's a Dell E1705 with a 1.83ghz core duo, 2 Gigs of ram at 667mhz, a GeForce go 7800, and the 7200 rpm hardrive with the truelife ultrasharp screen.

I read the guide posted on reformatting and reinstalling XP, and I did not get the optional DVD burner, so I cant burn the dell partition. What are the dangers of going through without it? I'm planning on doing the reformat and installing the MobileForce GS driver, and doing some safe overclocking. I'd also like to overclock the cpu a bit if this will help with the game speed. I went to the dell website and downloaded all the drivers listed under the e1705. I'm not really planning on using this on my lap much, but if the occasion arises I dont wanna burn myself. Any advice? I don't wanna fry my investment, either. Thanks. -Dave

 

Well, I would keep your Dell partitions. Personally, I would just un-install all the stuff that you don't need and run TuneXP and RegCleanerXP. That should get rid of most of the stuff you don't want, and you will be able to keep the partitions.

As for the heating. Get a cooling pad,...especially if you are going to OC. The E1705 had cooling problems to begin with, so that is definently something you will need!

Hope this helps.

 

Right on, it's good to hear thats a viable option. From what I've read people seemed insistent on reformatting for better speed, but I don't think I'll have much of an issue. The only game I've got right now is HL2(and access to all it's great mods) so I dont think I'll need to do any overclocking as of yet. I'm wondering if I'll want to once I save up for Oblivion. I think I'll mosey on over to said thread and see if anyone with a similar system can get good settings and speed without the overclock. Might be tough though with a native res. of 1920x1200.

 

Reformatting (before attempting add/remove of bloatware) only took me from 60 running processes to 45 or so. I'm not noticing that much of an increase in speed either, but that's probably becuase I didn't use it very long before reformatting.

 

haha sweet my suspicions about the reformatting craze have been confirmed. i wonder if ill have to overclock at all for oblivion... thanks alot for the help.