(Dead Link Removed)

You definately need to do your own fresh install anytime you buy a computer, especially if you buy from companies like Dell or Gateway. They throw a boatload of their own spyware and assorted garbage in there that you definately DO NOT want in your computer. Hopefully, they gave you a Microsoft Windows XP disk rather than their own disk which has XP bundled with all of their garbage. If the latter is the case, you'll have one HELL of a time sorting it out.

Before you do your fresh installation, you need to make yourself a list of all of the components in your peecee, then go online and download the latest drivers for everything. Once you have them all, burn them to a CD. Make sure that the burn is successful.

Then comes the part that most people ignore, and it screws them up. Take the components out of the tower that you don't need for the installation, such as your modem, add-on sound card, SCSI card, RAID card ... basically any PCI cards. All you want in the case is your power supply, motherboard, CPU/heatsink/fan, memory, primary harddrive, FDD, CDROM, and graphics card.

Now you partition and format your HDD. I recommend a small primary parition (5-10GB, depending on your space requirements) for your OS and major apps, so that these things aren't spread-out all over the drive.

Install your OS, then install the necessary drivers from the driver CD you made for the components that are now in the tower. If everything is fine at this point, then you will proceed to put those components (which you took out) back in, one by one. Each time you put a component in, install it's driver from your driver CD, restart the computer, and make sure that everything is fine with it. If so, proceed to installing the next component. HOWEVER, if you install a component, and something goes haywire, STOP, don't install anything else yet. Solve the problem before adding any more components.

Once you have the everything installed, and all is well, then you can go-about updating your OS. Windows update works well for telling you what is available for updating your computer, but I don't recommend letting it do the auto-install at all. Here's what I do ...
I make a print-out of the stuff that Windows Update says is available for my system. I then put a checkmark on the papers for the updates that I want to download. I then go into My Documents and create as many folders as I'm going to need to put each of those items that I checked-off into it's own individual folder, then I put all of those folders into a single folder labeled "Windows Updates". Then I go into the Microsoft download section and download the .exe files individually, saving each one into it's own folder. After they're all downloaded, I install them all, one by one, restarting between each installation. Once they're all installed, I go back to Windows Update and let it scan the computer again, ensuring that there's nothing else that it recommends that I want.

Now I obtain the latest versions of any other stuff that I want, such as a different browser, Quicktime, Acrobat Reader, et cetera. Again, I create a folder in My Documents for each one that I download, then stick them all in another folder, labeled "MiscApps". I install them all one by one, restarting between installations.

Now I have two folders in My Documents, "Windows Updates" and "MiscApps". First, I copy and paste those folders onto my secondary partition, so that if something happens with the primary partition and I totally lose it, all of that updating procedure and downloading that I did doesn't have to be repeated, and it's readily available. PLUS, I then burn those two folders to a CD, so that I have a backup copy, and also so that I can install them onto any other computer if I ever want to. If you've ever gone through a major data loss, I'm sure you see the wisdom in doing this.

So now the computer is fully installed, updated, and backed-up. Now I do removals of all of the Microsoft crap that I don't want. Mine's a long list.

Then I do the fine-tweaking.

I know it's a much longer, involved procedure than most people want to go through, but it's thorough and pretty much idiot-proof (it has to be, for me ... LOL). Taking the initial time to do good backups has saved me time tenfold, not to mention aggravation.

*Edited by SOS 2-2-2003, for improved readability.*

Smawg....

I've read alot of your stuff, and you are always very helpful.

But man, put some space beteen your paragraphs or something! My eyes are getting worse by the day! I know it would sure help me a bunch. :p

thanks guys! Yeah dell gave me just an XP Disk so I just installed that and not all the other crap that they give ya. I think I am going to take the if it aint broke don't fix it path and just leave it alone because it seems to be working fine. I plan on building a new rackmount portable daw in the near future so this info will help me out alot. thanks again,

put some space beteen your paragraphs or something! My eyes are getting worse by the day! I know it would sure help me a bunch.

Thanks jscott. I can see the wisdom in what you're saying. I'll do that.

:c:

Okay, done. You're absolutely right ... much better.

As I surf the site, I'll edit my previous posts in the same way. Thank you very much for pointing this out to me.