Help reformatting a brand new Dell laptop

[Ge|atinousFury]

Hey everyone, I'd appreciate it if I could get some help with some laptop questions I have. Here's the scoop...

My girlfriend received her brand new Dell 8600 laptop in the mail today.

Specs are as follows:

1.5GHz Pentium M
512mb RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility Pro Turbo
802.11g WiFi
SXGA LCD
WinXP Home

Ok here's the goal. This laptop is a Dell and it's littered with software, plus she would like WinXP Pro but her dad ordered it and picked out the specs.

Can I reformat this hard drive and install a totally fresh copy of WinXP Pro from a full version retail disc, and then load what Dell drivers I would like from the Dell recovery discs that came with the laptop?

I ask because I'm afraid that after I reformat and get XP Pro on that the Dell drivers might not work since the Dell WinXP Home won't be on the system anymore.

So, can I install XP Pro, rid the HDD of all these unwanted programs, install the drivers off the recovery cd's without hassle, and live happily ever after?

Thanks for any help!!

P.S. -- I recently purchased a Sager laptop that came with a blank HDD and installing drivers and WinXP went perfectly with that, so I'm sure I can do this.....I'd just like to know if Dell has any tricks up their sleeve lol

 

[Th0r]

Yes it will be perfectly fine ... Dell drivers are actually Drivers from the componets companys like the ATi drivers....

 

[Ge|atinousFury]

Yes it will be perfectly fine ... Dell drivers are actually Drivers from the componets companys like the ATi drivers....

Great!! That's positively exactly what I was hoping to hear. Thanks Excelsior!

 

[Th0r]

No problem my friend... Any problems get back yo us.

 

[Xaotic]

There's usually a drivers or utility folder under the root drive that has drivers and sometimes applications that you may find handy. Look around a bit before you format it.

 

[gusgizmo]

i made the mistake of not finding the drivers before i formatted my dad's ltop to put XPpro on it. bad move, took me forever to get it running again.

 

[Ge|atinousFury]

i made the mistake of not finding the drivers before i formatted my dad's ltop to put XPpro on it. bad move, took me forever to get it running again.

lol I bet....I have the system restore cd's since the laptop just arrived today though Not even opened yet

Thanks for the help everyone

And Xaotic, thanks for that tip I'll see if I can find it

 

[Th0r]

Lastest OEM systems i have noticed have a Partition Named: Recovery.... There is tons of stuff in there....

 

[Ge|atinousFury]

Well, I'm doing the reformat tomorrow and I popped in the Dell "Drivers" cd that came with her laptop just to see how everything was set up. My laptop is a Sager and when I put the Dell cd in it said something to the point of "This program has not recognized that this is a Dell computer. This program will now exit."

Now, this worries me. After I format the hard drive of the Dell laptop, will the Dell drivers cd be able to recognize that it's a Dell computer? Is the identification info contained in the BIOS or something? I'm just trying to foresee any problems

Also, for anyone who's re-installed Dell drivers before, do you have to manually find drivers from browsing for specific files, or is it just a setup file called "Video Card Driver" (just an example name) that you just double click to self-extract and install?

 

[CPFitz14]

Well, you shouldn't really need to run any programs, even if it doesn't recognize that the laptop is a Dell. Just pop the cd in, and when the "new hardward found" dialog box pops up, point it to the cd, and it should take care of the rest.

Good Luck.

-CPFitz14-

 

[Xaotic]

That will work, unless the CDs are strictly recovery images. If so, then the contents are in a compressed form and will not be accessible without restoring the factory image. Look at the drive in Explorer prior to initiating the reload to make sure.

 

[phoenix111384]

you can always d/l the drivers from the dell website and put it on a cd. that's what i did, the first thing when i got my dell laptop. works perfectly fine, and you won't have to worry about finding drivers from the cd or the hard drive.

Edit: oh and win xp pro and home drivers are the same on the dell website, at least for my laptop. i have a dell inspiron 5100

 

[Ge|atinousFury]

Thanks for the helpful replies everybody. I just finished with the reformat about an houra go. I got all the drivers installed and everything's working perfectly. For some reason Dell's driver cd didn't have the 10/100 ethernet drivers on it so I had to download them from Dell's website. The laptop loads up faster now and has more HDD space

Thanks again!!