Clean install: HP-specific question

I have read How to Clean Reinstall a Factory OEM Windows 7

My question is about the "Special notes to HP owners:"

HP Recovery will now do a Minimized OS Recovery when booting from F11, which retains only the OS, Recovery Manager, HP Support Asst, and HP Wireless LAN. This is as close to a clean reinstall as you can get without using a retail DVD with COA key.

I'm not clear on this - does this statement mean that because I do not have a retail DVD, I cannot do an actual clean install?

Yes...that's correct. It's technically, not a clean install. It's a factory re-install of the factory OS that came with the PC/laptop.

If you want to a clean install, with out all that factory bloatware, you can download the ISO and burn to a disc and re-install the OS (just the OS). You will need to have all the drivers pre-downloaded from HP and have available for install after the clean install is finished.

You can download the ISO from here....

Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Digital River « My Digital Life

Using a recovery partition does not give you a clean install--by definition.

If you want a clean install, download an ISO from mydigitallife,info and burn it to a disc. That is the equivalent of a retail DVD.

Thank you both for your replies - what you suggest is what I had originally intended to do but when I read the "Special notes to HP owners:" I thought it was saying I could not do that.

One more question: What should I do with FACTORY_IMAGE (D:)? Should I leave it there or wipe it once the clean install is complete and tested? Or wipe it before the install?

Probably best that you post a screen shot of Windows Disk Management so we can see your setup.

I build my own PCs and so never have to deal with weirdo partitions from OEMs, so I'm not sure what "Factory_Image (D)" might be. I'd guess it is a partition necessary to restore your PC to factory specifications. My understanding is that those types of partitions often don't work after a clean install anyway.

There's no point in having it if it won't work after your reinstall, but you can always get rid of it after you finish--rather than before.

A purist would delete all partitions during the clean reinstall from the burned ISO.

You probably ought to make recovery DVDs anyway. I'd guess they would work even if that Factory Image partition won't---although recovery DVDs in general are not highly reliable.

A purist would delete all partitions during the clean reinstall from the burned ISO.

That's what I'd like to do - any downside to doing that?

I planned to make two DVDs with the ISO and put the ISO on a flash drive.

That pic looks standard. The D partition would be needed to restore to factory specs.

If you delete all partitions you are giving up the ability to restore to factory specs from that D partition.

If you have separately made recovery DVDs, they should (I say should) do the same thing.

I'm not aware of any HP-specific issues that might make deletion of all partitions otherwise undesirable, but I'm not an HP authority. OEMs can do some cuckoo things and I can't say for sure what other capabilities might be provided by that D partition.

On the other hand, that HP note you quoted in your first post implies that the recovery partition should still work after a clean install if you leave it intact. The operative word in that note is "should". If that is true and if you do not need the 11 GB of space it takes up, it might be better to play it safe and leave it alone----and just delete the other 2 partitions when you come to the screen asking you "where do you want to install Windows".

Others with more HP experience might have more comments.