New Dell-is clean os install worth it?

motorguy

chuckles1066 wrote: »

Dell provide a driver CD but you're right, I always download the latest drivers for my specific machine and shove them on a USB stick.

As Conor says, Vista picked up nearly all the installed hardware on both my Dell laptop and desktop units and did the necessary with the drivers.

They dont always provide a driver CD - in fact i think you have to opt to pay for it. The Vista ones that didnt work correctly on my Dell inspiron 1501 were the graphics drivers - kept making the screen go fuzzy. Just downloaded new ones though.

motorguy

jmc160 wrote: »

Dells are actually really easy for this. Just go to their support website http://support.euro.dell.com/
Go to the Drivers section and enter your service tag. It'll show you all drivers needed for your system.

Yup, though its worth doing all this in advance, rather than finding your half hour reinstall meant you couldnt connect to the net to get the drivers...

motorguy

Conor wrote: »

TBH for the most part, Dells are natively supported in Windows.

TBH not in XP, which this machine could have as Dell will still supply laptops with XP - lots of people still opt to do that.

I wouldnt want to make a throw away comment that a half hours reinstall will resolve everything, when it might not just be as handy as that

motorguy

weegie.geek wrote: »

Downloading the latest stable drivers before reinstalling any pc is a given though, surely?

You have a point though, it can be a pita to get the proper drivers for some of these custom-made motherboards.

You have to remember that not everyone who reads these posts knows what the 'givens' are. Weegie.geek made the throwaway comment that '30 mins to install windows' would remove all the crap. If someone were to act on that alone, they could get themselves in a right mess - particularly given we're assuming here its a Vista machine - it probably is, but it may not be.

chuckles1066

pgilc1 wrote: »

They dont always provide a driver CD - in fact i think you have to opt to pay for it. The ones that didnt work correctly on my Dell inspiron 1501 were the graphics drivers - kept making the screen go fuzzy. Just downloaded new ones though.

They always provide a driver CD - it's the OS CD that all manufacturers went through a phase of not providing without charging (the Restore Partition was their get-out clause).

Dell now provide the (Dell-modified) Vista DVD.

motorguy

chuckles1066 wrote: »

They always provide a driver CD - it's the OS CD that all manufacturers went through a phase of not providing without charging (the Restore Partition was their get-out clause).

Dell now provide the (Dell-modified) Vista DVD.

Yes, i got the Vista media with the units i bought recently. I do recall not getting drivers disks with the dell machines i got last year, but maybe thats changed now.

chuckles1066

pgilc1 wrote: »

You have to remember that not everyone who reads these posts knows what the 'givens' are. Weegie.geek made the throwaway comment that '30 mins to install windows' would remove all the crap. If someone were to act on that alone, they could get themselves in a right mess - particularly given we're assuming here its a Vista machine - it probably is, but it may not be.

Agreed...............Vista is a nightmare if you start trying to split your hard drive into various partitions.

You'll quickly encounter an error message along the lines of "Windows can't find a suitable volume on which to install" (the wording differs but the message is the same).

Took me about 2 hours before I sussed it.

missile

chuckles1066 wrote: »

They always provide a driver CD - it's the OS CD that all manufacturers went through a phase of not providing without charging (the Restore Partition was their get-out clause).

Dell now provide the (Dell-modified) Vista DVD.

I bought a Sony PC in December and it did not come with any disks.

chuckles1066

missile wrote: »

I bought a Sony PC in December and it did not come with any disks.

Alas, some of the manufacturers are still reliant on providing a Restore Partition rather than the OS media.

Millionaire

Personally I find Dell put too much rubbish on to individually try removing it all and finding further down some remnants pop up out of the blue.

I tend to go for a clean install.

I found that the Vista reinstall that I did from the Vista Disc on my Dell which i now no longer have had all the drivers on it for graphics, sound etc etc.

Which wasn't the case with XP.