How to do a fresh install on NX860XL?

I just ordered a souped-up NX860XL notebook this weekend, and from what my husband and I have read, it sounds like it's a really good notebook but comes with a bunch of unnecessary software. It's quite likely that I will want to do a fresh install of Windows and all the drivers, and not bother with uninstalling any of the preloaded software. (We had to do this with the ThinkPad that I'm replacing and we not only reclaimed a large amount of disk space, but general reliability and game performance improved significantly as well.)

I've found very little info at all about the NX860XL on Gateway's support site though, and I have some questions:
1. From the support site, it sounds like there's some kind of recovery feature that restores the bundled applications and software. Does it have a way of just installing the OS and drivers, with none of the stupid extra software? (I'd like to use this if possible rather than doing a by-hand install, just to save time.)
2. If we have to do a complete manual install of Windows/drivers, are there any guides to doing a fresh install for this model or other Gateway notebooks? Everything on the support site only talks about using the recovery feature, which I will probably want to destroy anyway, to get some disk space back.
3. Has anyone here with an NX860 model done a fresh Windows install on it, and if so, have any tips to share?

Thanks!

P.S. OMG I can't wait til it's here!!!

 

MistressWilde, congrats on your purchase. I've been very happy with my NX860XL since it arrived in March. Gateway has a winner with this one. I haven't tried their tech/customer support yet, but they did call me the other day to see if everything was going OK. I'd never experienced that before after a computer purchase. That's basically what I had to say. I just uninstalled the junk I didn't want on my notebook and chose not to do a complete format. One of the first to go was McAfee. It was really slowing things down. I went with CA security package and it seems to be much better behaved. Maybe one of the other NX860XL owners out there can provide info about a fresh install.

 

Hi, thanks for replying! Any idea how much of your hard drive the recovery partition eats up? (If there is a recovery partition... it sounds like there is one, based on the support site articles...)

 

You can select in System Restore setup how much of your drive will be reserved for restore files. I've got mine currently set at 12% or about 11GB since I still have plenty of disk space. I did have System Restore off, but had a virus scare (which turned out to be false) so I turned it back on. I guess it slows down everything a little, but I haven't noticed. There is a recovery partition with a big recovery file which I never used. I moved the file over to my external back up drive. I guess it contains all the drivers etc. Come to think about it, the Gateway guide did have an operation to go through to save all drivers in a file first thing...almost forgot about that. I burnt them onto a cd and filed them. In a real pinch you could always download the drivers from the Gateway site if you have another computer. The backup partition is 10GB on my 100GB drive. I'd just as soon it wasn't there and that would be the only reason I'd reformat.

 

I reformatted the drive and did a fresh install. I recommend getting all the drivers at http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?param=nx860xl&st=kw I was not able to install the chipset drivers so I got them from the Intel site. My biggest problem was that I have an older version of windows XP which did have SATA drivers. The hard drive was not detected when I went to install XP. You can get around this in 2 ways. Have an external floppy or slipstream the drivers into XP. I went with the slipstream version. After that the install was pretty straightforward.

I have been extremely pleased with the computer so far.

 

Thank you, Sirosis! Oy, it looks like I'll have to get a USB floppy drive then. Only I just saw on Microsoft's site that only three USB floppy drives are supported by Windows XP setup.

What do you mean by slipstream? Did you put the drivers on a Windows XP CD somehow?

 

Yes. Slipstream means you add the drivers to the windows XP cd. You can also add service packs etc. Some links

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=13173&hl=Si3112r
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=559

I remember I had to get the info from the SATA drivers and change a few files similar to described. It might be easier to use a floppy.

 

For what it's worth...my 8510GZ(basic level predecesor to your NX860) came with a 6.7GB recovery partition on my 100GB hard drive. I uninstalled the apps I didn't need(which were only like 7 applications) without any issue. I just made sure to do it right away. I decided to leave the recovery partition there just in case I needed it. I intended on wiping it and doing a fresh install...but that was back in October of 2005. I'm still running fine with no issues now. Can't justify the few hours it'd take to reinstall and reload my applications when I don't think I'll get any performance benefit from it.

 

I think that the short answer to your question is "no" - you can't just install the OS. Could be wrong but I have the 7515 and I have wanted to do the same thing but didn't find a way to do it.

For my part though I really like the recovery partition. It works really well and even backs up almost your entire C: for you if you want. Once you have reformatted there will be a folder called something like "Backup of C: 1-1-06". It will contain almost all of your files except for applications. It really makes things easier.

 

My recovery partition is 5.84 GB on the NX860XL I bought in Feb/March timeframe. The actual files take up 1.89 GB of that partition.

I uninstalled AOL and McAfee first thing and turned off a few startup programs. My machine has been trouble free so far.

 

Revisiting this thread because I found the link useful to me:

http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html

I have the txtsetup.sif file for the SATA drivers as well as the proper files to make this work. So if anyone is going to do this I could walk you through it.

 

Did anyone here manage to get this to work?

 

I got it to work. If you have any questions I'll try to answer them.

First thing I did was get all the drivers from:
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?param=nx860xl&st=kw

This is important to follow:
Then I made a slipstream XP Pro SP2 CD with SATA drivers by following:
http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html

You need to extract the drivers from
D00455-001-001.exe (SATA drivers)

Run the setup and you'll get some files installed into:
C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel Matrix Storage Manager\Driver
iaachi.cat
iastor.cat
iaStor.sys
iaachi.inf
iastor.inf
TXTSETUP.OEM

These files were placed in the $OEM$\$1\Drivers\SATA\iastor
directrory for slipstreaming.

Copy iastor.sys to the I386 directory.

In TXTSETUP.SIF under [SourceDiskFiles] I added:
iastor.sys = 1,,,,,,4_,4,1,,,1,4

under [HardwareIdsDatabase]
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C5&CC_0106 = "iastor"

[SCSI.Load]
iastor = iastor.sys,4

[SCSI]
iastor = "Intel(R) 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH7M)"

My WINNT.SIF file consists of the following:
[Unattended]
OemPreinstall=Yes
OemPnPDriversPath="Drivers\SATA\iastor"
[Data]
UnattendedInstall=Yes
MSDosInitiated=No
AutoPartition=0

Then follow the instructions on how to create a bootable XP CD and burn it. The install should detect the SATA drive and install XP. Then install the Gateway drivers. I do remember I couldn't install the chipset drivers from the gateway site but got them from Intel which worked.

I have been running a fresh install for about 4 months with no problems.

 

i dont quite understand the how to do the slipstream.
I have backed up my drivers using the system recovery software that produced an ISO file and then burned to DVD.

Would it be wise to remove the recovery partition? Id prefere to do installs with disks and do full formats instead of using the recovery partition.

 

You'll need a Windows XP CD to do the install. Follow the directions on http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html and the additional info here and you should be good to go.

You could keep the partition or get rid of it. I formatted my drive into 2 partitions of about equal size. I figured if I need to recover I have my slipstream XP Pro CD to do it and then copy over files I've backed up.

 

I can't get it to work. Do you think you can post your Txtsetup.sif file and let me analyse it? Also, there are several [SourceDisksFile] heading in the file and does it matter where to insert the entries? I placed it in the first one and it obviously didn't work.

I tested the Windows CD that I made in Virtual PC/VMware and it works. I also notice some hard drive options in the BIOS and could it be that the answer may lie in the BIOS?

 

Also, once I delete the original partition on my hard drive, how can I put it back? I don't recall getting a recovery disk from Gateway and even then there was a warning of not recovering the original partition.

 

I have an NX860XL coming this week for a gaming development laptop so I'm curous...

Did your older image of XP have SP2 or how old are we talking about - 1, 2 3 years old? I'm curious because I want to just do a full FDISK/FORMAT with a company XP Pro or XP Pro 64 disk (at least until the whole Vista upgrade deal pans out). I haven't had any problems doing this on hundreds of desktops with SATA controllers, but if this Gateway uses some kind of goofy controller that isn't recognized by my XP install, then I guess I might have to do this...

Thx!

 

It was old. It didn't even have SP1. So a newer version of XP should work fine. I don't think there is anything about the controller that would cause a problem. Hopefully it works without the slipstream.