Mac user with first time PC laptop. Need advice w/crapware & airport

[Maserati7200]

Yes and no; as far as your Windows install itself goes, they are indeed gone (apart from little flakes left over that the uninstaller might have missed). However, assuming your machine came with a restore file/partition on the hard drive rather than physical discs, then that restore data of course matches the "new" state of the computer exactly, and thus contains all the same crapware. It's probably compressed, since it's an installer, but it's there in one form.

Like jman240 recommended, I would definitely burn myself a set of restore discs immediately using whatever tool it supplies to do that. That way if something goes horribly wrong at least you've got a Windows installer handy. This is particularly good in the event your hard drive dies and needs replacing--beats having to wait for the manufacturer to ship discs to you (or buying a copy of Windows if it's been long enough they won't).

Also like jman240 and others recommended, if you want to get rid of the restore image stuff on the drive, you'll probably have to delete the partition reserved for that (or repartition and reformat the entire drive from scratch). Sometimes there is an included uninstaller to free up the space--poke around a little and/or ask tech support and see if there's an automated way to do it. Occasionally the reinstallation tool also includes an option to do a more "clean" Windows install, although I can only remember seeing such an option once, and it wasn't recently.

Admittedly, the last new PCs I've bought got immediately wiped and installed with an Enterprise copy of Windows, once I'd made reinstall DVDs, but this was at work where it doesn't cost us anything additional to do so.

That may be the DVD player software. I can't remember if Win7 finally includes a DVD player of its own or not.

The Synaptics driver is definitely for your touchpad, though. The good news is if you accidentally uninstall the driver for something, Windows should, in theory, re-detect the hardware upon reboot and with any luck find and download a driver for you. If you're unlucky, you'll have to go find a download from the manufacturer's website manually.

So really, all one would have to do is delete that partition, right? That should work...

 

[CylonGlitch]

So really, all one would have to do is delete that partition, right? That should work...

Deleting the partition will remove the images; but will not recover the disk space. To do that you need to delete the partition and then expand the main partition to recover that space. BUT in Windows you can't expand the partition. You'll have to use a 3rd party tool that should work; or start over from scratch and during the reinstall delete the primary partition and recreate it for the full size of the drive. Then reinstall the OS, delete crapware, and reinstall apps.

 

[Wie Gehts]

jman...thanks for all that useful info!

yep, I found it and its like you say...theres three partitions..

11.72GB Healthy (Recovery Partition)

System Reserved 100MB NTFS Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)

286.27GB NTFS (Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

so its got three partitons

I guess nearly 12Gb is used for the recovery thing. but they have this one small 100mb partition for 'system'? thats weird to me.

and I suppose the discs it had me burn are just a backup of the recovery partition, iow, a further redundancy

thanks for the offer, i appreciate it....however, right now I'll chugg along and try and figure things out (and ya'll helped) so i know more better, but if I really get stuck I'll take you up on it.


clevin, you also have a point...it is what it is and should just leave it be for the meantime, harddrives are cheap and if i want to do a complete wipe and clean install type thing, i can simply put another fresh drive in the laptop and go to town on it

 

[Maserati7200]

Deleting the partition will remove the images; but will not recover the disk space. To do that you need to delete the partition and then expand the main partition to recover that space. BUT in Windows you can't expand the partition. You'll have to use a 3rd party tool that should work; or start over from scratch and during the reinstall delete the primary partition and recreate it for the full size of the drive. Then reinstall the OS, delete crapware, and reinstall apps.

Would reformatting the drive make everything one partition (with everything else deleted, obviously)?

 

[steve knight]

it would be foolish to delete the recovery partition. it is very little space and not having a backup to the dvd is foolish. telling a newbie to windows how to do it is really not very good advice. leave it alone it is a vast way to recover your machine. it's faster and easier to use then using the dvd.

 

[Makosuke]

Would reformatting the drive make everything one partition (with everything else deleted, obviously)?

Yes, it would.

And steve knight is correct that there are certainly legit reasons for keeping the recovery partition (particularly if you're not going to use up all the space on the hard drive--most people these days don't even get close unless they're big on downloading TV shows or porn). That said, there are also legit reasons for wanting it off there--simplified partition map (that's why I'd reformat the drive rather than just repartitioning), extra space, not having the fastest 12GB of the drive eaten up by something you'll never use, burning hatred of Acer, whatever.

As I said, at work where we have a campuswide Windows license, the last thing I want is funky extra partitions (I've had them cause problems down the line on more than one occasion). Were I using a personal laptop that wasn't strained for space, I'd probably keep it.

Of course, since one of the major reasons I'd want to reinstall the os is because the hard drive failed, that partition will do you zero good in a lot of cases.

 

[BlueRevolution]

Of course, since one of the major reasons I'd want to reinstall the os is because the hard drive failed, that partition will do you zero good in a lot of cases.

That's what gets me about recovery partitions. If it's your only way of recovering from a system failure, you're screwed. If it's not, what's the point of having it at all?

 

[jman240]

jman...thanks for all that useful info!

System Reserved 100MB NTFS Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)

This is a new thing that windows 7 does. Should something happen to the boot process it will boot into this partition and run diagnostics (before this required you have a cd to boot from) and usually fix the boot issue automagically.

For those who remember 'format mbr' this is now automated here. It can also use system restore from here to restore your to an earlier state. System restore is kind of like TimeMachine for windows, it lets you go back in time and revert 'some' changes, mostly installed software, deleted files, and registry changes. These restore points are created automatically. Unfortunately it is an all or nothing restore unlike TimeMachine. It basically takes your computer, cough, back in time, to how it was on a certain day when it made the restore point. I have only seen this fix an issue on very select occasions, but then again, that depends on how messed up things are that you need to use this feature.

 

[Makosuke]

That's what gets me about recovery partitions. If it's your only way of recovering from a system failure, you're screwed. If it's not, what's the point of having it at all?

Given how frequently "Reinstall Windows" has been used as a troubleshooting step, that would be one very good reason to keep the recovery partition around. There's also the apparent need, according to some, to reinstall Windows every year or so to keep it running fast.

That said, I'm under the impression that Win7 shouldn't have the severe bit-rot issues of XP and earlier, so I don't know if this is even going to be necessary outside cases of extreme OS corruption.