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Any reason NOT to reformat?

post #1 of 26
3/10/05 at 12:20pm
Thread Starter 
My mom and I both got new laptops this week from Dell. Me and i6KD, her a 700m. I've already gone ahead and reformatted and I must say it is a significant speed improvement. I am heading over to her house this weekend to help get her set up on her new PC and get it up and running.

Because of the speed benefits it offers, not to mention getting rid of the piles of junk forced on us by Dell, I plan to reformat her hdd as well. Is there any reason not to do so? I mean, does it affect her warranty or support/at home service? Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) my parents live about 3 hours away so if there if a problem down the line I cant just zip over and take care of it. She'll have to rely on Dell's customer support and I dont want them to be giving her a hard time because we did the reformat.

Any opinions or past experiences with this would be helpful.
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post #2 of 26
3/10/05 at 12:28pm
no it does not effect it

my old dell(inspron 8100) was fromatted within 2 days of me gitting it

they don't ask if you did that or not

as long as it is what came with the laptop
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post #3 of 26
3/10/05 at 12:29pm
I'm a totaly newbie when it comes to this stuff and waiting on my 9300. Is this something that's easy for a newbie to do? I also don't want all the crap that'll be on it...but I also don't want to F up my new 'puter...
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post #4 of 26
3/10/05 at 12:54pm
I personally wouldn't bother with it. For a total newbie, I would use it for a while and learn about everything they do put on it. Anything you don't like you can probably just remove without having to reinstall everything. And you'll save yourself a lot of trouble. Later on down the road you may realise, "I need to reformat this thing and reinstall everything from scratch" and you'll be more educated by that time.

The flipside is if you've got no immediate need for the notebook and just want to learn by doing, by all means, reformat and reinstall. Better make sure you have all the disks and serials and drivers you need or you might be in for a little surprise and several days or weeks without use of your notebook and also dollars shorter for having to buy software you didn't have backed up or service on your laptop.
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post #5 of 26
3/10/05 at 4:25pm
I don't reformat my HD. I doubt there will be a big difference in speeds.
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post #6 of 26
3/10/05 at 4:33pm
Figure I'll spend this weekend downloading drivers and such and burning to a disk. When mine arrives I plan on installing one of my copies of WinXP Pro (one is Corp version been meaning to try) to it asap, reformatting to 2 or 3 partitions, then she'll be ready....
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post #7 of 26
3/10/05 at 5:23pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by FearNo1
I don't reformat my HD. I doubt there will be a big difference in speeds.
All I can say is I have noticed a significant increase. Now this is likely just because I erased all the programs that Dell had running in the background. I probably could have realized similar benefits by simply add/removing programs through the control panel but why? Its not hard to reformat and I can spend my time doing other useful tasks while it is processing, rather than sitting there removing programs one by one.

This is completely a personal preferrence though.
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post #8 of 26
3/10/05 at 5:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dinosaur
All I can say is I have noticed a significant increase. Now this is likely just because I erased all the programs that Dell had running in the background. I probably could have realized similar benefits by simply add/removing programs through the control panel but why? Its not hard to reformat and I can spend my time doing other useful tasks while it is processing, rather than sitting there removing programs one by one.

This is completely a personal preferrence though.
Part of it could be more memory and faster access to the registry. The more programs, the more crap gets loaded in the registry and memory. The bigger the registry is, the slower access to it is. The other thing is disk space and disk fragmentation. I wouldn't think that a brand new Dell would be badly fragmented, nor would I think that the amount of Dell crap over just your pure install would be that much different, but these are the things that it "could" be. I prefer a clean install myself, not to mention I usually require a different operating system than what I order. I pretty much reinstall my system at least once every 6 months. It's like an upgrade, performance wise.
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post #9 of 26
3/10/05 at 5:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sonicwind
Part of it could be more memory and faster access to the registry. The more programs, the more crap gets loaded in the registry and memory. The bigger the registry is, the slower access to it is. The other thing is disk space and disk fragmentation. I wouldn't think that a brand new Dell would be badly fragmented, nor would I think that the amount of Dell crap over just your pure install would be that much different, but these are the things that it "could" be. I prefer a clean install myself, not to mention I usually require a different operating system than what I order. I pretty much reinstall my system at least once every 6 months. It's like an upgrade, performance wise.
Actually I would not be surprised if there is a fair amount of fragmentation on a new drive. When software goes through an installation process there is often a lot of temporary files that wind up getting deleted. So in the process of installing windows, drivers, office, and various applications – I suspect there is plenty of opportunity for fragmentation. Of course if DELL were really slick they could defragment the master hard drive image before installing it on other machines. But with the rate of change and variety of software configurations they support I doubt the take the time to do it.

When I reformat I do periodic degrags as I rebuild the drive.
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post #10 of 26
3/10/05 at 6:14pm
I'm still waiting for my 700m and found this thread really useful. What kinds of pre-installed programs did you guys find useless? And are most people just using the Dell CD to reformat or a separate copy of Windows? Does it make a difference?
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post #11 of 26
3/10/05 at 6:17pm
one think you lose is the free 6 months of isp sign up software. its not on the rebuild cds, and dell cant help you with it. but thats about it.
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post #12 of 26
3/10/05 at 6:26pm
I can't imagine using a system with out formatting it first. My friend booted up her new dell fresh out of the box, and their was about a dozen programs down by the clock running in the background. That's rediculous. I'm a 'neat freak' when it comes to my computer. Only 2 or 3 programs are really essential to have run on startup.
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post #13 of 26
3/10/05 at 6:37pm
i don't know if dell still does it now, but in the past (1 yr ago) dell has a hidden partition in which they store the dell diagnostic partition. well, it's not a particularly useful tool back then, i don't know if they've made any major changes to it such that it's more accurate or has repairing or backup capabilities like the ibms... but yea if you do a format, depending on how you do it of course (if you use a windows cd to format, then you'll probably keep the partition intact, but if you use the manufacturer-specific program to write zeros to the drive, then everything will be gone), you may just lose the partition. just thought you'd like to know.

actually what i'd do if i were you, is to ghost my entire hard disk onto a dvd or a few dvds, so that in case i want my fresh from the factory dell setting, i'll be able to do that, in less than an hour.
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post #14 of 26
3/10/05 at 6:53pm
gosh - i would HATE to lose my AOL trial. LOL!
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post #15 of 26
3/10/05 at 7:11pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by anettis
gosh - i would HATE to lose my AOL trial. LOL!
I swear I was going to say the same thing. Not meaning to poke fun at the poster but just because its exactly how I feel. I wish Dell offered home users the option of clicking "no ISP requested" like they do for SB buyers.

I use Comcast highspeed cable, but checked Earthlink when I was forced to choose. I get enough crap from AOL already and if Dell sends them a notice that someone has checked their free 6 months what do you wanna bet you'd get even more junk. Especially if you didnt use the free trial.
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post #16 of 26
3/10/05 at 7:25pm
Hmm, does Dell send out actual windows media or just system "restore" disks? I ordered a 700m earlier this week and didn't even think about that.
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post #17 of 26
3/10/05 at 8:59pm
Dell does not have restore discs like many other manufacturers.Dell sends many different discs (OS Disc,drivers,programs,ect) so a clean install is very easy to perform.
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post #18 of 26
3/10/05 at 9:17pm
I bought home, i format, I install pro.

Advantages:

1) Better stablility and performance
2) Clean install of all drivers and programs
3) Only install the junk you want

Disadvantages:

1) Time consuming
2) Not getting the drivers before formatting (burn onto cd)
3) Losing some programs that came with dell
4) losing dell system restore (partition) forever (depends)
5) What else?
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post #19 of 26
3/10/05 at 9:22pm
You should be able to keep the restore and diagnostic partitions - if you desire. I think I am going to nuke mine as 60 GB is just not what it used to be.
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post #20 of 26
3/10/05 at 9:32pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by anettis
You should be able to keep the restore and diagnostic partitions - if you desire. I think I am going to nuke mine as 60 GB is just not what it used to be.
I remember buying my first 5gb hdd. I thought there was no way in hell I'd ever need anything bigger. Now I can blow through that in a single day of shooting if I am using RAW.
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