Clean Install Joys
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Recently my old Dell Inspiron laptop, (some 10+ years old), started to throw in the towel: WiFi failed, Bluetooth failed, Hard drive showed erratic errors. So I decided to retire it to the great laptop heaven in the sky. I ordered a new Dell XPS 15 inch screen and it arrived with loads of crapware installed by Dell. The operating system appeared to be spread over six partitions - yuck! Ever present on Dell products was McAfee stuff that is difficult to get rid of. Double yuck! What was I to do? The answer: A clean install. Using Diskpart I ran "clean" on the disk, converted it to GPT and running a Dirkpart script repartitioned the main drive to a modest 4 partitions. Then I installed Windows 10(2004) on the machine. NICE! All the pre-installed garbage gone! The only issue: The machine came with fingerprint recognition. Windows 10 did install the latest driver for the fingerprint device, but so far I cannot get it to work. Not important. Will figure it out in due course. I may be a masochist, but I love doing clean installs. There must be something wrong with me. My time doing a clean install: Booting a Windows PE flash drive and running a Diskpart script to clean the systems disk and repartition it: No more than 5 minutes. Installing Windows 10 (2004): Maybe 10 minutes. Updating Windows 10: Possibly 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your machine. Installing all apps: Well, forever? It depends on your needs. IMPORTANT: Stay away from Diskpart unless you know what you are doing. For example: Running the Diskpart "clean" command on a drive will knock it back to the virgin state it was in when it first left the assembly line. It won't even now whether it is a GPT or MBR drive. All partitions and data will be gone forever! Diskpart has no "Are you sure?" prompts. Commands are executed without prompts immediately.
I am not wrong. I am just different!
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Recently my old Dell Inspiron laptop, (some 10+ years old), started to throw in the towel: WiFi failed, Bluetooth failed, Hard drive showed erratic errors. So I decided to retire it to the great laptop heaven in the sky. I ordered a new Dell XPS 15 inch screen and it arrived with loads of crapware installed by Dell. The operating system appeared to be spread over six partitions - yuck! Ever present on Dell products was McAfee stuff that is difficult to get rid of. Double yuck! What was I to do? The answer: A clean install. Using Diskpart I ran "clean" on the disk, converted it to GPT and running a Dirkpart script repartitioned the main drive to a modest 4 partitions. Then I installed Windows 10(2004) on the machine. NICE! All the pre-installed garbage gone! The only issue: The machine came with fingerprint recognition. Windows 10 did install the latest driver for the fingerprint device, but so far I cannot get it to work. Not important. Will figure it out in due course. I may be a masochist, but I love doing clean installs. There must be something wrong with me. My time doing a clean install: Booting a Windows PE flash drive and running a Diskpart script to clean the systems disk and repartition it: No more than 5 minutes. Installing Windows 10 (2004): Maybe 10 minutes. Updating Windows 10: Possibly 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your machine. Installing all apps: Well, forever? It depends on your needs. IMPORTANT: Stay away from Diskpart unless you know what you are doing. For example: Running the Diskpart "clean" command on a drive will knock it back to the virgin state it was in when it first left the assembly line. It won't even now whether it is a GPT or MBR drive. All partitions and data will be gone forever! Diskpart has no "Are you sure?" prompts. Commands are executed without prompts immediately.
I am not wrong. I am just different!
I just got a new Asus laptop with all the various crapware, and I'd love to do a clean install, but I'm scared that there will be something in the standard image that I wouldn't be able to get separately. So I am stuck with McAfee. :sigh:
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I just got a new Asus laptop with all the various crapware, and I'd love to do a clean install, but I'm scared that there will be something in the standard image that I wouldn't be able to get separately. So I am stuck with McAfee. :sigh:
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
Get an image of the whole drive with macrium or aomei of the current status and you have your fallback solution for the
Richard Andrew x64 wrote:
I'm scared that there will be something in the standard image that I wouldn't be able to get separately.
If you manage to get it separately... screw you bloatware!! :-D If not... restore the image and continue with
Richard Andrew x64 wrote:
I am stuck with McAfee. :sigh:
That's what I always do when I get a new device or doing a (from time to time) clean install anyways.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Recently my old Dell Inspiron laptop, (some 10+ years old), started to throw in the towel: WiFi failed, Bluetooth failed, Hard drive showed erratic errors. So I decided to retire it to the great laptop heaven in the sky. I ordered a new Dell XPS 15 inch screen and it arrived with loads of crapware installed by Dell. The operating system appeared to be spread over six partitions - yuck! Ever present on Dell products was McAfee stuff that is difficult to get rid of. Double yuck! What was I to do? The answer: A clean install. Using Diskpart I ran "clean" on the disk, converted it to GPT and running a Dirkpart script repartitioned the main drive to a modest 4 partitions. Then I installed Windows 10(2004) on the machine. NICE! All the pre-installed garbage gone! The only issue: The machine came with fingerprint recognition. Windows 10 did install the latest driver for the fingerprint device, but so far I cannot get it to work. Not important. Will figure it out in due course. I may be a masochist, but I love doing clean installs. There must be something wrong with me. My time doing a clean install: Booting a Windows PE flash drive and running a Diskpart script to clean the systems disk and repartition it: No more than 5 minutes. Installing Windows 10 (2004): Maybe 10 minutes. Updating Windows 10: Possibly 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your machine. Installing all apps: Well, forever? It depends on your needs. IMPORTANT: Stay away from Diskpart unless you know what you are doing. For example: Running the Diskpart "clean" command on a drive will knock it back to the virgin state it was in when it first left the assembly line. It won't even now whether it is a GPT or MBR drive. All partitions and data will be gone forever! Diskpart has no "Are you sure?" prompts. Commands are executed without prompts immediately.
I am not wrong. I am just different!
Cp-Coder wrote:
The only issue: The machine came with fingerprint recognition. Windows 10 did install the latest driver for the fingerprint device, but so far I cannot get it to work.
Dell has a downloadable program that scans your (Dell) computer, and recommends the correct Dell-blessed drivers. My google-fu isn't working too well today, so I don't have a link.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Recently my old Dell Inspiron laptop, (some 10+ years old), started to throw in the towel: WiFi failed, Bluetooth failed, Hard drive showed erratic errors. So I decided to retire it to the great laptop heaven in the sky. I ordered a new Dell XPS 15 inch screen and it arrived with loads of crapware installed by Dell. The operating system appeared to be spread over six partitions - yuck! Ever present on Dell products was McAfee stuff that is difficult to get rid of. Double yuck! What was I to do? The answer: A clean install. Using Diskpart I ran "clean" on the disk, converted it to GPT and running a Dirkpart script repartitioned the main drive to a modest 4 partitions. Then I installed Windows 10(2004) on the machine. NICE! All the pre-installed garbage gone! The only issue: The machine came with fingerprint recognition. Windows 10 did install the latest driver for the fingerprint device, but so far I cannot get it to work. Not important. Will figure it out in due course. I may be a masochist, but I love doing clean installs. There must be something wrong with me. My time doing a clean install: Booting a Windows PE flash drive and running a Diskpart script to clean the systems disk and repartition it: No more than 5 minutes. Installing Windows 10 (2004): Maybe 10 minutes. Updating Windows 10: Possibly 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your machine. Installing all apps: Well, forever? It depends on your needs. IMPORTANT: Stay away from Diskpart unless you know what you are doing. For example: Running the Diskpart "clean" command on a drive will knock it back to the virgin state it was in when it first left the assembly line. It won't even now whether it is a GPT or MBR drive. All partitions and data will be gone forever! Diskpart has no "Are you sure?" prompts. Commands are executed without prompts immediately.
I am not wrong. I am just different!
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Cp-Coder wrote:
The only issue: The machine came with fingerprint recognition. Windows 10 did install the latest driver for the fingerprint device, but so far I cannot get it to work.
Dell has a downloadable program that scans your (Dell) computer, and recommends the correct Dell-blessed drivers. My google-fu isn't working too well today, so I don't have a link.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Recently my old Dell Inspiron laptop, (some 10+ years old), started to throw in the towel: WiFi failed, Bluetooth failed, Hard drive showed erratic errors. So I decided to retire it to the great laptop heaven in the sky. I ordered a new Dell XPS 15 inch screen and it arrived with loads of crapware installed by Dell. The operating system appeared to be spread over six partitions - yuck! Ever present on Dell products was McAfee stuff that is difficult to get rid of. Double yuck! What was I to do? The answer: A clean install. Using Diskpart I ran "clean" on the disk, converted it to GPT and running a Dirkpart script repartitioned the main drive to a modest 4 partitions. Then I installed Windows 10(2004) on the machine. NICE! All the pre-installed garbage gone! The only issue: The machine came with fingerprint recognition. Windows 10 did install the latest driver for the fingerprint device, but so far I cannot get it to work. Not important. Will figure it out in due course. I may be a masochist, but I love doing clean installs. There must be something wrong with me. My time doing a clean install: Booting a Windows PE flash drive and running a Diskpart script to clean the systems disk and repartition it: No more than 5 minutes. Installing Windows 10 (2004): Maybe 10 minutes. Updating Windows 10: Possibly 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your machine. Installing all apps: Well, forever? It depends on your needs. IMPORTANT: Stay away from Diskpart unless you know what you are doing. For example: Running the Diskpart "clean" command on a drive will knock it back to the virgin state it was in when it first left the assembly line. It won't even now whether it is a GPT or MBR drive. All partitions and data will be gone forever! Diskpart has no "Are you sure?" prompts. Commands are executed without prompts immediately.
I am not wrong. I am just different!
I get pleasure from disabling stuff in the Startup Tab: "har, har ... trying to get past me ... Noooo!".
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it. ― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I have had similar experiences with Dells. It really is about time manufacturers offered an option of hardware plus OS (Windows or Linux) for developers.
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Recently my old Dell Inspiron laptop, (some 10+ years old), started to throw in the towel: WiFi failed, Bluetooth failed, Hard drive showed erratic errors. So I decided to retire it to the great laptop heaven in the sky. I ordered a new Dell XPS 15 inch screen and it arrived with loads of crapware installed by Dell. The operating system appeared to be spread over six partitions - yuck! Ever present on Dell products was McAfee stuff that is difficult to get rid of. Double yuck! What was I to do? The answer: A clean install. Using Diskpart I ran "clean" on the disk, converted it to GPT and running a Dirkpart script repartitioned the main drive to a modest 4 partitions. Then I installed Windows 10(2004) on the machine. NICE! All the pre-installed garbage gone! The only issue: The machine came with fingerprint recognition. Windows 10 did install the latest driver for the fingerprint device, but so far I cannot get it to work. Not important. Will figure it out in due course. I may be a masochist, but I love doing clean installs. There must be something wrong with me. My time doing a clean install: Booting a Windows PE flash drive and running a Diskpart script to clean the systems disk and repartition it: No more than 5 minutes. Installing Windows 10 (2004): Maybe 10 minutes. Updating Windows 10: Possibly 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your machine. Installing all apps: Well, forever? It depends on your needs. IMPORTANT: Stay away from Diskpart unless you know what you are doing. For example: Running the Diskpart "clean" command on a drive will knock it back to the virgin state it was in when it first left the assembly line. It won't even now whether it is a GPT or MBR drive. All partitions and data will be gone forever! Diskpart has no "Are you sure?" prompts. Commands are executed without prompts immediately.
I am not wrong. I am just different!
You made it too difficult. Do a custom install deleting the partitions with the Windows 10 Retail ISO and then download, install and run the Dell Command | Update. On the first run, make sure you review the optional updates and tell it to ignore Dell Digital Delivery unless you purchased optional software such as Adobe. Once this is done then go to Microsoft Update for updates.
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Recently my old Dell Inspiron laptop, (some 10+ years old), started to throw in the towel: WiFi failed, Bluetooth failed, Hard drive showed erratic errors. So I decided to retire it to the great laptop heaven in the sky. I ordered a new Dell XPS 15 inch screen and it arrived with loads of crapware installed by Dell. The operating system appeared to be spread over six partitions - yuck! Ever present on Dell products was McAfee stuff that is difficult to get rid of. Double yuck! What was I to do? The answer: A clean install. Using Diskpart I ran "clean" on the disk, converted it to GPT and running a Dirkpart script repartitioned the main drive to a modest 4 partitions. Then I installed Windows 10(2004) on the machine. NICE! All the pre-installed garbage gone! The only issue: The machine came with fingerprint recognition. Windows 10 did install the latest driver for the fingerprint device, but so far I cannot get it to work. Not important. Will figure it out in due course. I may be a masochist, but I love doing clean installs. There must be something wrong with me. My time doing a clean install: Booting a Windows PE flash drive and running a Diskpart script to clean the systems disk and repartition it: No more than 5 minutes. Installing Windows 10 (2004): Maybe 10 minutes. Updating Windows 10: Possibly 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your machine. Installing all apps: Well, forever? It depends on your needs. IMPORTANT: Stay away from Diskpart unless you know what you are doing. For example: Running the Diskpart "clean" command on a drive will knock it back to the virgin state it was in when it first left the assembly line. It won't even now whether it is a GPT or MBR drive. All partitions and data will be gone forever! Diskpart has no "Are you sure?" prompts. Commands are executed without prompts immediately.
I am not wrong. I am just different!
Cp-Coder wrote:
I may be a masochist, but I love doing clean installs. There must be something wrong with me.
IMO there's something wrong if you don't do a clean install. Those who fall into that camp either: a) don't have the technical know-how b) don't know any better I don't know why you're doing anything with WinPE to deal with the partitions. "Burn" the OS ISO to a USB stick and let it own the entire disk. It's recreate the minimum set of partitions it needs and carry on.
Cp-Coder wrote:
All partitions and data will be gone forever!
If the laptop's brand new, isn't that the point?
