Daave said:
I see that the product key in the winnt.sif file on the CD that came
with the Vostro matches the one associated with the Latitude (using
Belarc Advisor), so I guess there shouldn't be any problems. If I were
to do a clean install, I suppose I would need the laptop-specific
drivers, but that shouldn't be a problem.
Yes, you will most definitely need the drivers. Not sure how many of
them. Most of my equipment fails. The mouse and video are about all
that worked. So a CD/thumb drive of drivers is going to be your friend.
You might also have an AV software and if you don't use windows firewall
then a firewall too should be on the CD. I load all that before I
setup the wireless and connect to the internet.
A side note. Acronis True Image Home or Norton Ghost seem to be the
front runner suggestions for imaging software. If you think about it,
and do the reload, I'd load up some of the major programs, do the major
tweaking of Windows like removing bloatware etc. Then do an image of
the drive for a later restore. You could even setup mail. The point
being is that it takes about 20 minutes to restore a HD image with
Acronis as compared to loading Windows, setup drivers, setup software,
configure, tweak etc. I clocked about 8 hours to get my PC to a well
configured clean install with a good part of my customization. That
compared to a 20 minute reload. I even put in SP3 and IE7 and WMP11
updates from MS. I use Acronis and its great. You just need
someplace to put the backup file that for a moderately loaded OS etc is
about 5+ gigs. It goes on a big thumb, I cleared out a huge amount of
things on my OS and got it to fit on a DVD. Took about 3 backups as the
first 2 were too large. I removed things like the sample videos and
pictures and wallpaper and $NTUninstall$ files etc. Removed all restore
points. Wow I had to hit everything.
Yes, this is a bit much for a friend so its more of an idea for you
probably.
Good luck.
