Wiping hard drive and reinstalling vista.

TheFullDuck

Hi, my friends laptop has slowed down and ran out of memory so he gave it to me to wipe. No discs came with it to reinstall vista or the drivers.
I have a dell laptop myself and have wiped and reinstalled using the discs that came shipped with it.
My question is can I use the dell discs to reinstall vista and the drivers on my friends hp laptop? If not, how do I go about wiping and reinstalling?

chin_grin

Eh, wiping and re-installing the operating system would be a last resort.

Would you not check to see if you can speed it up using applications like Ccleaner or Defraggler first?

It could be a load of unnecessary applications installed or the C drive is nearly full\fragmented.

TheFullDuck

chin_grin wrote: »

Eh, wiping and re-installing the operating system would be a last resort.

Would you not check to see if you can speed it up using applications like Ccleaner or Defraggler first?

It could be a load of unnecessary applications installed or the C drive is nearly full\fragmented.

Ok, I'll give them a go first, thanks for the fast reply.

chin_grin

TheFullDuck wrote: »

Ok, I'll give them a go first, thanks for the fast reply.

No worries,

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

and

http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

are what I was referring to.

If it comes to it (and I'm pretty sure it wont) you'll need the 'rescue' disks to reload the operating system. I wouldn't say the Dell disks you have would work as it's for a specific dell build.

JustAddWater

If you can, try upgrading to windows 7 if the laptop supports it. Especially if you're going to wipe and start again. Windows 7 runs much smoother. Vista can be fairly resource hungry at times

But yeah, you should also try defragmenting and/or use ccleaner to clear unwanted programs and startup entries. also make sure that spyware isn't an issue

filehippo.com is a good place to find some useful software to help you on your way

As chin_grin says, the dell disk may or may not work but since it's built for dell you'll probably find you'd be missing drivers or softare from your friends laptop

chin_grin

JustAddWater wrote: »

filehippo.com is a good place to find some useful software to help you on your way

+1 for filehippo.

Also to be on the safe side I'd run a malwarebytes scan.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

If you're looking for a decent anti-virus install MSE.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/security_essentials/default.aspx

bonzodog2

If you decide to try it with the Dell discs, first find the models of graphics/sound/network/wifi/modem etc from Device Manager or the makers website if they have a useful one, and download drivers elsewhere to a USB stick or maybe to a CD-R, in case the USB won't work first off.

Good luck.

However its almost certainly possible to get it back to decent performance without a re-install. Post the make and model and specs (CPU speed/Ram size) and someone here will probably be able to tell you more.

demanufactured

Being a HP it will have a recovery partition to reinstall from , this will be got to by pressing one of the F keys while booting up, dont try to use the dell disks as they wont work , they are OEM install disks designed for dell PC's only.

As already said you will probabaly be better off cleaning up the laptop in its current state.

TheFullDuck

Quick update, I ran ccleaner and defraggler and it cleared quite a few things, I unistalled some pointless programs too. It's still running slow, all he wants it for is the internet and a bitta minecraft, I can't imagine thats a demanding game on it?