Cleaning junk off new computer

Re-install XP and only the necessary drivers (DVD drive, graphics card, etc.). Wipe your HD first or Windows will do a fake re-installation. XP will boot up and shut down really fast which I think is a good thing.

I don't think stores give out XP cd's with new computers (which I think is a HUGE rip off). I'm pertty sure they just give you recover cd's which is crap, it just puts all that garbage and tracking crap back on your machine.

The computer came with a Windows XP re-installation CD. It sounds like that CD will load all the same stuff back onto my computer. Is there not a way to manually get this stuff off the machine..and what do I look for?

ORIGINAL: xackley

ditto.
If you are nervous about it, spend $50 on a new harddrive and put the original OS HD on the shelf.

I agree, but even better, leave that for your net surfing, etc.. And use the new hard drive for audio and daw's only. And install xp on the new drive bare as poss. Turn off all services other than plug'n'play, and windows audio, as well as not installing the network. (and a few other tweaks to stop unnessary stuff). You can even do like I did, and edit boot.ini (careful), and name one as "Internet Account", and the other as "Studio" account, for making logging in easier.

I'm almost sure off the shelf computers don't come with full versions of Windows. You will spend so much time trying to achieve what you want. If you consider time to be money, I like the suggestion of purchasing another hard drive, a full copy of Windows XP, and doing a clean install. But that seems like alot of time and money as well.

Why even worry about it? Why not just tweak the computer to function as an audio machine - there are many articles about it. I think www.digifreq.com has a few good ones.

This is why most people wind up building their own machines. I'm using an off-the-shelf HP machine, but when I get ready to seriously implement Sonar 6, I will be building (or having built) my own machine, one reason being so that I can acquire a full OEM version of Windows and do a custom install with only the components necessary for audio/MIDI production.

Another thing to consider - computers are getting so powerful that these little extra do-dads probably do little to compromise the performance you'll achieve. The main thing is having enough RAM and a dedicated hard drive for audio. Then do the little tweaks for music production and most likely you'll be fine.

ORIGINAL: The Scar

"Did removing Dell Jukebox somehow corrupt my registry? Did removing AOL screw something up?"


T.

If he has AOL then he's already screwed somethng up (Sorry, couldn't resist)

thanks for all the advice. I will be using a second hard drive for all my audio files. That's how I have it set up in my current DAW (older HP)..just have to pull it from the HP and install it in the new Dell.

That's what I figured I would do..go to the add/delete programs and remove all the stuff that I think isn't necessary. I guess before I do that I can always make a system restore point incase I screw something up. At what point do you think I should pull my Aardvark sound card out of my old computer and put it into the new one?...after I've cleaned it of unnecessary programs or right from the beginning?

ORIGINAL: toastjam
The computer came with a Windows XP re-installation CD. It sounds like that CD will load all the same stuff back onto my computer. Is there not a way to manually get this stuff off the machine..and what do I look for?

all the dells i've ever owned or worked on have the actual xp installation cd (if in fact you choose to have it sent to you when buying it).

hp, compaq, gateway, toshiba, etc. to my knowledge do the "re-installation" cd which is why i'll never buy one of those machines. my next laptop will be a dell latitude, and my next daw will be one i've either built myself or ordered from a daw builder.

Or you could try msconfig.

Go to Start Menu --> Run, and then type "msconfig". Go to the last tab entitled Startup. I wouldn't mess with any of the others. From the startup tab you can uncheck and thus prevent most programs from being loaded at bootup and into your Ram.

Jeff