Dell laptop- wipe clean/ reinstall original

I want to wipe my 3 year old Dell laptop clean and reinstall the operating system, drivers, etc. Can someone point me to a procedure that will make this as trouble free as possible? What disks should I have on hand, what drivers, etc should be backed up, how many "Hail Mary"'s I should say.
Thanks.

 

First, if you haven't done a clean install before, check out this guide so you're familiar with what's going to happen. It's a good step-by-step with screen shots.

You can download the drivers from the Dell web site in advance and burn 'em to a CD, or you can use a driver tool like DoubleDriver or Driver Magician or DriverMax (I can personally recommend DriverMax; I've used it, it's excellent!). You can then burn the backed up drivers to a CD, put 'em on a USB flash drive, whatever. Obviously, you'll need your Windows install disc, and you might want to consider creating a Windows install disc with the all the latest updates and service packs 'slipstreamed' in to it. That way you don't have to spend the time to install 'em all later; they get installed when installing Windows. You can also slipstream your drivers in to the Windows install disc, but I haven't done any slipstreaming with drivers so I can't really comment on it. But slipstreaming the service packs and updates is actually really easy. You can use a tool like RVM Integrator to easily slipstream updates and service packs into your XP disc. The developer has some 'pre-built' update packs available; download 'em from this link. Info, FAQs, and how-to's can be found there also. Unless you bought a new XP install disc fairly recently, yours probably contains SP2, so you may want to slipstream SP3 into it. You can download XP service pack 3 from Major Geeks using this link. There are several ways to create a custom slisptreamed disc. Using the RVM Integrator already mentioned or nLite are two of the easiest and more common methods. You can read a good nLite how-to guide at this link or at this link. You can also do it without nLite by following the steps in this guide. There's tons of info about slipstreaming available out on the web.

I recommend that you download your drivers instead of backing up the drivers currently istalled on your PC. The main reason is because of malware/viruses. Many of the newer types of malware install themselves as drivers and you'd run the risk of possibly backing up an infected driver. Another reason to download fresh drivers is to avoid possible driver corruption, and to make sure you have newest drivers available. If you have trouble finding your drivers, post the model of the Dell laptop and we'll do our best to provide you with download links. Then you'd burn 'em to a CD or integrate 'em into your custom XP install disc.

After you have the hard drive formatted and Windows and the drivers are installed, you've got all your favorite software installed (like Office, and Photoshop, for example), you may want to create a back up 'image' to a DVD using software like Acronis. It will create a complete backup of your PC including all software, drivers, even pcitures, music, whatever. The next time you want to reload (or if there's a catastrophic meltdown or failure or virus infection) you can simply boot to a pre-made disc, and restore everything from the image you burned to DVD. I use Acronis8 (it's older but works fine) immediately after a fresh install on my home PC; it includes XP Pro SP3 and all updates, drivers, Office, Nero, Firefox (with my bookmarks and add-on modules), Adobe Reader & Flash Player, Java, my antivirus/antispyware software, media player with codecs, maintenance tools (defraggers, disk cleaners, etc), my custom themes and wallpapers, etc. So- when I restore from this image I don't have to re-install anything!!! It's already there in the image I built, and Windows is already all set up and configured just the way I like it with all my software. I always store all my documents, music, pictures, videos, and downloads on a 2nd hard drive, so they don't add unnecessary 'weight' to the image or its size, and the image easily fits on a single standard DVD, and having all my personal stuff on a 2nd drive completely avoids the whole "what do I need to save and back up before formatting" scenario... very handy, and a great time saver.... since you have a laptop, you might want to consider using an external USB drive to store your docs, pics, tunes, etc....

I hope this helps!!!
:-D

[dlb]

( :-o I got a bit carried away, and I know it's a lot to read, rolleyes but I think I posted some good stuff )

 

WOw, Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes ut I appreciate your time and effort! Really!

 

No dlb.
You did just fine(patting on back).

 

dlb,
I'm sorry, it's been a while since I installed Windows now that computers have it pre-installed. Will my Windows start up disk have the format command? Also, I have Infrarecorder, can I use that to make a back up image?
Thanks,
Jeff

 

If you have an XP install CD, and you boot to it, there will be an option to format the hard drive. You can follow the steps in this guide for a clean install with a drive format. It's a complete guide, easy to follow, and has screen shots of each step.