Installing XP on a new Dell

[musicman64]

This might seem a bit odd.. forgive me =)

Anyhow, just bought a Dell for a friend, nice price, couldn't build it for that price with a nice lcd so... and this person does no gaming whatsoever...

I was wondering if there would be anything that would prevent me from installing XP on it, it already has it yes, but also a ton of junk....... instead of disabling/removing everything, I'd rather just wipe it and reinstall with a real version of XP heh...

So, any odd driver issues I might run into, any reason why I couldn't install???

Thanks

 

[Dahak]

There should not be any problems. as for drivers, should beable to grab the all from dell's support site.

 

[musicman64]

Quite a few years back, I remember repairing some customers OEM computer, I can't for the life of me remember the brand. Point is, it had this weird restore feature that took up a part of the HD and was a royal PITA.

Guess that's not so much an issue anymore, but since I'm curious, anyone remember who it was/what it was exactly?!

 

[keeleysam]

Jsut reinstall for the CD's it cam with. All teh extra crap will be gone.

 

[Valkerie]

-some Dell's are not given support for it's hardware from the Windows XP CD alone, have the Dell install discs ready (usually blue), or download the drivers off of the Dell website - as you cannot connect to the Internet with an unrecognized network card?

-when you restore the comp, erase the drive first, format it to NTFS,
-after the format, Windows XP will self-install itself

-install most important hardware first, restart as needed, and continue process

 

[Slowlearner]

I reintalled XP Home on Dim 4600 yesterday at work - the Maxtor HD had died - used WD's cd to partition and format- its quicker - used Dell burgundy OS disk- 35 mins - to install XP homebut it had no ethernet card drivers - then used Dell's Drivers CD for video/audio/ and network card drivers - went on line and downloaded all windows updates and then SP2, then another set of updates, and last installed Sonic now(?) for CD buring software skipped everything else. Didnt have to put in Windows product key or activate.

 

[musicman64]

Thanks, It should be fairly straightforward, as I said I was just hoping there wasn't going to be any nasty surprises.

=)