Can I Remove Vista Completely?

I just bought a refurbished ThinkPad that came with Vista pre-installed. Since I plan to use only Linux on this machine from the start, I want to competely remove Vista before I do anything else with it. Then I'll install either Fedora or Ubuntu and go to town. I've been using Linux for about 6 years, though I've never installed it on my own. I definitely prefer it to Windows.

I've seen some really nice guides for eliminating Vista bloatware to activate a "clean" Vista install, but I want to rid my hard drive of it completely if I can. I haven't even turned the machine on yet, so I have an opportunity to do this correctly from the get-go.

Can anyone point me to instructions for removing Vista completely?

Thanks!

 

Uhh, just install linux over it....

 

Yeah just format the harddrive. Download the distro of your choice and burn it to a CD/DVD. Boot the computer, backup any files you want to save, put your newly created Linux disc in the drive, and reboot the laptop. It should boot from the optical drive and when you go through the steps to install Linux, it should give you the option to partition your drive. At this point blow away all partitions and create new partitions for your Linux system. Save the changes to the partition table and continue on with the install till finished. Now you should have a Linux only machine

 

Oh, cool! The Linux install does it all. I shoulda known.

That explains why I didn't find an online guide for this -- it's too simple.

 

Let us know how it goes....some of us haven't garnered up the Ka-Hoe-Knees to do it yet....

 

Be sure to click 'No" to the Windows license agreement to get a refund if you want, then you can install Linux.

 

I would dual boot first to make sure that your linux flavor works with all of your hardware, although a refurbished laptop should be fine with Ubuntu 8.04

 

Calvin, are you serious? Who refunds & how much?

 

Microsoft has a clause in their contract that says that you can send them back your copy of Windows if you don't want/use it. Don't know how much you get back though, especially OEM...

 

I wish I knew that. When I bought my laptop two years ago the first thing I did was replace XP Home/bloatware with a clean copy of XP Pro.

The copy that came with it has never been used . Of course it was OEM, Maybe they wouldn't have taken it anyway.

 

They (MS) refund pretty easily. They refunded me full retail on Vista Ultimate upgrade because I couldn't use it on new OS'less laptop. Since I bought it at Costco, I got more back than I paid for it. Of course, they sent me the check after I mailed the box back to them. So, if you do 100% linux, sure you can get refunded.

 

MS does, as previous posters said it's in their contract. I'm not exactly sure how it works but i know it can be done.