Hi Kevin,

To perform a clean installation of Vista, you must boot your computer with the Vista DVD (change the setting in the BIOS so that your DVD/CD drive is the first item in the list). When you boot with the Vista DVD, format your drive and then proceed with the installation. Once Vista is up and running, then install all of your required drivers in this order.

NOTE - a few things to do first:

1) Make sure that you have all of the installation CD's for any applications that you might want to reinstall.
2) Make note any Serial Numbers or Keys for any of these applications (you will probably need these when you reinstall)
3) From Device Manager, make note of all of the hardware installed on your machine (so that you can download and install all of the appropriate drivers)

Good Luck!

Edited to add: Don't worry about uninstalling any of your programs. Formatting the drive prior to installing Vista will wipe everything.

Rebel9

thanks alot that a great help im going to start doing that as surgeseted and see where it leads me if i reply in a few hours then its all gone well if not then im in trouble but cheers for your advive here hoping.

kevin27

Rebel9

ive done as you surgested and in bios selected to boot from a disk and then run the installation dvd.

i followed all prompt and after a bit of waiting all seems to be working fine infact better than fine, my laptop is now super quick and no more jumping or having to press f5 every 5 mins

my one question is, i wasn't prompted for a product key or any thing to download from the drivers and downloads page like you said in your last link (desktop system software,chipset,video adapter, ect ect ect..) and was wondering if this was normal

thanks for your advice

kevin27

HI I am having the same problem as Kevin.  I reinstalled vista but jumped the gun, I installed it on recovery by mistake, it made the OS, this morning I got my head round it and reinstalled it again on to which is now calling itself Recovery. I have reformatted that is fine. What I would like to do is format and do a complete reinstall but it wont let me. Everytime I boot up it asks me which OSi I want to use. Itdosn't give me the option of doing a factory restore either. I would like this option to regain the memory I have lost. Any ideas??.

TAFFIE.

TAFFIE,

Since you installed Vista on the D partition, your Factory Restore option is no longer available (you overwrote it when you mistakenly installed to D).

You can format C and reinstall, but you have to do this by booting from the Vista DVD.

hi ,,, i want to ask a que,  i have dell studio 1535 ,,, i need to make ( restore factory settings ) ,,, i tried to use F8 at start ,,, and it is ok ,,, but ( Repair my computer ) doesn't appear ,,,  note : i have partition in the hard drive is called ( RECOVERY ) ... so i need help

THANK YOU ,for consideration ,,,,

Welcome to the forums shetoos :emotion-21:

The process is explained in the manual you got with the system, but you can also find out how to do it, with the help of the official Dell 'Restoring your [Dell] computer to the factory settings' :emotion-5:

Rebel9

sorry bout the delay getting back,ive chercked whats on my computer now to what was on there before after running the "drivers and utilites" disc and as listed below is whats missing;

in network adapters its "Dell wireless 1390 wlan mini card"

in system devices "ATI PCI Express (3GI0) Filter driver"

and "VSO Devices" is missing all together which had "patin couffin engine" in it.

but can i add my laptop is running better than ever and ive had no problems at all with it since the reinstall but just wantd a bit of expert advice on what i should do and where to do it regaurding the above list

thanks alot

kevin27

Kevin,

The "patin couffin engine" is associated with CD or DVD burning software (see this search).

You also probably have to download and install the drivers for the wireless card and the video driver. Go here and expand the "Network" section and the "Video" section. You'll find the appropriate drivers there.

Glad to hear the laptop is running smoothly now.

Rebel9

ive done the downloads and alls good, i was just wondering if if you could just answer one more question for me,

after i reinsalled my laptop i was using under half the 45gb memory ive got,all ive put on hear is itunes,vuze(bittorrent),quick player and media player and recordnow delux, and im now being told ive only got 6gb left.any ideas

cheers kev

System Restore points could be taking up a lot of hard disk space (BTW - a 45 GB drive is a pretty small drive these days).

Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup>Files from all users on this computer>select the drive>OK.When the next screen opens, click on the More Options tab and then under the "System Restore and Shadow Copies" section, click on Clean up. You may have to confirm this action. Once you do this, how much free space do you have left?

thank you .. TheRealFireblade 

i folowed the steps shown in the dell support ,,, and so that step ...

Press the on the keyboard to select Repair Your Computer on the Advanced Boot Options menu , and then press .

but in that step he says  select repair your computer ,,, the problem that when i open the advanced boot options ,,, i don't find ( Repair your computer ) ...

and it is the problem ,,,

and i tried to use that step from windows in safe mode ,,, from the recovery partition  :

In the Dell Factory Image Restore window, click Next.

8    Click to select the Yes, reformat hard drive and restore system software to factory condition check box.

but the system told me ( Error ) ...

thank you again for your consideration and help ...

Great Kevin. Glad to help out!