Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide

[Kinghong1970]

Ok, it seems some of the newer owners of Studio 17 that got shipped Media Direct 4 has a different set of instructions then?

well, i havebeen working all night to try to install Vista Ultimate 64 on a NEW HDD that i had lying around and so far, i've been somewhat boggled.

1) installing vista from CD constantly prompts me for a CD/DVD driver and so i got stuck there
2) installing vista from a USB flash worked... but the confusion over ACHI and SATA modes caused BSOD and no reboot.
3) installed vista from USB flash, when the screen to select PARTITION came up, i installed ACHI drivers and vista 64 installed flawlessly on the HDD...

BUT...

despite trying to install all the 64 bit drivers,..

1) ATI Catalyst 8.8 does not load properly and still lists as generic, res stuck at 1600x1200
2) webcam is not recognized within control panel
3) fingerprint reader driver installed, but i'm missing the program?
4) on board network, iirc Broadcom? cant seem to find drivers anywhere...

i'm a bit lost...

any/all help would be greatly appreciated...

[pikinEW]

hello there,
I have three volumnes, one is C (146Gb with sistem, boot, etc etc/NTFS), another with 3Gb(Primary Partition ) and other with 47Gb (EISA Configurtion).

I have a 160Gb samsung and only can use those 146Gb, so, is there any whay to have those at least 10Gb back?



thanks a lot for your time.

Pd. the 3Gb partition gives me the "Eliminate ..or Erase Volumen" (using vista in spanish)
and all of them are "Primary Partition" .. no of then has tha black label of unlocated

I uploaded pic so you can see it clearly, thanks

[CrispyUK]

Got a new, Dell UK XPS M1530 delivered today and wanting to format it free of junk - it hasn't come with a drivers/utilities disk (guessing a mistake, the accompanying Inspiron has one) - is everything available off the Dell website or is some of it CD only?

Can't see an AHCI driver on the downloads site, or is it part of the chipset driver?

[Monk]

Got a new, Dell UK XPS M1530 delivered today and wanting to format it free of junk - it hasn't come with a drivers/utilities disk (guessing a mistake, the accompanying Inspiron has one) - is everything available off the Dell website or is some of it CD only?

Can't see an AHCI driver on the downloads site, or is it part of the chipset driver?

Its called the Intell Matrix Storage Manager on Dell's site
http://support.dell.com/support/down...&fileid=224400

hello there,
I have three volumnes, one is C (146Gb with sistem, boot, etc etc/NTFS), another with 3Gb(Primary Partition ) and other with 47Gb (EISA Configurtion).

I have a 160Gb samsung and only can use those 146Gb, so, is there any whay to have those at least 10Gb back?

thanks a lot for your time.

Pd. the 3Gb partition gives me the "Eliminate ..or Erase Volumen" (using vista in spanish)
and all of them are "Primary Partition" .. no of then has tha black label of unlocated

Sad but true, but loosing that much space sometimes happen. I have a 320 GB HD, and I'm only able to use 312GB, its all about how the drive reports the the space and how Vista reads it. Nasty advertising...

[pikinEW]

d@mn, it's seems that I will have to live with it, will a new reinstall fix ir? hehe

[taylor1940]

If you have the recovery cd, you can just pop-in the CD, select the reformat option and the installation process will continue automatically.
---------------------
Taylor

SuperBabyGuide

[Taco Guthrie]

I just made this thread in the xps forum but thought I would ask here too:

Basically I need another partition and don't want/need Media Direct so I was thinking about deleting the 2.5gb partition MD uses.

I also want to run through the bloatware removal process. Should I do this before I delete Media Direct and the partition or after?


Thanks for your help

[Monk]

I just made this thread in the xps forum but thought I would ask here too:

Basically I need another partition and don't want/need Media Direct so I was thinking about deleting the 2.5gb partition MD uses.

I also want to run through the bloatware removal process. Should I do this before I delete Media Direct and the partition or after?


Thanks for your help

If i was you, I would stick in the Media Direct CD, follow the first step of guide..pick your partitions IE how many you want and their sizes, then stick in the Vista CD. IT will ask you to select a drive to install vista into, but before you do that, you can see all your partitions, find the 2.5 GB media direct partition, and select at the bottom right to delete that partition. What happens is Media Direct has cleared your old Vista, set up new partitions, and allows you to actually remove the MD partitions. Once its removed, select your partition to install vista to, load your AHCI drivers, and follow the rest of the guide. MD is not an essential part of vista...its only personal choice. Also if you dont do the MD first, when you stick in Vista disk it will only allow you to repair vista, thats why its important to do step 1.

[darthsat]

d@mn, it's seems that I will have to live with it, will a new reinstall fix ir? hehe

Hi Pikin. A new reinstall won't free up space beyond the 146GB usable space. According to your disk management screenshot, there is no 10GB recovery partition, as it has already been added to your usable space on C. If the recovery partition was still present, your C volume would have 136 GB max capacity.

On a side note, this great thread that was started on NBR when the first people who ordered and received m1330 were here is now up to 2000 responses.

[pikinEW]

thanks darthsat,
now that I think about it, my disk might have had that space in the first place, bou as I did the clean intall a few days after I got my laptop ... I don't remember very well the size of it :P.
I think I'll leave my lappy as it is now, it's fast, and already cuztomized with the tweeks.

One more thing for the ones planning to do the clean OS intall, my lappy didn't came with many bloatware, just roxio .. and one or two more stuff, so, may be you want to check what's in you lappy, may be it's ok the way it is, it's just a thought, because in the other hand, you learn a lot .. for the newbies like me ... with this process.
cheers