Vista - Clean install of Vista on a new laptop

Hi Everyone,

I've got a brand new Dell Studio 17 laptop that was bought for me. It has
Vista Home Premium, Office 2007, and a whole bunch of crapola I don't care
about - including McAfee (sp?)

Makes me nuts to have all this extra *stuff* on a computer, so I'm
considering wiping the harddrive and doing a clean install of Vista.

In addition to what came with the laptop, I've got an OEM version of Vista
Home Premium I bought not long after it was released - seems like it was oh,
a year, maybe a year and a half ago. This is what I'm thinking of
installing.

I used to format/reload regularly back in the Win95-WinXP days, but its been
a while since I did one so I'm a bit rusty.

Any suggestions? Any major hurdles?

Of course I've got about 10 Dell cds that came with the laptop - drivers and
such.

Dumb idea?

James

If the new computer that you received is working, you'd probably be better
off to take your time to tweak the new computer to your liking which
includes uninstalling the Bloatware and adjusting Startup in System
Configuration. You may have more problems trying to get the old Vista to work
(downloading updates and drivers) than gradually tweaking what you already
have.


--
oscar

....Right click is your very good friend...


"James Ivey" wrote:

"James Ivey" <nope@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ejHJZp9BJHA.3484@xxxxxxWhile we all know how you feel about the programs that you don't want or
need.. * don't do it*. This not the old days of 98SE.

Key Codes and Activation are tough. There is no one to talk to in order to
get Activitated.

Pull the unwanted programs out one at a time using 'ADD and Remove
Programs' .
Do a reboot and a defrag and a restore after major extractions. Do one a
day,

The voice of experience speaks the truth.

Jim

I did this. Not a big deal. I wound up with OEM XP (Dell version at that)
and Vista Business in place of Vista Home Premium that came on my Dell
Inspiron 1501. The Dell disks that came with my laptop were (1) Vista
install DVD (2) MS Works install CD (3) Dell driver DVD and (4) Roxio
crippleware CD. Your Dell will also have a System Restore partition that is
capable of restoring the computer to factory new condition, with all the
crapola in place. The Office 2007 that comes with your computer is no doubt
the crippleware version too, and people have had trouble either using it or
deleting it, from the articles in this group. McAfee is an acceptable
security solution, but the one on your laptop is no doubt crippleware too.
It will go dead after a month or so unless you feed it money.

You can install Vista either from your own Vista Home Premium DVD or from
the one that came with the laptop. There should be no difference, unless
the newer one is SP1. Then you can install all the drivers you need either
from the driver DVD or to get the latest and greatest download them from
http://support.dell.com. It sounds as if you are not interested in
restoring your computer to factory new condition. You could therefore
delete all partitions from the destination hard disk and impose a partition
scheme that you like. I did this, but I copied the system restore partition
to a Ghost image file first, not that I will ever use it.

I would advise you to at least play with the laptop as is for a few days, to
get the feel of Vista. It is different from XP.

Good luck,

Earle

"James Ivey" <nope@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ejHJZp9BJHA.3484@xxxxxx

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:17:52 -0500, James Ivey wrote:
The PC Decrapifier
Features
The PC Decrapifier will uninstall many of the common trialware and
annoyances found on many of the PCs from big name OEMs. Here is the current
list of software and items that the PC Decrapifier can detect and remove.
You get to see the list of items it detects and then choose what will be
removed automatically.
http://pcdecrapifier.com/