New laptop, how to reformat to get rid of bloatware?

I'm getting a new Inspiron 1520 in the next couple of days. It will have Vista Home Premium and presumably a bunch of bloatware. I don't know what discs there will be but there wasn't any option for a recovery CD (if that would even work). I'm alright with Vista or XP, I just want to reformat the HDD so I only have my programs on the computer. I have an XP disc, but it's installed on this PC...does that mean I can't use the install key on my laptop and need a new disc? Anyway, what's the best way (hopefully without buying a Vista disc) to go in and erase everything and start from scratch? And are there any problems with doing this? Thanks

 

If you dont get it, you can request an OS disk to reinstall your drive. They will send you the OS and driver disks if you ask; this including the MD3.3 disk if that came with the original system.

Clean instal is described below.

 

No, those simple recovery disc won't work. You need a full version. There mat be a way around this but, I know none.

 

Yeah, the recovery disk will only restore the factory configuration... all bloatware included. Though these days, even Inspirons should be shipping with OS disks...

 

Dell doesnt send recovery disks. They will send you a Dell version of the OS.

 

Yeah, that's what I thought. Figured there was something strange about having a Dell recovery disk.

 

Good news for you: As an owner of an Inspiron 1520 with Vista Home Premium, I know from experience that the recovery disk Dell ships is a clean installation disk of Windows that includes no bloatware or pre-installed software. The disk itself does have Dell labeling on it, but otherwise it is identical to a newly purchased Windows installation disk. The top of it will read "Operating System" and "Already Installed on your Computer".

The best way to get rid of the bloatware is to re-install Vista from the recovery DVD. Simply put the DVD in the DVD drive and restart the computer. So long as the BIOS is set to boot from CD before the harddrive (you may have to change this in the BIOS - press F2 on the boot screen to enter the BIOS), you will get a message "Press any key to boot from CD/DVD..." when the computer restarts. Press a key, and you will get a progress bar entitled "Windows is loading files". This will take a couple minutes, after which Vista's install program will start. Select "Install Now", accept the license, and choose a "Custom Install".

At this point you can either re-install Windows on the main partition, deleting all information on it, or combine some/all of the three partitions your Inspiron comes with (main, MediaDirect, and recovery), and then install Vista on the new, larger main partition. Note that you can also delete partitions and then create new ones of the size you like. If you leave any space unallocated, Windows will not be able to recognize it after the install, but you can allocate it later without having to reinstall Windows. Once you've set this up as you like and have chosen an install partition, click Continue, and Windows installs. This takes 30 to 45 minutes. You won't need to enter any more information until Windows is almost completely installed and it is time to enter your username - activation et. al. is automatically completed.

After choosing a username, background, etc., the install is complete. When the computer restarts you'll be in Windows. At this point you'll have a clean install - the list of install programs reads "No programs are installed on this computer" - and only the drivers that came with Vista 1.00. You may need to download new drivers from support.dell.com - the touchpad, for example, requires Dell's drivers to be fully functional, as does the 8600M GT graphics card (you'll still be able to run Internet Explorer and simple programs with only the Standard VGA driver, but you'll need the nVIDIA one to run most games). You'll also want to download any Windows Updates you want at this point, disable UAC if you want, and start installing all your programs. Any programs that came with your Dell, for example Microsoft Works, come with a disk of their own, so you can install these at this point as well.

I just finished most of this process myself, and all is going well. You'll be able to surf the Net immediately after Windows is installed, even on wireless, so finding drivers from Dell should be easy. And there is a drivers CD if you prefer to use those. Good luck.

 

As far as I know all Dells have been shipping with pure Windows cds for the past few years. And like Apollo13 said, you'll have to reinstall some drivers too, the only drawback.

 

During this process, do you ever have to enter a product key?