HELP with doing a *clean install*!! - Page 2

Reinstalling will take a short period of time but its actually the setup that takes a long time. Programs, drivers, options, etc... You can't really uninstall an OS but you can reinstall on top of the old OS which is a clean installation. I am a little confused about your OS Cd's are they the ones that are actually for a new computer OEMs? HP recovery disk are totally different from OEM OS Cd's, the recovery disk have all the programs loaded on them and while doing a re installation the recovery disk will reinstall all the programs that came with the notebook. Doing a reinstalling should not void the warranty since you are using what HP provided you with. Just follow the instructions Windows provides you with and you should have no problems. Once your done with the installation reinstall all the drivers and go to Windows Update and update all the critical things.

I actually have experience with this. I purchased a Compaq computer (look at signature) and the computer came with a hard drive that had two partitions. One partition was used as a system recovery and the other was what I had left to use. I hated what Compaq did and question why they didn't just package their computers with system recovery Cd's. Maybe they wanted to save cost and time I would believe. So what I did is load up fdisk in DOS, deleted all the partitions and made my own and installed a clean version of Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition OEM (purchased from eBay). OEM can be said as the cleans installation of a OS you can get it to be. I always hated system recovery provided by those companies.

This is not the correct way to do a clean install.

To do a clean install you have to format the HD.
This is an option during the Windows XP install processes.
unplug the laptop from the internet while you are getting it back together. You'd be amazed at how fast those darn virii sneak in there. I was rebuildng my father-inlaws desktop and I took a 4-7 min coffee break (I forgot his system was plugged into my LAN and as soon as the install finishsed it jumped on my DSL to the internet)... so in those few mins he got several nasties that my hardware firewall didn't catch.

A pity they did not include the restore CD's... really speeds things up. But at least they made it easy to track down the drivers.

Do not forget to go to Windows update as soon as you connect to the internet. I can not overstate how important this is. This is more important in stopping virii then firewalls and virus checkers. Not that you should skip these things, just a matter of which to do first.

Good luck, nothing to fear; It is fairly easy with the OS and drivers CD's already there. Doing a clean install (or any install)with the supplied CD's will not void your warrenty; you are, after all, using the tools they provided in the manner in which those tools are intended.

It really doesn't take that long, especially if you have all the drivers downloaded beforehand (which you should). About 20 minutes to format maybe, depending on the size and speed of your drive, 30 minutes to install Windows, and an hour at the most to install drivers and patches. Also, most of the time you're not even actively doing anything, so you're free to do whatever while you're waiting.

Right, I was editing that part out (while you were writing your reply) becuase on my first pass I had missed him saying he has the drivers right there on CD.

Use the Pro CD. It may ask you for the Home CD (if what they sent you was an upgrade??? version of Pro).

Anyway, start with Pro.

There is an option during the XP-reinstall to select the directory to install to.
It is at this point you would select to delete the current partion and then to create the new one.

I just received my nw8000 today and did a clean install. It came with a cd that has all of the drivers, etc. on it.

Here are the steps I followed:

1. Reboot with the win XP cd in the drive.
2. Delete the one and only partition on the drive.
3. Format and install to a newly created partition.
4. Finish the XP setup.
5. When XP boots, insert the driver disk.
6. Run through all of the drivers setup (one click).

I now have a newly installed OS and all of the hardware appears to be functional. I have not had a chance to run any games or benchmarks on it yet, nor have I tried to install any ATI drivers (I think it should be using the FireGL drivers by default). I will let you know how it goes once I get a chance to test it out.

BTW, I love the machine so far.