“I have a 1 1/2 year old Toshiba X205s-7438 laptop. Working fine, but, I have been thinking of running the Recovery Disks to clean it up a bit. If I do is there a better program than Decrapifier to clean out the crap that comes with it? The Toshiba comes with two 120 gig serial hard drives. If I run the Recovery disks, will they format both drives or just the C. I just ordered the 49 dollar Windows 7 update. Should I wait until it comes in October, or does it matter?”
PC Decrapifier is a great tool and the one I would recommend for removing trialware and other annoyances that comes with most new computers from the big manufacturers. For the complete lists of crap the Decrapifier removes check out this page here.
Your laptop comes with 2 hard drives inside? Perhaps its one hard drive partitioned into 2 separate drives, one would be the “C Drive” and the other would be the “D Drive”.
By using the recovery disk you will take the laptop back to the way it was when you first got it which will probably include all the junkware if I’m not mistaken. Just a reminder to back up your important files before messing around with the recovery disk! During the recovery disc process, you should be able to choose the drive, and different options such as whether you just want to run Windows repair or do a full install. If you do choose to reinstall Windows with your Recovery Disk you can use Decrapifier afterwards to remove all the junk.
That’s pretty awesome that you pre-ordered Windows 7. I’ve been using the release candidate for a few months now and it’s rock solid. You can still download “Windows 7 RC” for free from Microsoft if you don’t want to wait till October. Free Windows 7 Download.
Sounds like your laptop is running fine and maybe you don’t really need to use the recovery disc. If you use it now you would only be reinstalling Windows a few months later, so I would probably just wait it out. If you still have trialware junk on your laptop you could still run Decrapifier and you could also use a program like CCleaner to remove other junk files from your computer as well. Good Luck!
That is the way the spec sheet reads and in the Device Manager under Disk Drives it lists an Hitachi and a Toshiba drive.
A clean, fresh install when I receive the Windows 7 CD would probably be desireable.
Is there anyway to download the Vista Service packs to disk so I can update the fresh instal with out going on line? I understand that an un-updated machine can be attacked in very short order when it goes online to get the Windows updates.
Richard
Yeah a fresh install is certainly the way to go if you can. That way you don’t need to worry about all the junk and trialware.
Also you can download SP1 from Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B0C7136D-5EBB-413B-89C9-CB3D06D12674&displaylang=en
As long as you are behind a router and only use Windows update I would not be too concerned about getting attacked. The demonstrations where unpatched windows machines get hijacked within minutes of being connected to the internet were all done with computers directly connected to the internet. If you are using a router it will act as a firewall and keep all the worms and junk away from your computer. Just don’t surf the web until you are fully patched and you’ll be fine.
Yup, unlike XP pre-service pack 1 where you were vulnerable to attacks within minutes of being online, Windows Vista or 7 you don’t really need to worry just as long as you update right away after a fresh install.