New
#31
Q. 1) As your Dell came Win 7, I would say no need.
Q. 2) You may get 100's posts on this one. For a free AV go with MSE, for paid AV go with Norton 360 v4.
No clean install possible on new Dell?
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New #32
With regards to BIOS updates...I'm conservative...I leave them alone unless I am having a problem that the BIOS version corrects. Most sites, Dell included..will tell you what issues the BIOS updates address.
With regards to AV...there are tons of threads on that subject here. I think any of them are fine..as long as you are using one. I use MSE on my Windows 7 box at home and Avast on my wife's Vista laptop and both have been just fine.
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New #33
Ok, thanks pparks and theog. I thought I might be opening the door to tons of posts on AV programs. I downloaded MSE and I think I'll be sticking with it. I'm not going to mess with the BIOS now since everything works fine.
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New #35
Hey guys- Dell shipped the OS overnight so I'm preparing to do a clean install. It looks like I just change the boot order so the cd drive is first and go from there? Do I not need to worry about using the drivers and utilities cd since I'll be installing drivers from my external drive? Or do I need to use it and then go through and replace drivers as needed?
Will I need to download another burning program in order to do backups since Roxio is probably on the other "applications" disk that Dell sent? Sorry for all the questions I just want to do this right the first time and get to a state where I can regularly do backups.
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New #36
Just boot from the disk, press any key when prompted to begin loading the OS.
Probably won't need the drivers or utilities CD...most everything will probably work just fine from the Windows OS. For anything that isn't work, support.dell.com is your friend and you just key in your service tag and you can get everything you need.
for CD burning, I wouldn't reload the bloated roxio app...but rather would get something leaner like IMGBURN (which is 4MB and FREE) and use that for your burning needs.
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New #38
I thought of one more thing. Would it make sense to create a partition during the clean install and having one partition for the OS and another for other data? Or should I do the install on just the one active (wiped) partition.
Thanks
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New #39
I would do 2 partitions. This way, if down the road you want to reload your OS or restore an image that you make..you can just restore the C drive and keep the D drive with perhaps your internet downloads, drivers, etc.
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New #40
So one partition would have the OS and anything I install on it and the other partition I would set up to have downloads go to (then I could move them over if I needed to) and any drivers I would need to keep for backup purposes, pictures, etc.?
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