cleaning up my new inspiron

So my inspiron arrived in the mail yesterday. It's a yellow 1520 that I named boco

Anyways, I didnt plan ahead and I'm unable to drive anywhere until I'm done with finals on the 14th, and before then I had been planning on taking to best buy or some PC shop and having it cleaned because notebooks come with tons of preinstalled crap that slows them down, right?

I talked to a best buy employee (not the best source of info, I know) and he said "well, I'm a CS major and it would take me 12 hours to do what geek squad will do in 2 hours, so I would say it's worth paying them"

So... do I need to find a ride and get it to them to have it cleaned up or is it something I could find out how to do fairly easily myself?

 

I wouldn't pay a dime to a Best Buy Geek Squad to clean up my computer. Dells are known to have less bloatware then Sony or HP and I don't think there is a need to save disk space. If you do really want to, you can reinstall Windows with the disc provided with Boco lol. It's really easy to do and it's free!

 

is fairly easy to do it. clean install the os. u can find guides all over the net and try serching the forums as ive seen one or two

 

lol good name

 

thanks


Hmm, I guess my concern is that it's going to be much more of a hassle if I end up doing it down the road, so I wanted to get it out of the way first. When you say that Dells are known to have less bloatware, how much less are we talking about? I was told that bloatware can slow notebooks by as much as 25 or 30%

 

From some of the reviews here on NBR and my personal experience, Dell only includes what's quoted below. Bloatware can slow down your notebook, but that's only if the software starts up with your computer. For Dell, the only piece of software that would start when you boot it would probably be Google Desktop. If you have Vista, Google Desktop would pretty much be useless, because Vista already integrates what Google Desktop offers. Remember, you can uninstall all 4 of these software. That would be easier than reinstalling Windows.

Dell User Review

 

Do a fresh install or delete the un-needed software. I wouldn't pay Geek Squad any money to do it. it's not really that big of a deal.

Oh, i named my laptop Bluebird. Cause it's blue, and it's free like a bird, portable, no restraints.

 

Interesting, I've never thought of naming my laptops but it's not a half bad idea.

Anyway, I agree with not paying the geek squad to do that unless you are just way uncomfortable with doing it yourself. It's a pretty simple process you could save your money on.

 

Yeah def something you can do yourself. If you're running Vista on it all you have to do is use the OS install disc and it'll let you do a fresh install sans bloatware. From there you can decide what you want if anything and you'll have your laptop for use the whole time.

 

Hmm, I have an issue that is separate. The first time I tried restarting my inspiron it stayed on the "windows is shutting down" screen for 11 minutes before I forced it to shut down and turned it on. Since then I have restarted it once and shut it off and then turned it on, and both times it has told me "windows has recovered from an improper shutdown" or something along those lines.

What's going on?

Also, programs I'm not sure of:

NetWaiting
MediaDirect

There's also other stuff I dont think I need but it doesnt read as taking up hardrive space, should I worry about it? Also right now there are 22 processes running, sound about right?

Also there is this "Fn" key between the windows key and the ctrl key. What is it doing there? I feel old -.-

 

22 processes is very little for today's laptop. Don't worry. It's a good thing. MediaDirect is the button in the front of the laptop that's like a media center. It allows you to watch movies, view photos, powerpoint without booting up Windows.

 

Ok I lied. It's only 21 processes in the list, the number shown at the bottom of the window is 69-72

There are tons of things running that have searched for at bleepingcomputer.com that arent necessary, but I dont know how to make it so that they dont start up automatically.

I also tried uninstalling PC-cillin and it didnt like that very much. Now it's constantly in the task bar but when I try to uninstall the program it says "that action can only be performed on installed programs"

I also think I have deleted stupid things like dell support center and it installs it again every time I reboot.

-.-

 

BlackViper can help you clean up your machine.

 

1. That might be Vista just being Vista My system sometimes refuses to wake up when it falls asleep, Once or twice it stays on the logging off screen until I manually turn it off, hopefully these issues will be addressed with SP1.

2. Netwaiting is a program that allows people with Dial-Up to get phone calls while online-A box will pop up and give a choice to either stay connected or answer the call. Media Direct allows you to play media (CD's/DVD's, pictures, videos, etc.) without booting Windows. Try it by pressing the media button with a "house" on it while the computer is off.

3. 22 processes? That's really, really good, I currently have about 70 running.

4. The FN key is called the "Function" key. It's used kind of like the CTRL and ALT keys to access certain system functions. You can tell where you can use the FN key by looking for keys on your keyboard that have another letter, symbol, or number on them in a color that matches the color of the Function key lettering. Hold down the FN key and press one of these keys to access it's secondary function. On my system, for example, keys that have functions that can be controlled with the function key (such as screen brightness-shared with UP/DOWN/and LEFT arrows, Battery Status-Shared with F3, and the integrated number pad, etc.) have the lettering, symbol, etc. in blue.

Hope you enjoy your new notebook

 

Considering Geek Squad would probably put more junk on then off I'd steer clear I own a Dell & They come with no bloatware really just uninstall Google Desktop & you'll be fine.