Replace bloated HP OEM Win7 Home Premium with fresh retail install

Hi,
I got a brand new HP laptop with great specs but there is so much bloat on the Win7 Home Premium install, it takes nearly 2 minutes to boot.

It doesn't come with any recovery media, but I see a recovery partition and I don't want to restore into a bloatware setup again.

I have a Windows 7 retail DVD ISO from Connect and have whatever file removed so I can select the edition to install.

Can I use that media (or modify it) so that I can do a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium back onto the laptop and use the OEM sticker key to activate it or trigger a System Locked Preinstallation (SLP) mechanism in the installer?

I don't have any additional retail licences to use so I only want to use the OEM licence for now, but without the shocking amount of bloat HP provide!

Thanks

Why not just remove the "bloat" you refer to? You'll be rid of it and you can see if it helps your boot speed. FWIW I have a relatively new HP desktop and it takes way less than 2 minutes to boot and I have almost everything it came with still installed.

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

As bru says, you can just uninstall any HP software you don't want, but if you'd prefer the clean install route, this tutorial will show you how it's done.

Clean Install : Factory COA Activation Key

bru said:

Why not just remove the "bloat" you refer to? You'll be rid of it and you can see if it helps your boot speed. FWIW I have a relatively new HP desktop and it takes way less than 2 minutes to boot and I have almost everything it came with still installed.

I'm glad your HP Desktop takes way less than 2 minutes to boot. Sadly my brand new laptop was taking 1 minute 45 seconds to boot (even when on a power supply). There are nearly 3 screenfulls of value-added products on Add/Remove programs. After a full hour of uninstalling programs the boot time is down to 1 minute 10 seconds.

I'd much rather do a clean Windows 7 install at this stage.


So guys, can the Win 7 Retail image be modified to allow OEM keys or SLP activation?

seavixen32 said:

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

As bru says, you can just uninstall any HP software you don't want, but if you'd prefer the clean install route, this tutorial will show you how it's done.

Clean Install : Factory COA Activation Key

Thank you! This looks exciting

It's a new computer so I guess you won't lose anything but that Warning in the tutorial would lead me to spend a little more time removing programs and see if that accomplishes what I want. I've used HP warranty service quite a lot and would hate to lose it so early in the life of my computer.

mwmw said:

seavixen32 said:

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

As bru says, you can just uninstall any HP software you don't want, but if you'd prefer the clean install route, this tutorial will show you how it's done.

Clean Install : Factory COA Activation Key

Thank you! This looks exciting

A little caveat I forgot to mention in light of bru's comment re HP's warranty period.

Make sure you create a set of recovery disks first so that you can recover your system to its factory state in case you have to ask for support that necessitates sending your computer in for repair while it's under warranty.

bru said:

It's a new computer so I guess you won't lose anything but that Warning in the tutorial would lead me to spend a little more time removing programs and see if that accomplishes what I want. I've used HP warranty service quite a lot and would hate to lose it so early in the life of my computer.

Good advice I think.
With the factory restore disks to fall back on, as well as cleaning up "rubbish" you can repartition. HP tend to provide a silly partition structure.

While a clean install is useful and I believe legal, you may be changing the status of your OEM license. If a factory restore reverts this then you're fine.