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New 700m, now what?

post #1 of 8
11/1/04 at 2:50pm
Thread Starter 
y years using computers, I finally got a laptop, a Dell 700m! I love it!

But I do have a few newbie questions...

Several times I've read that folks reformat the HD as soon as they get a new laptop. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this?

I do have a copy of Gost and Partition Magic, what's a good strategy for setting up the reformatted HD?

If I do rformat, what's the best way to update the drivers, do I use the ones fom Dell, or get new ones, if so, how should I get them to the 700m? Burn them on a cd?

Sorry for the bonehead q's.
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post #2 of 8
11/1/04 at 3:21pm
I'm actually receiving my 700m today as well. I already burned a cd with all the most up-to-date drivers from dell.com. I will immediately reformat the hard drive because dell puts a lot of unnecessary software on the hard drive. They also make "recovery partitions" many times that are unnecessary. With a reformat, you know exactly what is going on your hard drive. You can also set up your partitions exactly how you want to. I'd really recommend this. What I will do with partitioning is create a 15 GB partition for WinXP and programs. I will then create a second partition using the remaining hard drive space. I will put all my data/documents/music on this partition. I like this method because you can reformat the windows partition without losing all your data on the second partition.
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post #3 of 8
11/1/04 at 3:37pm
yep I also do the 15 gig partition for the OS and the rest is for misc programs and stuff I don't want to lose. It makes it so much easier when you have to reformat or if your OS becomes corrupted at least you don't lose all your data.
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post #4 of 8
11/1/04 at 3:46pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the partition opinions, I think I'll do the 2 part route.

As for the drivers, what ones wil I need? does the touch pad have a sperate driver? What about battery mangment, wifi etc? On my desk system I find it easy to figure out, add a car, add a driver. But I'm just not sure what all the laptop needs. As long as I can get on line I figure I'll find help and info to fix everything, so I guess the wifi drivers are key.
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post #5 of 8
11/1/04 at 3:51pm
http://support.dell.com/support/down...ex.aspx?~ck=mn

You will need the following drivers:
chipset, audio, lan, touchpad, video, wlan, and memory reader

Also, I recommend you download and install speedswitchxp, which allows you to customize your power settings. You can find it here:
http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/
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post #6 of 8
11/8/04 at 1:04pm

Reformat help

I think I’m going to pickup a 700m this week from eBay. The one I’m looking at has a 30G HD. I’d like to do the reformat as described in this thread to eliminate all of the junk that comes preloaded, but I’ve NEVER done a hard drive reformat. I really have no idea were to begin or how to create the partitions.

Can anyone provide a link or a source for a step-by-step guide top accomplishing the reformat and partitioning?

Also, with a 30Gig HD, would two 15G partitions make sense?

This is just a traveling machine to be used for e-mail, DVD’s and surfing, so I don’t plan to have any huge applications installed.

TIA.

Tispy
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post #7 of 8
11/8/04 at 2:37pm
Before someone does a reformat on their i700m, is it possible for you to send me a copy of the MBR? MBRWizard (http://mbrwizard.tripod.com/)
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post #8 of 8
11/8/04 at 4:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by GXAlan
Before someone does a reformat on their i700m, is it possible for you to send me a copy of the MBR? MBRWizard (http://mbrwizard.tripod.com/)
What is wrong with the link to which you have posted above?
It worked for me just now.
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