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8600 owners... reinstall OS or no?

post #1 of 38
1/20/04 at 3:34pm
Thread Starter 
I just got my 8600 today - I ordered it on Thurday night about 11pm so I'd say it was a pretty quick turn around!!!

My question for the current 8600 users out there. Did you reinstall OS after Dell or stick to the pre-load. I know Dell puts a lot of crap on there that may or may not be useful and I was debating a reinstall.
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post #2 of 38
1/20/04 at 3:37pm
When I got mine, I turned it on to see if there were dead pixels.

And then I reinstalled everything. I noticed there was a lot of crap everywhere. I'm anal when it comes to my desktop and stuff so I HAD to do it, my way.
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post #3 of 38
1/20/04 at 3:39pm
I also reformatted mine. I booted it up, to make sure it was all happy...then, within 15 minutes, began the format/install of XP Pro.
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post #4 of 38
1/20/04 at 4:13pm
Same here. I would reinstall to organize the partitions... system files + OS, paging file + temp files, program files, data. But that's after making sure everything is working properly... screen, etc. I'm still waiting for the UPS guy to show up.
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post #5 of 38
1/20/04 at 4:17pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah - I guess I could do the partition stuff with partition magic but there is still a lot of extra crap on here that I could do without!

I posted this question in another thread but... have you guys noticed in internet expolorer that images are distorted - like jpg image text (for menu bar) looks all messed up.

Is there a setting to fix this?
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post #6 of 38
1/20/04 at 4:53pm
Thread Starter 
OK - found out the answer here
http://delltalk.us.dell.com/supportf...ssage.id=27645

life is good again


By the way ... what is the easiest way to check for dead pixels? Whatdo they look like?
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post #7 of 38
1/20/04 at 4:54pm
Make sure you download or have access to the various drivers for your vid card, wireless, sound card etc as well.
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post #8 of 38
1/20/04 at 4:58pm
Same here, I reinstalled the OS after about 15 minutes of making sure everything was working.

If you dont have Norton Ghost, I would suggest on getting a copy because it is really helpful when you want a fresh clean install of win xp again.

You can install all your favorite applications/settings and just back it all up on the 8600's dvd+r. If something happens to go wrong in the long run, you can always load it up quickly without having to reinstall XP and the applications you had installed. Its really a timer saver.
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post #9 of 38
1/20/04 at 5:10pm
I did a fresh install of XP a day or so after getting my 5150. I cant believe how much it helped the system performance. The whole notebook ran a lot quicker and before the fresn re-install it used to hang on the shutdown screen for about 30 seconds. Now it shuts down in a matter of about 10 seconds .. definately worth it. I am happy to say I use none of that crap that Dell pre-installs.
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post #10 of 38
1/20/04 at 5:11pm
Thread Starter 
You guys sold me - deleting system now !


Do I have to reinstall drivers in any order like with Sager?

Also - are you guys using a better video driver for ATI 128mb 9600?

and finally - I've seen some people talk about utilities to monitor temperature etc... plus battery management utils etc - care to suggest some good utils for the 8600 or point me to a thread with this info

thanks!!
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post #11 of 38
1/20/04 at 8:24pm
I haven't killed mine yet, but I might soon. Everything's working fine so I'm inclinded not to... but part of my format-happy nature has just GOT to ditch everything preinstalled on here and go bare-bones... not sure.

Tim
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post #12 of 38
1/20/04 at 8:27pm
Thread Starter 
Well... they ship a cd with drivers on it but it is not specific to the 8600 so there are extra drivers and then like I said there don't seem to be any drivers for the 9600... I downloaded some from omegacorner.com - hope they work
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post #13 of 38
1/20/04 at 8:40pm
Although i know most of you are performance hungry Dell drivers have specific features the omegaones do not regarding specifici issues and sometimes dell gets your builds before the public does.
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post #14 of 38
1/20/04 at 8:52pm
About the ATI 9600 drivers,

Ive been using dells drivers because it seems that the Powerplay feature doesnt work when I installed the Catalyst 3.10. It made the GPU run at full clock all the time even when on batteries.

Im not sure about the newly released CAT 4.1, since i havent tried them yet.

If anyone knows a fix to the CAT 3.10 powerplay feature, let me know.
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post #15 of 38
1/20/04 at 9:13pm
http://www.driverheaven.net/articles...stestsetup.htm
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post #16 of 38
1/20/04 at 10:09pm
Thread Starter 
Another problem I'm having is my touch pad drivers keep going away. When I reboot it loses all my settings. Anyone else have this problem?
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post #17 of 38
1/21/04 at 4:16pm
Cant you just go in and uninstall all of the extra "crap" that dell puts on the laptop? I understand a clean HD would be best but it seems like a lot of work.
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post #18 of 38
1/21/04 at 4:20pm
Thread Starter 
That's what I did and it works better. The touchpad issue seems to be because I installed intellimouse drivers so I installed the touchpad software again and now my opti mouse and touchpad work
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post #19 of 38
1/21/04 at 6:20pm
I recently bought and I8600 and was tossing around the idea of a reinstall. I don't like all the 'extra' stuff but it hasn't really caused me a problem yet. Does the OS disk packaged with the computer contain a full copy of windows or only an image of what was on the computer from dell?
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post #20 of 38
1/21/04 at 10:47pm
full copy plus some neccessary dell software not all the extra junk youve come to expect.
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