Dell Vista Laptop Reformat and Bloatware Removal Guide

[Jetster]

Nice thread!

Have you ever created a list of items that are removed. That meet the definition of "bloat ware" And were they were removed from?

[AJHardware]

Bubba, I'd heard that Dell was pushing 174.31 - but putting in my service tag still has them recommending the version that shipped on my machine (which was 157 and change, or something along those lines, veeeery old and creaky). Where's Dell got the official pack with 174.31?

[bubbatex]

I just went to the support site and looked up drivers for the 1720 - HERE'S the link.

[itzmillertyme]

Ok Les if I understand everything I've read here. This process will kill the diagnostic and Recovery Partitions? If in the future I wanted to put these back...say on a new Drive to have it setup as I got it from Dell. Would I be able to? Maybe if I use Acronis to make an image of these drives.
Thanks Don

[darthsat]

Ok Les if I understand everything I've read here. This process will kill the diagnostic and Recovery Partitions? If in the future I wanted to put these back...say on a new Drive to have it setup as I got it from Dell. Would I be able to? Maybe if I use Acronis to make an image of these drives.
Thanks Don

If you don't want to, you do not HAVE to delete the restore partition. The reason for deleting it is to free up 10GB HDD space.

[cloudwane]

Hi all,

Great to join and participate in this forum.

I have just received my Dell XPS M1330 and wanted to follow the guide which was posted by Les. Just a few questions before I proceed:

1) I have a Media direct v3.5. Would it be possible to use the guide? In the guide, it was stated media direct v3.3.

2) Currently I have a drive C (OS) and a drive D (recovery). Just to check what does the recovery partition does? I guess after reloading everything, the recovery drive will no longer be available.

Hope someone will be able to assist me on the above.

Thanks!

[BertieW]

Hi Les, thanks for a great guide! Got my machine today and already wiped it clean of bloatware like your instructions said. Unfortunatly, I wasn't able to get rid of the third 30GB partition but that's all right. I named it Runt and dumped WoW and Civ4 on it.

[darthsat]

Cloudwane, that version of mediadirect will be fine. The recovery partition makes it so that you can click F10 during bootup and restore the computer to exactly how it was when you received it from the manufacturer.

[leoni]

I'm such an indecisive . I cannot decide if I should do this reformat or not
I mean, we are talking 10 GB of space here.. out of 250.. still, 10 GB is a lot..

Wanna know the worst part?
- I still haven't got the computer in my hands

This is a great forum btw

[Les]

Simple question to answer that...

How many have done this and regret it?

and maybe....

How many have done this and returned very happy?