Windows 7: Reformatting hard drive on HP Pavillion dv6000 w/ Windows 7 Ultimate

Hey guys,

Long time lurker on this forum. There's a lot of good info on here that's helped me through some stuff with my laptop. Just want to say thanks for that.

Anyways, here's my question:
I'm wanting to reformat my hard drive on my laptop which currently has Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit. I just want to have a fresh start, and get rid of all the useless crap that has piled up on the computer over time. My question is, do I need to download all the drivers before hand and store them on a USB drive, or will Windows 7 automatically download all the needed drivers (ie. network, display, etc.) for me? I've heard of doing the recovery disk, but I honestly don't even need most of the stuff that came with the computer when it was purchased.



Any help/input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Windows will try (and most likely succeed) in finding a driver that works for most of your devices.

However this may not be the best/most up to date driver thus I would also recommend after installation you download the most up to date drivers from the internet.

Oli

Hello GeoffBCVT, welcome to Seven Forums!





If there's nothing on the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) you don't want to save, have a look at the tutorial at the link below, this over-writes everything and gives you a clean slate to install Windows to.

Windows 7 is pretty much driver complete and you should have no issues, if needed you can view device manager to make sure there's nothing that needs to be added.


SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

the only driver i had to download for Windows 7 x64 install on my dv6519tx was the ricoh 5 in 1 card reader. windows update gave me all the others.

It wouldn't hurt at all to go ahead and download the current Win 7 Drivers for all of your hardware.

As already mentioned, they chances you'll actually need them are slim. 7 usually does quite well finding all it needs.

But having them on a USB & already on hand, just in case, certainly isn't a bad idea at all.

Especially if unsure about the current system on a clean install.

This is not XP or Vista. MS spent a fortune building drivers in partnership with manufacturers, paying the tab so they wouldn't hold out to force us to buy newer hardware like with Vista.

As a result, the installer is nearly driver-complete, with newer arriving quickly via optional Windows Updates. In a couple of hundred installs, I haven't seen any bad drivers be supplied. At most I have to hunt one or two. In the rare case, I swap out a chipset or display driver for a better one from the computer or device maker's website, but only if performance dictates doing so.

If you have wireless LAN then that driver should be on a stick or disk so you can get online quickly if installer fails to provide it, as it can sometimes. Then wait to see what goodies Windows Updates delivers, check your Device Manager for any missing drivers and go find them on the Downloads webpage for your computer/device.

Before you install Windows 7 copy the drivers folder from your C:\..This folder does have all the drivers..

C:\swsetup

Make sure you download the new audio driver from HP web site..The current one does not work very well on some of the DV laptops..

Thanks for all the help guys. I can kinda see the LAN/Wireless driver being a problem if it doesn't install. Without the internet I would have no way of getting all the drivers. I'm going to put all the drivers on my USB drive and try going through with the install later tonight. I'll keep you guys updated and let you know how it works out.

Hp pavillion will install LAN drivers "from the box" no probs.

Use GPARTED (freeware) to format / partition your HDD(S) and then install Windows 7.

Make the LIVE CD BEFORE wiping your computer.

GParted -- Live CD/USB/PXE/HD

You'll certainly have LAN connectivity and you should be able to get any missing x-64 drivers from the HP site --HP are one of the better companies in providing hardware upgrade info.

Cheers
jimbo

A lot of people are having really good success with Partition Wizard rather than GParted now and there is a partition specific wipe function.


Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD