Solved I have a few questions about clean install

[FloAmi]

Hello I have a few questions. I need to perform a clean reinstall, but this is my first time and I'm a little nervous. I read through the whole tutorial but it is a lot to take in. I'd say I'm not a newbie user, but I'm not advanced either so bear with me here.

1. Should I locate all of the drivers needed for my HP computer before the reinstall and back them up on my external hard drive? If so how would I go about doing so, especially when it comes to figuring out what drivers are needed and which are not? (I read the Bloatware thread but I am still a little worried about this..)
Or will my computer install all the drivers needed via Windows Updates?

2. I only have one flashdrive to boot from (unless you can boot from an external harddrive, and doing so won't delete the files that are already on it). My flashdrive is older, and was I believe advertised as 4GB at the time, but is only 3.79 GB (or somewhere around there). Is that large enough to boot from for a x64 Windows 7 Home Premium OS?

3. My OS came preinstalled, but I found the COA sticker with the windows product key. Is that enough for activation, or should I back up the OEM activation keys and such?

EDIT: Also my computer is a touch screen, but I never used this feature since I found it more of a pain than anything (especially if a small bug or something ended up flying into the screen and exited out all of my stuff). Does this change anything when it comes to the drivers?

 

[AddRAM]

1) The only driver you really need is the network driver, it can be found at HP. It should fit on your flash drive even after you create your Home Premium installer.

You can use Rufus to create your usb installer.

Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

or my favorite WiNToBootic bootable usb drive windows vista/7/8 - Bootable USB | Bootable USB

2) 3.79 should be fine, the Home Premium Iso file is 3.09 GB

Did you download the Iso file yet, if not get it from here.

Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool

Just download and run the Windows ISO Downloader.exe, and it will pop up a window where you can choose to download the W7 Home Premium Iso file.

3) If you can read the key on the COA, that`s all you need to activate W7, you can`t use the key the factory used.


Any more questions, just ask.

 

[johnhoh]

Your plan sounds good.

I did a search on HP Touchscreen A4-3400 and got one hit - the hp touchsmart. If that's your machine, here is your network driver:

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp54001-54500/sp54333.exe

and here is HP Support Assistant.

HP Support Assistant | HP® Official Site

Just install windows, then run the network driver program, then run HP support assistant which will automatically download the rest of your drivers. Its also possible that the windows installation will correctly determine your network driver and install it before you even have to.

Meanwhile, here are all your drivers if you want to just download them now instead. Again, this assumes you have a Touchsmart machine.

HP Software and Driver Downloads for HP Printers, Laptops, Desktops and More | HP® Customer Support

 

[Megahertz07]

Why don't you use the Factory Recover program from BIOS?
You will finish with a computer as it came from HP.
HP PCs - Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 7) | HP® Customer Support

 

[FloAmi]

Would the Factory Recover fix corrupted metadata files? Factory Recover seems easier to me, so I'd rather go with that if it would.

Regardless I'll set up the USB in case something happens later on. Thanks everyone for the replies and help!

EDIT: For the record, the metadata file corrupted was one responsible for system security.

 

[Megahertz07]

Factory recover formats the drive C: and restore an image from another partition.
All data will be lost so Backup your data fist.
You will finish with a computer as it came from HP.
For the updates MS releases SP2 for Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

[AddRAM]

A clean install is very simple, but as you said you are a bit nervous, if you can just do a factory restore then try that 1st, it will save you a lot of time and grief. Look at the screen when you 1st turn on the PC, it should show you which key to press to start the process, or you may be able to start it from within windows.

Excellent advice by Luiz

 

[FloAmi]

Thanks everyone! I made the windows 7 flash drive for a later use in case, but managed to perform a factory reset and that seemed to have fixed the issue. Everything seems alright now, so I'm going to mark this thread as solved. Thanks for the advice and help!

 

[AddRAM]

That`s great news

Another great idea to research and think about in the mean time is creating a disk image, after you get windows back to how you like it.

Right now you should install any security updates, then go through each important/optional update 1 at a time to see if you actually need it.

Highlite the update then on the right side of the page it will say More Information, just click on that and it will give a description of the update, take your time there`s no reason to rush it.

Windows only gets corrupted and slow because people download and install garbage, be careful and you should never have an issue.

After you re install all your programs and the updates, and windows is working great, then you should consider making a disk image, that is if you have a place to store it. (your external would be ideal)

There`s nothing worse then having windows working perfectly, then have an issue and have to start at square 1 again.

Any questions, just ask.

Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup - Windows 7 Help Forums

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