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    Simple clean XP install

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by duke213, Jul 15, 2006.

  1. duke213

    duke213 Newbie

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    As a new owner of an E1505 I wanted to follow Southern Girl's advice for reformatting to get a clean install to replace all the junk in the C: drive without deleting any of the other partitions. Can I just drop in the XP CD and reformat C: which I assume is partition 2, without messing up the Media Direct or PC Restore. When I view on my computer all I see are the C and D drives the latter which is blank for backups.

    In device manager my computer shows four default monitors and four system boards, deleted the extras and flashed the bios to try and resolve this with a Dell online rep but they came back on restart. His next suggestion was to run PC Restore but I would prefer a clean install without the bloatware while still leaving PC Restore as an option.
     
  2. Amber

    Amber Notebook Prophet NBR Reviewer

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    yes, you can just select the XP partition and format it. If you don't want the restore partition, I recommend to remove it before you format. There should a be a remove utility located at C:\Dell\Utilities\DSR\DSRIRRemv2.exe. This will remove the restore partition and combine it with your XP partition. This way you don't have to mess with your partitions during formatting.

    You will need to repair MD if you format, but it is very easy and usually doesn't cause any problems.

    SG
     
  3. duke213

    duke213 Newbie

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    Thanks for the info. Like the computer but the bloatware is unbelievable.
     
  4. gridtalker

    gridtalker Notebook Virtuoso

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    The bloatware is getting worse and worse
     
  5. the1

    the1 Notebook Consultant

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    anyone know what the bloatware is like on dell's latitude line?
     
  6. Amber

    Amber Notebook Prophet NBR Reviewer

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    Latitudes are clean. You get a retail XP disc also.
     
  7. kingcrowing

    kingcrowing Notebook Evangelist

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    Yeah I just got a D820 and it only had Google Desktop- thats it. It had some really basic Roxio burining suite, but I just installed version 8 and use that instead but if you dont have that its ok for basic stuff