installing a clean version of an OS on a pre-built computer

never done it, easy to do? or pain in the (_|_)
rather than give my friends computer back to him with 15programs removed and cleaning the registry up, making it (to me in my opinion) unstable...was thinking of just putting in a clean OS...yay or nay?

 

It could be a pain in the butt, but I'm not really sure what you are asking, or what you meant by prebuilt. If you mean a computer built by a brand name manufacturer, then installing a clean OS as you termed it is no problem, but there could be problems if you don't install their drivers. If you install a clean OS, it should be from a legitimately purchased CD.

 

It can be a real pain in the butt if the parts are proprietary and not all the drivers are provided. A hard drive died on an old Dell laptop of mine, but I can't seem to be able to find the specific drivers it needs. I have a laptop that cant use USB or any expansion cards.

If you can find all the drivers, IMHO I would put a clean install of the OS on. That would also include installing the usual suspects for them (acrobat reader, zip utility, etc.).

 

this is my concern, finding the EXACT drivers.
think ill do some hunting for a couple of days, then take it from there.
i think ill try calling HP and asking for the drivers seperately, by pointing out the site lol.

 

This rarely works for me. But, when it does, I jump up in joy.

Anway, another way to hunt down the pesky drivers, is use the drivers already installed in your machine. You can use a number of programs to do this:

Driver guide backup:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2545

I use this one frequently. It will tell you what non-microsoft drivers are installed on the system. You can make note of these drivers, then if you so wish, you can back them up for later use.

 

Recently I did the exact thing to my computer. I bought the pc from HP and was refurbished. Came with XP Home, but bought XP Pro to do clean install and not just upgrade Home. I completely cleaned the drive (Maxtor) and did the clean install. Naturally when speakers, etc. decided not to work, it hit me that the drivers were not installed. While it took some searching on the net, I was able to find all of the original drivers either on Hp's website or the manufacturer's site. All of the manufacter's components work great, if not better. I am sure that success depends on the manufacter, but it should be possible with generic drivers.

p.s. I am still dealing with the original partition not becoming part of the original hard drive. It was the new fab with not sending backup CDs and instead putting the backup/restore in a partition.

 

i was lucky...the xp pro i put in it, made everything work just fine.
phew...bleh, hp products...told my old man even, dont buy it, ill get one built for you, but apparently pre-built computers are sooo much better
no wonder they have millions of $$$