Reformatting to get rid of the junk

Ok, so I have a I9300 that should be getting here in a couple days and I heard about Dell's reputation about putting extra junk on there. What would be the easiest way to go about reformatting? I ordered the recovery CD when I purchased the laptop. If anyone could give me step by step instructions I would really appreciate it. I'm not too good at this technical stuff, so any help is really appreciated. Thanks

 

if you have your own copy of windows,

just go to dell's support website, download all the drivers for the I9300, put them on a USB key drive, reformat, install drivers back

and you're done.

 

Garv, ou won't be getting the full version of Windows, just CDs to restore to the factory condition. It's really not a big deal to remove the software through the add/remove tool in XP.

 

Alright, so the easiest way will be to go through the Add/Remove menu? I know how to function that and should be able to handle that. Will that wipe of most of the junk?

 

Yes, just pull them off one at a time.

 

the CDs you get from dell are the same as the cds you would get if you bought them at the store, only they are labeled differently. they only have the os and service pack 2 on them... no bloatware.

if you restore from the restore partition, then it goes back to fresh-from-factory state... with all the bloatware.

 

one thing about the recovery cd is that it is an OEM, meaning it will only work on Dell systems. Like drumfu said, it does give you a clean install and everything. If you use the cd, then go to your c: drive and burn a copy of the dell folder. This contains your drivers, but some of them might be outdated, so you might want to check Dell's site for updates.

SG