Hi Matt,

You can use the original disk that was sent along with the computer to reinstall Windows Vista.
However the Recovery Partition and MediaDirect will not be restored.
MediaDirect may not be compatible with Windows 7 as the installer may not work.

Please reply if you have any questions.

If you install the Operating System manually or change the partitions on the harddrive the Dell Quick Restore to factory settings will be lost.

The recovery partition is thus useless. You can however perform a full manual reinstall with the Dell Windows Vista Reinstallation DVD.

Please see my two following guides:

• A Clean Install of Windows 7

• A Clean Install of Windows Vista 

For drivers see

• Inspiron 1525 - Windows 7 32 Bit

• Inspiron 1525 - Windows 7 64 bit

• Inspiron 1525 - Windows Vista 32 Bit

• Inspiron 1525 - Windows Vista 64 Bit

Media Direct and the Media Direct button work fine on my Inspiron 6400 on Windows 7 32 bit without any issues. I never tried Media Direct with the 64 bit version of Windows 7, the person here has everything working normally for example.

With regards to the formatting, use the DBAN, don't bother with the USB caddy. Ensure your card reader is disabled in the BIOS setup before using DBAN otherwise DBAN won't work, Step 7a.

Good to know about the drivers. Likely your DVD has Service Pack 1.

You should install the Dell Quickset however for the media buttons and on screen volume, brightness to work.

Also do a quick check in the device manager just in case to ensure there are no errors. The card reader for example may come up with an error in the device manager.

Also the Intel Matrix Storage Manager might be useful to install, it should speed the system up use the IATA89ENU.exe file.

Thanks Philip. I'm now running Windows 7 on my laptop with MediaDirect working well too!

Only major deviation from your guide was that after downloading all the drivers I havent actually used any except the Touchpad drivers as the default Windows 7 ones seem to work well. I also didn't bother downloading the service packs etc as I didn't really know which ones to go for and knew Windows Update would do it automatically when installed.

DBAN took a long, long time - much longer than I expected at about 4-5 hours! I'm sure back in the day it only took a minute or two but hey, at least it's wiped clean.

My version of Windows was an upgrade so it wouldnt let me enter the key on my clean version of 7, however after inserting the DVD and immediately doing an upgrade the key worked.

Oh and aside from MediaDirect & Touchpad, I left all the Dell  <ADMIN NOTE: Profanity removed as per TOU> off as I didn't really use it anyway and I'm sure it used to slow down my pc.

Finding Windows 7 a lot leaner and faster already so thanks for helping me exted the life of my Inspiron and save a few £!!

The DBAN is a much more through format than the standard Windows format, hence it takes a long time.

Thanks Philip.

Service pack 2 came through in my updates last night so it's all up to date finally. I also updated my BIOS as you suggested, from version 16 to version 17 so pleased that everything is good as new.

My media buttons seem to be working without Quickset but I did have 2 unidentified "Base System Device" in the Device Manager which, as you said disappeared after installing Ricoh drivers. Just going to download that Intel software now.

So thanks for all your help, it really made the whole process a lot less daunting!

Windows 7 Service Pack 2 doesn't exist yet so you must be very up to date :)

The media buttons are working, sometimes they are a bit funny without the Dell Quickset but if they work than thats great. Dell Quickset will also offer you the onscreen volume and brightness meter.

If you feel like there is is a feedback bthread called Has the Forum Helped You? Enjoy your system and Windows 7.

Haha yeah thats not a typo, I've got a USB time machine.

No bother, cheers. I'll not hesitate to come back here for any help in the future!