Vista Home Premium Re-install, Restore, Repair

LucianH

I have a four year old HP Laptop which came with Vista Home Premium with hundreds of megabytes of bloatware that HP sees fit to install. I have the recovery disk (created when first fired up) and the product key label on the base of the laptop.

Quite simply, I want to do a clean install - and as most of you know, simply using the recovery disk installs all the bloatware as well.

And this leads me to the question of what I need to do to get a clean install of Vista Home Premium from which I can install only the software that I want. And the title of this post sums up my confusion on disks that are available on Ebay.

Some offer what appears to be a repair/recovery disk which I assume is just software to attempt to clean up and installation - such as this one:

REPAIR/RECOVERY DISK LAPTOP/DESKTOP XP VISTA WINDOWS 7 DRIVERS AND PASSWORD

But then there are two disk versions that appear to offer a clean install such as this one:

Windows Compatible VISTA HOME PREMIUM Re-install Restore Repair Computer disk

Has anybody used this type of disk and do you get a full and clean install that can be activated using the product key on the laptop?

Thanks

Laz123

I did a clean reinstall on my HP Compaq with restore discs. It doesn't take long to just delete the crap you don't want.

Gordon_Hose

Same with Acer and Windows 7. I re-installed Windows after a HDD failure and just went through the Add/Remove Programs list and deleted everything that I didn't want.

LucianH

Laz123 wrote: »

I did a clean reinstall on my HP Compaq with restore discs. It doesn't take long to just delete the crap you don't want.

Thanks. I have tried that but have ended up with some instability (e.g., intermittent hangs on shut down or extremely slow boot up). Simply using the uninstalls leaves a fair bit of residual stuff lying around.

I really want to start with a clean install and work forward to see when/if the instability starts to reoccur.

Gordon_Hose

You can use CCleaner to remove unwanted registry entries etc

NiftyDigits

LucianH wrote: »

I have a four year old HP Laptop which came with Vista Home Premium with hundreds of megabytes of bloatware that HP sees fit to install. I have the recovery disk (created when first fired up) and the product key label on the base of the laptop.

Quite simply, I want to do a clean install - and as most of you know, simply using the recovery disk installs all the bloatware as well.

And this leads me to the question of what I need to do to get a clean install of Vista Home Premium from which I can install only the software that I want. And the title of this post sums up my confusion on disks that are available on Ebay.

Some offer what appears to be a repair/recovery disk which I assume is just software to attempt to clean up and installation - such as this one:

REPAIR/RECOVERY DISK LAPTOP/DESKTOP XP VISTA WINDOWS 7 DRIVERS AND PASSWORD

But then there are two disk versions that appear to offer a clean install such as this one:

Windows Compatible VISTA HOME PREMIUM Re-install Restore Repair Computer disk

Has anybody used this type of disk and do you get a full and clean install that can be activated using the product key on the laptop?

Thanks

Seems that you missed the part where it is written that the disc does not contain any Windows files.

You can just obtain an original Vista DVD and just use your Product key.