Dell 8600 on the way....need advice.

tbonepat11

Limp Gawd
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Dec 2, 2001
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This is my first laptop purchase....I am mainly a desktop guy and i jumped on that $750 Dell deal. My question is, when i get the laptop...should I leave it as it is or should I wipe it and install only the things I want? Since I have never worked with a laptop before, I was just curious to whether or not this helps. I do plan on uninstalling all the crap that comes with it. Also, it has the Radeon 9600 pro turbo. Should I just grab regular Cats for it or do I need special drivers? Thanks!
 
There is going to be a lot of crap on there you won't want. You can do one of two things:

1) Go through and uninstall everything you don't need (anything Dell related, spyware possible, etc) and then use the laptop, likely without issue.

2) Wipe and resinstall everything, getting the drivers from the Dell website and installing only the software you want.

Option 1 is the fast and easy way. Option 2 is the more foolproof. Just depends on how much work you want to do. I also go the 8600 on the coupon and I for one will be reformatting and reinstalling everything from scratch. Will likely save close to a gig of storage that way.

You'll likely want to download most recent Cats. If that doen'st work get the Omega Drivers. That's what I use on my Compaq Evo with Radeon 7500 right now.
 
I work as a network technician at my college. Whenever we get a shipment of dells in, the first thing they order us to do is to format the entire hard drive and reinstall windows from our CDs to eliminate all the crap that they preload on those things.
 
Thanks guys. I was thinking of reformatting because for one i have a 40 gig HD so space might be a issue and two i dont want that crap that comes preloaded. I just didnt know whether or not the Dell laptop would have a problem with that. I have heard of some laptops not working so well if the original software isnt installed. But who knows.
 
Schadenfroh said:
I work as a network technician at my college. Whenever we get a shipment of dells in, the first thing they order us to do is to format the entire hard drive and reinstall windows from our CDs to eliminate all the crap that they preload on those things.

i order the same thing done to every computer that comes into my school period

this also has a further advantage that most dont think about
when dell preloads software the administrator account either has no password or has a default insecure password

the cats can be used on the mobile platform
they however must be modified to do so

the omega's auto detect
 
definetly format it saves you much headache from dell retardation and bloatsoftware that is stupid.
 
Bomber said:
There is going to be a lot of crap on there you won't want. You can do one of two things:

1) Go through and uninstall everything you don't need (anything Dell related, spyware possible, etc) and then use the laptop, likely without issue.
I agree with this. Just uninstall what you don't want/need. It's much easier than reformatting and reinstalling. But there is one advantage to repartitioning/reformatting: you can wipe out the restore partition and get a couple of GB back. I'm leaving the restore partition because when I sell the system eventually, I can restore it back to original easily.

I'm getting my 8600 delivered today. The $750 off deal was even better than the one I ordered on 10/7 ($500 off + $200 rebate) so I returned the first one after a week and ordered one with a better screen (WUXGA) and more memory for the same price.
 
Received my 8600 (from the $750 off deal) this morning, and after booting it up and going through all of the crap they had installed on it (as well as XP Home), I decided to format it and start over from scratch.

I put XP Pro w/ SP2 on there, and installed the drivers from the Dell website (except I used Omega drivers for the 9600), and everything works perfectly (alot quicker and better looking than before) except for the 1350 b/g wireless card, which seems to possibly be having trouble with my roomate's wireless motorola router (that can be worked around).

So, my advice is to FORMAT IT.
 
I got mine today, too. Spent about 10 minutes uninstalling programs and everything is fine. My advice: don't format it if you aren't changing the OS. :rolleyes:
 
I got my 600m today and I'm scared to format b/c I'm afraid the wireless won't work flawlessly like it's working right now.

Also, I got the XSGA+ or something like that for the higher resolutuion but my desktop icons seem enormous, like unproportional to the start button, etc when I compare to my desktop. Is there anyway I can reduce the size?
 
Just go into your settings and change the size of the icons to normal (I believe thats what the setting is). Mine was the same way.

And for the thing about the wireless card, I had the same issue before I formatted that I have now after the format. So I wouldn't really worry about it if you really wanna reformat it. As far as I know, Dell uses the same drivers that they post on their website. I'm just fairly sure its the p.o.s. motorola b/g router that my roomate bought. Gonna try it on my Linksys b router that has always worked flawlessly before.

*update* - Booted up my laptop yesterday morning after work, and the wireless worked perfectly without modifying anything for some unknown reason. So now I have 0 problems after the format... SO FORMAT IT ;)
 
I just got my 8600 and reinstalled everything from my own copies. The dell was formated in Fat 32, so my 40gb drive only had 33GB availible...blech....

I used there driver resource CD for the Wireless, and hard wire NIC, along with the tough pad. I downloaded the latest ATI driver from dell, as the ATI website said to get your mobile drivers from your laptop manufacturer. I suppose you could try the desktop versions, but i didn't. I also downloaded the latest chipset driver from intel, the 8600 uses the 855PM if you get it from there, be advised, I had to do windows update to my XP to get this to install correctly. I was missing some USB .sys file, until I updated windows.

After that, I installed my anitspy ware,avg, smartripper, nero, dr divx, paintshop, my dell dj drivers, and printer drivers, then ghosted it, now I have my own restore disk.
 
forcemac101 said:
I just got my 8600 and reinstalled everything from my own copies. The dell was formated in Fat 32, so my 40gb drive only had 33GB availible...blech....
It wasn't formatted in fat32. 3.5GB of space was reserved for a restore partition.
 
madflava54 said:
Anyway to restore the partition w/o formatting?
yeah, delete the 3.5GB partition and create a FAT32 or NTFS partition in it's place. Or delete the 3.5GB partition and use partition magic (ugh) to extend the primary partition.

I really don't recommend PM because it can (too often) cause data loss. Back up anything important if you do use it.
 
pxc said:
yeah, delete the 3.5GB partition and create a FAT32 or NTFS partition in it's place. Or delete the 3.5GB partition and use partition magic (ugh) to extend the primary partition.

I really don't recommend PM because it can (too often) cause data loss. Back up anything important if you do use it.

Um, I dont see the partition drive in my computer. It's just C and D. In Add/Remove Programs, there is a Dell system restore file. Is that it?
 
that wouldnt do it, you need to re partition the hard drive...

hell i did that on my m6805 cause windows install make logical partitions (i wanted my 8mb back damnit!), so i installed windows and partition magic and then deleted the partition and make a new NTFS primary one.... lol, partition magic deleted the partition it was running on
 
madflava54 said:
I dont see the partitioned drive under My Computer.
control panel/admin tools/computer management/disk management
 
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