How to do a fresh install on NX860XL?

[MistressWilde]

I just ordered a souped-up NX860XL notebook this weekend, and from what my husband and I have read, it sounds like it's a really good notebook but comes with a bunch of unnecessary software. It's quite likely that I will want to do a fresh install of Windows and all the drivers, and not bother with uninstalling any of the preloaded software. (We had to do this with the ThinkPad that I'm replacing and we not only reclaimed a large amount of disk space, but general reliability and game performance improved significantly as well.)

I've found very little info at all about the NX860XL on Gateway's support site though, and I have some questions:
1. From the support site, it sounds like there's some kind of recovery feature that restores the bundled applications and software. Does it have a way of just installing the OS and drivers, with none of the stupid extra software? (I'd like to use this if possible rather than doing a by-hand install, just to save time.)
2. If we have to do a complete manual install of Windows/drivers, are there any guides to doing a fresh install for this model or other Gateway notebooks? Everything on the support site only talks about using the recovery feature, which I will probably want to destroy anyway, to get some disk space back.
3. Has anyone here with an NX860 model done a fresh Windows install on it, and if so, have any tips to share?

Thanks!

P.S. OMG I can't wait til it's here!!!

[dlstorm]

MistressWilde, congrats on your purchase. I've been very happy with my NX860XL since it arrived in March. Gateway has a winner with this one. I haven't tried their tech/customer support yet, but they did call me the other day to see if everything was going OK. I'd never experienced that before after a computer purchase. That's basically what I had to say. I just uninstalled the junk I didn't want on my notebook and chose not to do a complete format. One of the first to go was McAfee. It was really slowing things down. I went with CA security package and it seems to be much better behaved. Maybe one of the other NX860XL owners out there can provide info about a fresh install.

[MistressWilde]

Hi, thanks for replying! Any idea how much of your hard drive the recovery partition eats up? (If there is a recovery partition... it sounds like there is one, based on the support site articles...)

[dlstorm]

You can select in System Restore setup how much of your drive will be reserved for restore files. I've got mine currently set at 12% or about 11GB since I still have plenty of disk space. I did have System Restore off, but had a virus scare (which turned out to be false) so I turned it back on. I guess it slows down everything a little, but I haven't noticed. There is a recovery partition with a big recovery file which I never used. I moved the file over to my external back up drive. I guess it contains all the drivers etc. Come to think about it, the Gateway guide did have an operation to go through to save all drivers in a file first thing...almost forgot about that. I burnt them onto a cd and filed them. In a real pinch you could always download the drivers from the Gateway site if you have another computer. The backup partition is 10GB on my 100GB drive. I'd just as soon it wasn't there and that would be the only reason I'd reformat.

[Sirosis]

I reformatted the drive and did a fresh install. I recommend getting all the drivers at http://support.gateway.com/support/d...=nx860xl&st=kw I was not able to install the chipset drivers so I got them from the Intel site. My biggest problem was that I have an older version of windows XP which did have SATA drivers. The hard drive was not detected when I went to install XP. You can get around this in 2 ways. Have an external floppy or slipstream the drivers into XP. I went with the slipstream version. After that the install was pretty straightforward.

I have been extremely pleased with the computer so far.

[MistressWilde]

Thank you, Sirosis! Oy, it looks like I'll have to get a USB floppy drive then. Only I just saw on Microsoft's site that only three USB floppy drives are supported by Windows XP setup.

What do you mean by slipstream? Did you put the drivers on a Windows XP CD somehow?

[Sirosis]

Yes. Slipstream means you add the drivers to the windows XP cd. You can also add service packs etc. Some links

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?...173&hl=Si3112r
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=559

I remember I had to get the info from the SATA drivers and change a few files similar to described. It might be easier to use a floppy.

[tullnd]

For what it's worth...my 8510GZ(basic level predecesor to your NX860) came with a 6.7GB recovery partition on my 100GB hard drive. I uninstalled the apps I didn't need(which were only like 7 applications) without any issue. I just made sure to do it right away. I decided to leave the recovery partition there just in case I needed it. I intended on wiping it and doing a fresh install...but that was back in October of 2005. I'm still running fine with no issues now. Can't justify the few hours it'd take to reinstall and reload my applications when I don't think I'll get any performance benefit from it.

[Bamboo One]

I think that the short answer to your question is "no" - you can't just install the OS. Could be wrong but I have the 7515 and I have wanted to do the same thing but didn't find a way to do it.

For my part though I really like the recovery partition. It works really well and even backs up almost your entire C: for you if you want. Once you have reformatted there will be a folder called something like "Backup of C: 1-1-06". It will contain almost all of your files except for applications. It really makes things easier.

[jahcs]

My recovery partition is 5.84 GB on the NX860XL I bought in Feb/March timeframe. The actual files take up 1.89 GB of that partition.

I uninstalled AOL and McAfee first thing and turned off a few startup programs. My machine has been trouble free so far.