Do HP systems ship with Vista installation disc?

Sorry if this has been asked before but i've just had awful trouble with Dell systems for the last 3 months and have decided to go elsewhere for my laptop.

I'm looking at the dv2799ea (same as dv2700t) in the UK and would just like to know if it comes with the vista dvd to do a fresh install?

Thanks.

 

I doubt it. My 6720s didn't come with a Vista recovery DVD. I'm downloading one now to see if it'll work.

 

Thanks for the quick reply, I guess I could make do giving it a good clean without a fresh install.

 

Unless you order the recovery disks, HP never sends you a Vista installation disk or the recovery disks. You can burn the recovery disks on your own computer though. Inside the start menu there will be a Recovery Disk Creator where you can burn the recovery disks, but these disks will only restore your laptop to default settings with all the bloatware intact. If you wanted to do a clean install, burn the recovery disks first, then purchase a Windows Anytime Upgrade disk and you will then be able to do a clean install, and still have the Recovery Disks as a backup incase something happens.

 

Envision is correct. HP will only send recovery disks to you if you are having problems with your notebook. When you get them is another matter. DO NOT do what I did and wait to burn your discs. Do it ASAP. If you want to know why just go to my thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=215345

 

What you need to do is buy a Vista anytime upgrade DVD and use that for a clean install. I purchased mine at compusa.com for 5 bucks but they are out of business now.. Not sure where people are getting them now but microsoft may provide them.. there are some threads on this forum about that. Then use the sticky guide on this forum to perform a clean install of vista without activation by using your oem key. The recovery discs that HP sends you or the ones you burn from your recovery partition include all the bloat and spyware that comes shipped with every HP system. However, you can remove much of that fairly easily and remove many unneeded vista features in the services.msc and msconfig startup folder etc... But it does take some work. The two things that I would caution is removing Norton.. if yours has that, and Vongo. If you want to uninstall norton go to their site and get the Symantec removable tool. When I removed norton in the control panel I lost my internet connection.. I had to do a system restore to bring it back and then use the removal tool. The Vongo is probably the worst spyware resurrecting bloatware that HP installs. You can't remove that very easily.. Add/remove does not work... it will resurrect itself. I had a HP tech remotely take control of the system and they spent almost a half an hour in my registry deleting lines to kill off the vongo. Vongo must have subsidized HP quite a bit of money for HP to install such a horrible app on their systems.

I did get the Vista anytime upgrade DVD. I have not done a clean install yet since my system is running very fast and stable. But it took a couple of days of work to get it like that. If I ever have to reinstall vista I will probably do a clean install.. save me allot of hassle. But I also made a backup of what I have with Acronis True image so I guess I could do that. Which is another way of doing it.. tweak you factory install and then back that up with Acronis true image.. which is excellent imaging software.

 

Thanks a lot everyone for your help, especially HI DesertNM for your post I found it very helpful .

I've decided that I won't be doing a clean install since it seems like having to do a lot more than i'm comfortable with. I am however very comfortable with removing programs, speeding up with msconfig, services.msc and doing nother Vista tweaks. It looks like doing that will be enough to get it at it's top performance, or very close to.

Here's what I will be ordering shortly, it's a dv2700 verve special edition:

14.1” 1280x800 WXGA High Definition BrightView Widescreen Display
T9300 2.5Ghz 6MB L2 Cache
4GB DDR2 RAM
250GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
8400M GS 128MB
Fingerprint Reader
Remote Control etc etc

 

Doing a clean install is always worth it. Uninstalling programs and doing the process that HI DesertNM will get you a faster performing PC, but won't take you close to the speed of your computer with a clean install. It's not that complicated to do a clean install, so I don't know what is stopping people that know about the benefits of it. Also, you are part of this forum, and have access to an amazing amount of information regarding HP laptops and clean installs. What would make you think it would be too hard for you too accomplish? Anyways, by doing a clean install it helps you learn more about the computer, understand more about the hardware, drivers, and software, etc.

All in all, do a clean install, you will definitely notice the difference.

 

Well for starters I am in the UK and have no idea whether/where you can buy a Vista anytime upgrade DVD. I have owned numerous Dell laptops in the past with lots of bloatware and clean installed them all with the included vista dvd. My mum has just recieved an m1330 and did not want to clean install, so I just uninstalled the bloatware and tweaked vista and in my opinion it is just as fast as previous dell laptops I have owned that were clean installed (and the m1330 has weaker specs than those).

 

I forgot to mention to make a copy of your swsetup folder on C: drive.. That has all the drivers and applications that ship with any new HP system. What I did after I made my back up copies (HP only allows one burned copy so keep it in a safe place!) is I deleted the back up partition and merged it with the primary giving me another 10 gigs of space. Copying and deleting the swsetup folder will also free up another gig or more.. I forgot how much it was. But I have a 120 gig HD and Vista is such the beast it probably takes up more then 20 gigs or more by itself. You probably won't care about the drivers so much in the swsetup folder since you can get newer ones... but some of the applications are probably not available on the HP site.

As for a clean install.. yes I agree it will definitely be quicker then tweaking in both benchmarking speeds and the time it takes to manually tweak a oem install. The only reason I tweaked mine was because I did not have a anytime upgrade disc when I received my HP. Once I received my disc from Compusa I had already done the work. If HP had just sent it to me in the first place I would have done the clean install straight away.. especially with all the crap I went through with uninstalling vongo and Norton But now my system runs fast and I am too lazy to do the clean install now. I also have friends that say vista only really boots faster after doing a clean install. Once you start loading MS office and other apps it will start to take longer. Mine fully boots in 45 seconds with sidebar up and everything ready to go with office 2007 installed. I recommend using the sleep feature on vista.. it does not take much power and it will boot in seconds from sleep instead of shutting vista down. From the factory, it took 90 seconds from a full shut down which was bad. As long as you order your system with at least 2 gigs of memory I doubt you will notice that much gain from normal productivity things like web surfing and running office etc.. from a tweaked system versus a clean install. Superfetch loads all your favorite apps in memory anyways so that really speeds things up.. Thats why you better have 2 gigs of memory. If you don't', you should disable superfetch in msconfig... or services.msc.. forgot which one it resides.

Also, any copy of vista will work. Apparently all versions of vista are in all copies of vista. You can even borrow any copy and use it.. just use your own oem key.. or the one on the bottom of the laptop... but you have to call MS to activate if you do that.. Better to use the guide and do it without having to call using the oem key.. As Envision says.. its not that hard.. I will eventually get around to it. But at this point, my system is so stable and smooth.... its just not worth the effort.

Another fact is MS has never used Disc protection. They rely on authentication or validation for copy protection. What I am saying is you can use DVD copy feature in Nero or other burning applications and make vista copies. Its possible, but its also illegal per the terms on the disc. On the other hand, MS really does not care much about what disc you are using when you call them up to activate your vista copy.. All they really care is you have a legit key that is tied you your notebook. Both the oem and the printed key on the back of the notebook are tied to your machine.

Now if you call HP and ask about doing a clean install.. they will tell you not to do it and its illegal.. bla bla bla. The bottom line is they get big bucks from companies to put the bloat on.

 

Is there a "sticky" on how to remove the bloatware. The only thing I did was go into "add/remove" programs but I guess it does not work that well. My computer really flies, but maybe getting more HP ware off of it might get it to move a little better.

 

Here you go: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228

 

mikelets456, this may be more of what you're looking for. I had to search for it... I knew I had seen it somewhere:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=177289&highlight=box+guide

Edited to add: You'll want to take a look at #3 on that list. I think that's what you're wanting.

 

If all you do is go in and remove the programs, you need to get a registry cleaner to delete all the useless registry keys that are left behind. A simple tool that will parse through the registry to delete keys that have no purpose is CCleaner. It is a free application that will quickly scan through the registry and deleted and keys that are left behind after you uninstall a program. It's not the best tool, but if you are looking for something free it's not that bad.

The other thing you can look at doing is modifying the bootup programs. If you hit start, type msconfig in the run bar, then go to the startup tab, you will see all the programs that are set to run at the startup of Windows. You can deselect programs that you don't want to run every time that Windows starts and that will help the boot up time and stop those programs from hogging up some resources during the use of your computer. Just be careful when you are deselecting programs, always look at the path that it is coming from to get a better idea of what the program/processes purpose is.

 

It all depends on the things you need vista to do. There are tons of features on vista that are enabled in services.msc. Just go to the search/run box and type services.msc and you will see allot of things taking up system resources. Whats difficult is going through that huge list and deciding which ones you don't need. There are allot of guides on the net explaining what each of these services does. Many of the services are not needed by most people... Others depend on what you are doing. I personally searched many tweaking sites on the internet and slowly disabled many unneeded services. In the start up folder in MSconfig you can generally remove most of those. Again go to run/search in vista and type msconfig and go to the startup.

There is no black and white way of tweaking.. Its sucks and it takes time if you want to do it right and keep the things you need in vista running.. The good thing is you can enable things back as well as disabling in services.msc

The other stuff in add/remove is more straight forward.. except for Norton and Vongo.. Like I said, use the norton removal tool and not add/remove.. And Vongo.. well be prepared to dive into the registry to kill that one. I left that for the HP techs.. they put that resurrecting crap in there so I let them spend their time and money taking it out.

When I initially did my tweaking last summer CCleaner did not find that many lines in the registry to clean but it did not hurt anything. I believe it can back up your registry so I recommend enabling that feature just to be safe. It also has some other nice tools, so like Envision, I recommend CCleaner as part of your vista tweaking.

 

Sorry, I saw that before. I do not want to re-install the OS. I did not know if there was a write on removing bloatware from the registry, "add/remove" programs, etc......

Sorry, forgot to refresh before posting...I am a few posts behind. Good stuff guys!!! Thanks alot.

 

My HP8510p (vista business) shipped with the following disks:

Vista 32bit
Vista 64bit
XP 32bit

 

I noticed a drastic spike in performance when I dumped stuff from the msconfig and services.msc. If all you have done is uninstalled stuff in add/remove then you will no doubt see better performance if you go into these other resource hungry areas.

I initially bought a Dell 1420 and I must say when you order it without the junkware (they give you that option or at least they used to) it was really fast out of the box. I had to return it for a crappy screen and crack in the case... dell has bad QC. But anyway, HP's default vista install really suck in comparison to dell. I mean mine came fully bloated from hell. The Aero on the task bar would not even work since it had a huge resource hogging search engine.. yahoo or something like that.

Anyone who is just receiving a new HP should really consider just burning the recovery discs and copying the swsetup folder on C drive and go straight to a clean install. Any copy of vista or anytime vista DVD will work. At least for me, I spent several hours in tweaking vista. Just the aggravation that Vongo gave me would have been worth doing the clean install. Unfortunately, HP quit shipping systems with the anytime upgrade disc back in April last year. They really don't want people taking out their corporate sponsors on your desktop

 

Maybe in the business line they still do. By on the pavilion line they ship with ZERO discs. You are allowed to burn one copy of the original install.. fully loaded with all the bloat. This is typical however. Business customers generally don't tolerate bloatware on productivity business machines. But I do admire Dell for listening to their customers and they now ask you when you build a system online if you want the bloatware. At least they used to as of last summer on a inspiron system. The 1420 I briefly owned had a nice pre OS install.. Booted fast and very little bloatware.

IMO HP has better hardware then dell.. so I guess I rather fix bloatware then having hardware defects... which can't be fixed. Dells speakers are bad.. nothing you can do about it.. There screens suck too.. nothing can be done about that either.

 

Well I've placed my order for a dv2700 verve special edition:

14.1” 1280x800 WXGA High Definition BrightView Widescreen Display
T9300 2.5Ghz 6MB L2 Cache
4GB DDR2 RAM
250GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
8400M GS 128MB

It's gonna take a couple of weeks to arrive. I've found that I can buy a vista anytime upgrade disc for only £3 from microsoft so i'm going to go ahead and do that. Just to clarify with the clean vista install sticky, I use ABR to get my product key and then follow the rest of the guide using the upgrade disc?

 

Did you get the verve special edition sleeve? http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=216446I think you can only order that when you build the system. Also, I thought they were shipping with the 256mb 8400m gs now. Are you ordering with the 32 bit vista or the 64 bit? Because if you have vista premium 32 bit it will only see 3 gigs of that 4 you just ordered.

As for installing without activation.. just follow the sticky guide on the HP forum on this site. You will be installing using the oem key.. not the one on the bottom. Just read the guide it basically has a tool to put the oem key on a jump drive.. you will use that later in the install. Using the guide means you will register with the oem key and not have to call MS. If you use the key on the bottom, you will have to call MS.. but either way will work.

 

Yes it does include the sleeve, the reason it's only 128mb is because i'm in the UK and I guess it's different, but I don't mind since I don't game what so ever.

It's 32bit and it was a pre-configured system we don't get to customise in the UK

 

Well from what the gamers say the extra memory on the GPU won't help much because of other limitations on the GPU design. But you can still game with that.. just may have to turn some graphics down on the newer games. Make sure you have the newer drivers for the video card since the new ones really speed things up. You will want that just to improve on the vista aero graphics on the desktop. Believe it or not, the integrated X3100 scores higher on the 2D areo benchmarks then the 8400m GS does. On the 3D, the nvidia obviously does better.

Hope you enjoy your new notebook. I think you will really like the display and speakers on these machines. Those are the two things that really make them stand out from the dells. The build quality is much better IMO as well.

 

It won't take much to beat the build quality i've experienced in the last three dell notebooks i've ordered, all had grainy screens amongst other issues and got sent back for refunds.

Can anyone answer my latest question of: If I purchase a Vista upgrade disc from microsoft and use ABR to get my product key, then follow the guide in the vista install sticky, the install will work fine?

Thanks.

 

Well I personally have not tried it myself, but I have read dozens of people who say the ABR works perfectly on HP DV systems. For some reason it won't activate it if its on a CD etc... thats why it has to be put on a flash/usb drive. But that sticky has been up for months and it works on the dv2500 and yours is essentially the exact same. But check out the user thread on the sticky.. its 82 pages long and is still active.. In fact Orev who wrote the script is very active on that thread and just posted today. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228&page=82. I suggest just reading through that huge thread. I am sure every question you have has been answered on that thread. The script apparently works on other makes other then HP as well. Just remember, even if it doe not work, I think you can authenticate with the key on the bottom of the laptop with a online connection without calling MS.

 

Every time I get an OEM desktop/laptop, I do a clean install of the OS. Even if you uninstall all those programs/bloatware, you will always still have remnants on your install. Moreover, Windows generally slows down after about 1.5 years, and you'll have to do a reinstall. At that point, do you really want to go through removing all that bloatware again? I have to say that it's not really that difficult to do a clean install. If you follow the directions for slipstreaming an XP install CD, as stated in one of the stickies, it's downright simple. If Vista's your thing (it's definitely not mine ), then Windows Update should take care of your problems.

 

Thats what imaging software is for. I have an acronis image so I won't be doing that again. Honestly, I think my system is faster then a regular clean install at this point. Mainly because I disabled a quite a bit services in services.msc My system fully boots in 45 seconds which is good for vista. I guess the point is you can do it either way.. clean install or tweaking. In a way I like tweaking since I can keep some of the HP applications that I want. I turned off the HP stuff from loading up but left them so I can manually use them if I want to later on (EG HP advisor). Some of them I did remove all together. With a clean install you may have to re install some applications drivers back on.. With tweaking, you are just removing, disabling etc.. CCleaner did not find that many stray registry files after I uninstalled the bloat. I honestly don't think there is that much of a noticeable difference in speed from a finely tweaked system or from a fresh install. The important thing is to do it. But I expect many people just use them as they are shipped and that is a shame since they won't have efficient running systems.

 

I'm just OCD about having a clean install, I guess