Clean Vista install WITH NO ACTIVATION

The guide is very vague as to which stuff to actually install from the SWSetup - which obviously is a question everyone is faced with after following the great (but thus incomplete) guide.

I understand this is dependant on which computer is used, but because we're at least limited to the HP/Compaq/Voodoo in this forum, I figured I might ask what is RECOMMENDED and recommended AGAINST installing on my HP dv9740.

I've compiled CVA info, from each folder in SWSetup, for everyones benefit below. I am not a qualified/competent user - but I have marked what I'm guessing is GOOD/INSTALL in green and BAD/AVOID in red. Some merely left black that I have no guess on. It would be super if someone can correct me.
( Note to admin: I also think this information ought to be made 'sticky' in the beginning of this 100+ message thread.)

sincerst thanks!

/Amzg



Adobe\LI
Acrobat reader
- might just as well get it from here, no?


CyberDVD\CyberLink DVD Suite
Cyberlink DVD Suite


DPFPR\Digital_3.0.0.2598_B_A5
Digital Persona


Drivers\Audio\AUDIO
Conexant HD-Audio SmartAMC HD2 Driver
This contains the Vista driver for Conexant HD Audio .


Drivers\Chipset\CHIPSET
nVidia nForce Chipset Driver
This contains the Vista driver for nVidia chipset chips Driver.


Drivers\Misc2\READER
Ricoh 5-1 Card Reader Driver
This contains Windows Vista driver for Ricoh card reader device.


Drivers\Misc5\FPR
AuthenTec AES1610 Finger Printer Driver
This is a self-extracting compressed file that contains the AuthenTec AES1610 Finger Printer Driver.


Drivers\Modem\MODEM
HDAUDIO Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP
This contains the Windows Vista driver for Conaxent HD Modem chip.


Drivers\Touchpad\synaptics
Synaptics Touchpad
The Touchpad driver provides advanced features such as PalmCheck, EdgeMotion, tap zones, double tap and tap to select.


Drivers\TVTnr\PVRDCRD_A2.220
HP DVB-T TV Tuner
Hardware enabling SW Driver for HP DVB-T TV Tuner PCI ExpressCard.


Drivers\TVTnr2\PVRHYBCD_C1.20
HP Digital/Analog TV Tuner - (Supports NACC)


Drivers\Video\VIDEO
nVidia GeForce series video driver
This contains the Windows Vista driver for nVidia video chips .


Drivers\WLAN\SP37913
Atheros AR5007 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Driver


ESUVT\SP37736
Essential System Updates for Microsoft Vista
This package installs Microsoft fixes and enhancements for the Microsoft Vista Operating System, as well as providing other fixes and enhancements that are specific to the listed notebook models. These fixes and enhancements are required to improve the performance of these notebook models.
- or is this something Vista will automatically detect as missing and download?


HPASL\sp37021
HP Active Support Library
Active Support Library is a collection of tools offering customers the ability to troubleshoot and diagnose their computer.
- ok this one I'm very uncertain about?


hpImgEnh
- no cva file?


HPUpdate\HPSU
HP Update
HP Update provides an easy and convenient way to keep your HP software programs and HP devices up to date. The HP Update program will locate the latest updates that are needed for the HP hardware and software installed on your system and give you the choice of which to install.


HSC\SP37115
HP Help and Support Vista
This package customizes Microsoft Help and Support in Windows Vista with product and support information and diagnostic tools for Compaq or HP Notebook PCs.
- I'm guessing it's good, or?


Inetsec\Sym
Symantec Norton Internet Security
Uninstall any version of NIS on the system using Add-Remove Programs before attempting a new installation. NIS helps keep personal computers safe from viruses, hackers, and privacy threats in one easy-to-use, fully integrated suite.
- better get some free antivirus software, right?


LSHSI\LI
LightScribe Host Software (DRF)
- not sure what this is but it sounds good...?


MMFlash\AdobeFlash90470
Macromedia Flash Player 9ax
-might just as well get it from here, no?


MSNLIVE\<language>
MSN Live Messenger 8.1


MSWorks\02\MS Works 90
MS Works 9.0
(--etc for some other languages)
- nor harm with this software, right? Or will it interfere with e.g OpenOffice?


QPW\QP4W
HP QuickPlay / DVD Play


QTouch\QTouch
HP QuickTouch


Shockwave\Shock_10.2.0.023A3
Adobe Shockwave Player


sp37021
- no CVA file?


SUNJAVA\SunJava
Provides support for running Java applets and code.
Version=1.6.0


support
- contains a file named gbunicnv.exe but no CVA file?


sw_ver\325670B2
Hp File Based Installer


sw_ver\OCAMRK
OCA marker file for Vista


sw_ver\TPV3HP00
Windows Vista 32-Bit Home Premium Edition
-?


TvTnr2 - hcw85bda
This is the CX23885 AVStream video/audio capture driver inf file PCI Express x1 Adapter
- sounds like something important if I want to use TV feature, or?


UG0088\UG0088
HP_User_Guides_0088
- maybe this is good? or is it something that taxes CPU?


WLASST\SP36770
HP Wireless Assistant
HP Wireless Assistant provides a way of controlling the enablement of the individual Wireless devices {Bluetooth, WLAN, WWAN} and shows the state of the radios for them.
- sounds valuable, or?


YouCam\Youcam
Cyberlink Youcam
- I assume this is for the built in webcam?

 

Hey, that's a great list. I tried to avoid doing that because things change and some people will want some software and not others. I think your list is a great starting point for anyone to make a decision about what to install/not install.

 

Thank you Orev.

...but I feel really unsecure about this. I would really, really, appreciate it if any of you sharper guys would do a rough run through which ones you would keep or avoid if it was your computer, and maybe a quick note about the choice. Nothing "definitive", just your preferences. Particularly which ones to avoid, I guess.

I'm just so lost at this, but I really wish for my attempt at following these clean install instructions to actually be meaningful.

Again, thank you so much for helping out!

/Amzg

 

Personally I only do drivers, the Vista fixes, and the HP Wireless assistant. There are many things which are in a gray area like the cyberlink dvd, adobe, flash, etc... so it's really hard to have a definitive list. Each of these things is useful to someone. I tend to wait until I need something before installing it.

 

Thank you again orev. That does give a good general guideline.

I also found this.

Best

Amzg

 

My laptop currently has Vista Home Premium but I will probably do a clean install with either vista business or vista ultimate. So my question related to after I did that.
I have a msdn key which will activate my vista once clean install is done for vista ultimate, and I will backup my activation with ABR after that. But every msdn key can only activate certain limited installtions. In future, if I ever had to do a clean install again, in case of virus or something else, can ABR restore my activation, in other words, reactivate my vista ultimate without connecting me to microsoft servers??

 

No, it only works with OEM activations.

 

I didnt get it.... On HP drivers page for dv6700CTO, I only see Quicklaunch software (v.6.40B) and thats all. Where do I get the QL drivers?

Also, where to get the webcam and express-card remote control drivers for my notebook?? Someone replied to one of my other posts that remote-control drivers are included in QL software. But I read someone posting in this thread that he couldnt get the remote to work even after installing QL. Please help...

 

On the Drivers Page you mentioned:

Driver - Keyboard, Mouse and Input Devices
The QuickLaunch Button Software (QLB) is the (v.6.40B) you mentioned.

Software - Multimedia
HP QuickPlay Web Update (v.3.63 A) (This is the QuickPlay Windows Software (QPW)).

I have not done a clean install, but, I have dug myself out of several problems.

Be sure to make a copy of your C:\SWSETUP folder (copy it to DVD) for future reference and software/driver files. The QLB folder also contains the QuickLaunch Button software and the QPW folder contains the QuickPlay Windows software.

My laptop uses a driver for the Webcam that looks like it was selected by Vista during the install. It is a Microsoft USBVIDEO driver Date: 6/21/2006 Ver. 6.0.6001.1800. This driver number appears to be a group of drivers (or whatever Microsoft calls them) and contains many different drivers of which the Webcam is one.

The following Webcam driver listed on HP’s website for Vista is the latest http://tinyurl.com/57hf9t but I don’t think this is the driver installed on my notebook as I indicated above. It doesn’t appear that you are getting much info about webcam drivers so I thought I would offer my .02. At least maybe someone will say I am correct or all wet .

I don’t know about the remote-control-drivers.

I hope some of the above info is useful to you.

 

As mentioned earlier, ABR won't work for you, however since you are installing Ultimate I would suggest that after you do the install you use Complete PC Backup to make a clean image. Then, next time you install you can restore the image instead of doing a "real" reinstall.

You've quoted a very old post. HP has changed the software they use for the buttons now. You will need to adapt the recommendations of the guide to the specifics of your situation.

 

Thnaks Orev for following up. So, complete pc backup/restore using vista ultimate (or acronis TI maybe) will restore a vista's activation also??

Also, Is there a way to keep the recovery partition and use it later for system recovery. Even though I have burnt the recovery DVD's, I would still like to have the freedom of having recovery sitting on HDD iteself.
Thanks for help.

 

oh my god .. you are a life saver .. i have an hp pavilion dv6725ee with vista home premium included ..

and i tried making the recovery dvds using the recovery manager .. but it gave me alot of errors .. and i ended up with 5 disk 1 dvds and it doesnt continue to disk 2 of the recovery .. dunno how to fix this .. but the abr app is absolutely amazing .. now i can sleep easy until i have some time to go to hp and ask for my recovery dvds ..

another question .. "doesnt the recovery drive has the same function as the dvds .. meaning i can recover from it during boot using f11"

thanks alot in advance and for the amazing tuto ..

cheers

 

Hello guys, My T61 come with Vista Business (Japanese) OEM. Since i cannot read Jap, i m thinking to clean install Vista Business (English Version) using a Vista disc i found somewhere. Would ABR work for different language version? ( I would be using same Business Ver).

 

Yes ABR should work. I dont remember Vista Business having a multilingual user interface though.

 

Thanks! I guess ABR will save me some telephone calls to MS

 

Thanks for ur prompt reply.
Yes, MUI doesn't work with Vista Business though language can be changed through Vistalizator ( www.froggie.sk/).

I don't have Vista (Japanese) disk. So, i m planning to Clean Install using English disk (and will continue using English interface).
Wanna make sure if original OEM license for Japanese version will work with new English version of Vista (if i m using the same Vista Business).
Thanks

 

Yes, either way you make the image, it is made of the hard drive which has the activation stored on it. When you restore the image, it will still be activated.

If you want to keep the recovery partition, just don't delete it when you do the install.

Recovery discs are the same as what's on the hard drive. They way they work is to create a partition on the hard drive, then copy themselves to it. Then you reboot from that partition, and do the reinstall from there.

 

Hey Orev, thanks for help again. Wanted to ask if I dont delete the recovery partition, can I still do recovery after clean install using it??? means can I still press F11 when rebooting and access that partition to do the recovery??? someone said its not doable because clean install deletes the MBR thereby removing the existence of recovery partition option from the boot menu or something like that. So, basically question is, given its not deleted, can recovery partition still be accessed to do a recovery after a clean install is done using F11 when rebooting??

 

I'm not sure as I have not tried it myself. I suspect that once you do the install the MBR will be overwritten. If you leave the partition there, I think you can boot from the DVD then tell it to restore from the partition. You can always try it and if it doesn't work you can do a full recovery from the recovery discs.

 

Worked great on a new HP dv2700t. Thanks!

 

Alright i seem to be having some issues obtaining a vista cd, its not on my computer as far as i can tell(HP Dv5z). None of my buddies have one and i cant order it from the marketplace so im in a rough position. I have kinda cleaned up vista a little, this may have to do for now.

 

I think I understand the reason for going through the steps created by the OP; but if I've already created the recovery discs and am restoring my system, so wouldn't that restore also contain the original generic OEM pre-activated codes? Thereby also bypassing on-line activation?

 

Correct. However, a recovery disk (as I refer to it) doesn't just reinstall the OS, it also installs bloatware. Many people want to just reinstall the OS so that their computer is free of any extra junk. If they don't have an OS reinstall disk with the OEM key pre-activated (like Dell provides), then the user will have to use a generic OS install disk and use Orev's tool to activate their OEM key.

 

Of course it does. But the purpose of this guide is for people who want to do a clean install using a regular Vista DVD instead of using the recovery discs/partition provided by HP, so they can install only the software they need and not bother with HP's junk software.

 

I guess I missed the main point. Will definately give this procedure a go when my notebook arrives. Good thing I kept the anytime upgrade dvd.

 

Orev, …

“ Dell is currently the only OEM I have info for. If you have a disc from another OEM, please let me know and we can figure out how to add it”.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I recently received a HP DV2700tv in exchange for a defective L2000. Like a lot of folks, I wanted to do a clean install of Vista but was faced with the problem of having only the HP Recovery Disks and a copy of the software setup folder. As luck would have it though, some friends came to stay the weekend and just happen to bring their brand new Lenovo Ideapad along, including an OEM/Lenovo branded, Vista Home Premium 32 installation disk.

I read through your guide several times. I checked the Lenovo “recovery” disk and thought it might be worth a shot to get a “clean” install on the DV2700tv. To make a long story short, it worked !! The only exception is that the Lenovo installer never asked for an installation key. It basically just installed Vista Home Premium 32 (no SP1) as the only option (although all the other Vista versions are listed on the disk). Following the directions for backing up Vista keys, once the install was complete I ran ARB to reinstall the correct keys and it activated without issue.

Very cool....so thanks very much for all the hard work put into your “Clean Install” guide. I now have a clean Vista install…. with only one minor exception. The install, as pretty much expected, includes a few spots of Lenovo branding but no additional add-in software. I’ve been able to remove all of the branding with regedit and the deletion of the oobe files found in the system 32 folder. Still, prior to running it through vLite for slipsteaming SP1, it would be nice not to have the Lenovo branding present.

So… any thoughts on removing the Lenovo branding?

Note: I looked over your Dell OEM comments to see if perhaps Lenovo used the same OEM method but the Dell files you mentioned are not present on the Lenovo/Vista OEM disk. Here’s what the disk looks like.

View attachment 21319

 

Thanks Orev. I had posted this question in a saparate thread and got this answer:

Can you please share your thoughts about it??

 

If I have clean install on my system and if I ever had to get online support from a HP rep or send this laptop in for repair from HP, can they deny me support or help because I have a clean install??? if yes, whats the solution in that case??

 

Works perfectly on Acer 8920. Thanks!!

 

Worked great on my Toshiba U405D-S2852!
Thank you for the great guide, much appreciated.

 

hmmm. i am not able to download windows vista as the links given aren't working. i live in singapore and no one sells anytime upgrade dvd. what else can i do to get the disc so that i can do a clean install?

question: if i use dell oem vista disc, would i be able to use it to do a clean install on my HP pavillion comp?

 

Yes, just use either the Vista Product Key on the bottom of your notebook or the ABR program to do the install.

 

I have an Anytime Upgrade Disc that came with my laptop. My laptop is running 32bit Vista, would I be able to follow these instructions and install 64bit Vista on my laptop?

 

You will probably need to slightly modify the Dell disc to remove the dell customizations. There are instructions in the "OEM Re-Installation Disc" section of the guide.

You will need to obtain a 64-bit disc. But otherwise, the instructions will work just fine.

 

Thanks orev. i managed to successfully clean install windows vista thanks to your great guide.

anyway, i need a little bit more help. in windows update, it failed to install all the "updates for windows vista" and "security updates for windows vista". any reason why is that so? cos apparently they are important updates. also, from the folder swsetup, the folders "ESUVT" and "MSCUVT"...i didn't install that stuff. is it because i didn't install that stuff, windows update is not able to install the vista updates?

 

Skipping the updates from ESUVT and MSCUVT should not cause any problems with any other windows updates, however those are considered "critical" updates, and I think you should install them.

To get the updates from WU to install, take a look at the details (right-click) and see if there's any information about why it didn't work.

 

alright all the updates that failed in WU were installed the second time round. dunno why they failed the first time round. SP1 is already available in WU. that was fast. so everything's ok now! thanks once again orev for your guide.

 

Thanks for this great guide, I just finished a clean install on my dv5t . . . beautiful!

 

gRr. i accidentaly deleted the recovery partition on drive D: .. havent burned the disks yet..is partitioning the drive again to alteast 10GB by a software and copying the D: rec. partition of my friend and transferring it on my on comp will help? we got the same model . HELP.

 

i am not sure, but i think u can back up ur activation, recover from your friend's partition, and then restore ur activation. i might be mistaken so wait for others to post abt this first

 

Have your friend burn his recovery disks, then make a copy of them for you. Make sure you do a complete disc copy (like an image), don't just copy the files between each disc. Try to boot off the copies before you consider it working. You won't be forced to do a restore if you just boot from them.

 

I just got a dv5t, which did not come with a physical anytime upgrade disc and I can't seem to locate it on the hd. Chaz, since you also have a dv5t and did the clean install, could you help me out? Thanks.

 

The anytime upgrade discs are no longer being distributed, so you'll have to take one of the other routes. If you can borrow a disc from someone else, that will work -- they are all the same.

 

I was hoping it was on the hd somewhere and I just couldn't locate it. Are there any other options besides borrowing one?

 

thanks orev. Really.

 

Very good guide. Thourough to say the least

 

Hello All...

I had done a clean install of Vista onto my Compaq C762NR after I got it. All that I did was borrow a disk labeled "Microsoft Windows Vista OEM Vista 32/64-Bit" that my boss had that came with her Gateway desktop she had just bought the same week. I was over her house helping her set some stuff up, saw she had that disc and thought it might be handy to have...

I ripped it to an ISO with UltraISO and re-burned it with UltraISO, and installed onto my Compaq from that.

I even used the Product Key on the bottom of my laptop. It never asked me to activate and I never had any problems w/ WGA or anything, and was able to get all updates.

Aside form physically acquiring a Vista disc as described, I don't see why this longer procedure is necessary if that all worked...

Can anyone explain why my procedure is different/worked fine?

 

i just bought an HP dv9700t and i am trying to do a clean install. Do you know if i can make a bootable vista disc from the harddrive or do i need to buy one? I tried checking the anytime upgrade but it says i will send an upgrade disc if i order. Does it mean i do not have an anytime upgrade in my harddrive and will have to order a disc?
thank you for all the help

 

You cannot make a Vista disc to do a clean install from the data on your harddrive.

You do NOT have the data to make an anytime upgrade disc on your computer. I am not sure if you can still order one, I heard no, but you could call and find out.

 

I am thinking about doing the clean install for my new dv5t. However, I am having little problem understanding step 5. Do I need to download the unzipped abr file onto a flash drive or can I just write down the activation code? Is there something specific in the file that I need for the clean install? Maybe this isn't such a good idea for me to do...haha

EDIT: Anyone know where I can download and burn the disc?