New laptop - should I reinstall the OS?

I just bought the DV6449US from Circuit City. It has Vista Home Premium and Office Home/Student trial. I have licenses for Vista Ultimate and Office Ultimate and am contemplating reinstalling the OS.

It seems like there is a lot of extra / unnecessary software that comes with the laptop and would like to get rid of it. I saw the thread on installing XP, so I'm guessing that a lot of people reinstall the OS...but I just wanted to see what opinions people had... any advice for/against?

Thanks!

 

reinstalls wont help you need a complete version of vista and a clean install i suggest just using add/remove programs

 

I have the complete versions and was looking to find out if there are any downsides to installing a fresh copy of Vista as opposed to using the HP "version".

 

you have to reload all the software and hope you didnt activate ms office and there the exact same os so if the first one is acting funny use the recovery/reinstall disc worked for me never done a clean install

 

Since the laptop has the required drivers already, I would agree just to uninstall the offending programs and it's really not that difficult. I found out it took more work just to find the drivers, download them and then re-installed. Then I had to re-install some programs that came with the laptop that was there in the first place. Then you can get a registry cleaner to finalized your clean-up. I too have the full version of Ultimate and can actually upgrade to Ultimate without a clean install. Fair warnig though.. it will take awhile to do so.

 

Actually I had little problems doing a clean install of vista, and it boots/shuts down much quicker now.

The only "unknown device" after reinstall was the Quicklaunch buttons, which is easily downloaded from the HP site. Also make a backup disc of your current SWSetup folder before nixxing the HP install, so you can use it to update the default Vista drivers after the reinstall.

 

I have done both a clean install and an upgrade and didn't notice any significant difference in booting or shut down times. Yes a fresh install of Vista is faster than a recovery install but from my experience it would be best just to delete bloatwares and not be hassled with re-installing required drivers, though Vista does a great job in updating the hardware drivers automatically. But once everything you need is installed the performance differences isn't that significant.

Have fun with your new laptop and ignore people who keeps downgrading Vista. One serious programs that I don't recommed installing is NHC for XP. It will crash the whole system. Also, if you're planning to install Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 uninstall the Drag-to-Disc program, it's also not 100% compatible.

 

I should point out that I'm using no HP software at all aside from the Quicklaunch buttons. No Quickplay, Wireless wizard, HP Update or Battery Control Center stuff. It is purely a Microsoft install (aside from AV & Firewall), which may account for my added speed over the HP install. I've also disabled some minor Windows components...............

 

Yes I agree. I currently just received my dv9500t and its great. I just uninstalled all the bloatware - which really wasn't too much since I decided to keep the Roxio suite - and ran a registery cleaner and the computer runs great. I do think the start up and shut down speeds are slow but this can be because I was expected like a 40 sec boot instead of like 90 secs I get..lol. The one thing that is a little janky though is Sleep Mode. I'm going to test it some more when I get home from work but from the couple times my computer went into sleep either it would take too long to wake up or it will crash and restart :-|. Hibernate mode worked pretty well though beside the slow boot times.

Vista though I found not to be that bad. There are some issues with it but they are easy to fix and I'm looking forward for SP1. XP was pretty janky too but after SP2 it got really stable and so far Vista has been very stable to me except for Sleep mode. The visuals are nice but Vista at boot up takes up 50% of my memory so thats a full GB of mem just for Vista alone. Well Good Luck with your lappy. =D

-Eric

 

If you're just looking to get rid of the bloatware, then yes, doing it from the add/remove programs may be the best idea.

If you go for the complete format, then you can remove the recovery partition to get about 11 gigs of disk space, plus you can make it dual boot with XP, Vista, and a shared data drive.

What the OP can do right now, is make the recovery DVDs, back up the \SETUP folder to DVD, use the laptop for a few weeks, then decide. If everything works fine and you like it, great.

 

Thanks for all of the suggestions/tips. I tend to be a control freak about what is installed on my pc and my first instinct was to wipe it out and do a fresh install

This is what I was planning on doing, but I think I might do as suggested and give it a little time before I decide.

-Eric

 

emartin24 -

I am thinking about buying this laptop model. Any comments for or against it would be appreciated. How is the video graphics performance? That is the biggest drawback to me.

Thanks!

 

I don't recommend deleting the recovery partition. I have a 120gb HD and after installing all the softwares I use I still have 50gb left (excluding the partition). Just leave the partition alone for emergencies.

 

For any other dv6449us users that come across this thread, there is a user's group specifically for this laptop model at:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/HPdv6449us/

 

xvvvz - I sent you a PM detailing my thoughts.

Thanks for the yahoo link...