Doing a clean install on a new Dell

[TheBDB]

I just bought an Inspiron E1505, and I love it but there is a lot of crap installed. When I bought it I made sure to ask for a Windows XP disk instead of a reinstall disk. I also got a drivers and utilities disk. Should there be any problems with me trying to do a clean install, booting to the disk and formatting the drive? Are there any drivers or something I should download before starting?

 

[ITJunkie]

Originally posted by: TheBDB
I just bought an Inspiron E1505, and I love it but there is a lot of crap installed. When I bought it I made sure to ask for a Windows XP disk instead of a reinstall disk. I also got a drivers and utilities disk. Should there be any problems with me trying to do a clean install, booting to the disk and formatting the drive? Are there any drivers or something I should download before starting?

As long as you have both the XP and Drivers & Utilities Disks, which you do, you are golden for a rebuild. All the drivers for your system should be on the Utilities disk. Just get XP installed and put the drivers disk in and it should find all your hardware and allow you to install the necessary drivers one-by-one. Look around on Dell's site though because there is a certain order you want to install drivers for best stability.

 

[TheBDB]

It seems I have a SATA hard drive and I might need to install a driver during Windows XP installation. The Dell support site says to create a floppy disk that has the driver from the utilities disk. First, I can't find the driver I need on the disk or the website, and second I don't have a floppy drive. Do I need the driver, how do I get it, and how do I install it during XP setup without a floppy drive?

 

[Basie]

You could try creating a bootable CD. Check here http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Have you tried the Manufacturer of the SATA Drives Website for the Drivers?

 

[ty1er]

Originally posted by: TheBDB
It seems I have a SATA hard drive and I might need to install a driver during Windows XP installation. The Dell support site says to create a floppy disk that has the driver from the utilities disk. First, I can't find the driver I need on the disk or the website, and second I don't have a floppy drive. Do I need the driver, how do I get it, and how do I install it during XP setup without a floppy drive?

When i reinstall WindowsXP on my Dell dual xeon workstation thats running Sata HDs. I do not recall doing anything special regarding sata drivers. I do not have a floppy driver either. So i know that i did use a floppy with drivers on it.

 

[TheBDB]

Thanks for the help. I chatted with Dell tech support and he said it didn't need anything special, so I did the reinstall and it worked fine.