[mfsoa]

Whaddya think-
Just got off the phone w/ Dell tech support and I need a new hard drive. I have done complete reformats of this drive before, and using the Dell reinstallation CD puts lots of bloatware on the PC. I've always been able to reload the drivers from the Dell-supplied discs.

Any thoughts about buying a version of XP and loading this instead? I like the idea of as clean an install as possible and I think I'll be able to load whatever drivers I need after the XP install.

This PC is mostly used by my son for gaming.

Any problems I don't forsee if I want to load just XP?

Thanks for any advice.

-Mike

[Tr3vWh0r3]

I have worked on a Dell and once the clean XP install was complete we had no drivers for the net card. Just make sure that when all is said and done you can get on the internet to get whatever other drivers you need. Have the driver ready on a cd or something.

[Nels Ferre]

If you don't care about the expense, get the XP disc and do a clean install, then install your drivers.

[contrarian]

I have a newer Dell and I had the original disk go bad also. I used the supplied OS disc (I ordered it with the machine) and it did not have the crap that the restore partition had.  If you have this disk, you might try it before you send your hard earned dollars to Mr. Gates.

Otherwise, I have never had a problem with Dell's drivers disk.

Just say no to crapola.

[jqp]

I just upgraded my ancient Inspiron 8100 with a 120GB 7200rpm drive from Seagate for $80. From a 20GB slowww drive.

I burned all the Windows 2000 drivers I had accumulated to a CD, so the reinstall from my Windows 2000 CD went smoothly. Yes it is great not to have all the crapware. Now I have plenty of room for ubuntu also!