Optimizing my dv6500t, Out of the Box

My dv6500t is scheduled to ship September 12.

I’ve read lots of threads on the site regarding optimizing performance. I am aware of the potential threats posed by Vista, Norton, vongo and bloatware, et al.
I do not have much technical expertise, so I plan on learning to peacefully coexist with Vista rather than installing XP.

I gather that the best thing to do upon receiving my machine would be to “clean install” vista to eliminate the unnecessary third party software and pop-up offers gumming up my system.

Do I need a vista restore disk to do this?
Can someone offer or direct me to a resource with idiot-proof step by step instruction?
Any other advice on making my machine run smoothly as possible is greatly appreciated.
I do know that when the inevitable problems do arise, I will come here looking for solutions. I have read about adjusting the BIOS, but I'll wait to see how my machine performs before attempting any mods.

BTW, does anybody have anything nice to say about vista? Somebody out there must find it workable.

Thanks.

 

There's a sticky for this.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228

For the nice comment, err... I like the 3D-angle thing?

 

Yeah, I found that 5 minutes after I posted

Gamja- Are you planning to do that clean install when yours shows up?

 

Nice thing to say about Vista? Yes - its handy having two OS's on one system in case one tanks with a virus or something. Received mine yesterday and loaded XP on a spare drive - then Vista onto a 50-Gb partition on the same drive then used the balance for data. I used an Anytime Upgrade DVD to install Vista - after backing up the activation and certificate. No problems activating after the install and the clean Vista build runs pretty fast. Mine has an LPL display - which looked kinda washed out until I tuned it a little using the Nvidia settings.

 

Either way you go.. you will have some work to get it optimized. If you do a clean install, you will probably have to install many of the drivers.. either from HP site or from the swsetup folder on your C drive. If you do a clean install, make sure you burn a copy of that swsetup folder first. A clean install will delete everything on your primary partition. I got my dv6500t running pretty sweet now without having to do the clean install. I did this by turning off the yahoo toolbar.. its in the preferences on the taskbar.. and also turned off HP adviser.. I keep it, I just don't allow it to startup with windows. The rest is pretty straight forward going in the add/remove (called programs and features in vista) and uninstall the obvious bloatware there. Just make sure you uninstall Norton using the remove tool on symantecs web site not the uninstall in programs and features.. mainly since Norton is such a pig it can screws things up.. their own uninstaller sometimes won't work.

Before you do any of this, make you make your HP backup copies.. there is a sheet that comes with the system explaining how to do this. When you get to removing vongo.. call tech support and you can allow them to access your PC.. you have to install java and they will walk you through it.. They will have to access your registry and they know how to kill it. Vongo is about the only thing.. and its a really bad one too that is hard to remove. Just make sure the tech does a system restore point before they go diving into your registry.

Other then the Vongo.. you can probably figure this out on your own.. Even with a clean install, you might have to still go into the msconfig and services.msc to stop some of the services that take too much resources. In the start button there is a search button.. Just click on that and type msconfig -- in the startup folder you can stop many of those.. and in the services folder you have to be more careful what to diasble.. You can always go back and enable them later. Some of this is trial and error. There are many tweak guides in the internet explaining what these services and help you decide which ones you don't need. One major service in the msconfig that seemed to take allot of resources was the superfetch.. Many say that is good. I found that everytime I started windows that HD would run for 3-4 minutes.. it was the superfetch. To me, superfetch was a major piece of bloatware.. I'll never use it.

My suggestion is use msconfig to stop many of the items in the startup folder. and then disable superfetch in the services tab.

After that type services.msc in the start/search box in vista and open up services.. use that to disable more services.. there are some descriptions there to help you decide.( some are pretty obvious like tablet PC support.. the HP notebook does not need this!) Also remember the guides on the internet will help..
You can always go back to msconfig or services.msc and turn them back on.. don't panic.

After doing all this, my system now boots up to around 30 percent ram usage. From the factory, it used over 45 percent. Thats a pretty big reduction and it boots faster and runs much smoother now. Remember, even if you do a clean install you will have some work to do with manually installing drivers and disabling some items in services.msc. The startup folder will probably not be too bad on a clean install.

On the sticky, there is a link to compusa to purchase a anytime upgrade vista dvd for 5 bucks.. you will need to do that if you want to do a clean install. I called HP and they told me its practically illegal to do a clean install. I don't know about that, but the sticky shows you how to use your own key, but the method it used more or less hacks into your registry to do it. Just follow the sticky to the T and you should be alright.. Or just tweak it the way I did.

I just wanted to explain that either way, it will take some work to get a fast version of vista on your new machine. God knows, its not fast the way Hp butchers it.

This is what I did:
1: made HP backups
2: tweaked system using msconfig and services.msc
3: Allowed HP to remove the dreaded Vongo.. they messed it up.. let them fix this mess of a resurrecting virus.
4: Uninstalled Roxio Rhapsody and Norton and other worthless apps.
5. formated and deleted the recovery folder on D drive
5: Used acronis disc director and removed the D partition and added it back to the main primary partition.
6: Used Acronis true image to make a new back up straight to DVD so I don't have to ever go through the tweak process again!!

Note, the acronis disc director/ true imaging software is a good thing to have even if you do a clean install.. either way, imaging your custom tweaked system means you will never have to go through that pain again. Good Luck!

 

Yup. As soon as I pull my notebook out of the box, that's the first thing I'm planning to do.