new laptop user?

[tottenham123]

i've just ordered a dell inspiron 6000 and i have heard that dell's come with a lot of bloatware. i understand the easiest way to get rid of all this is to reformat and make a fresh install of xp and start installing only programs that i want or that will be useful.

i used to have a disk, pcdoctor or something that i used to reformat an old computer but cant find it now, so how would i go about reformating the new laptop? are there any free ways to do this, freeware programs or anything?

also can anyone offer any experience with using anti-virus, firewalls, media players, spyware or any other useful programs. i would prefer to know about freeware programs, for obvious reasons. but from the security aspect i dont mind paying to make sure im safe while surfing the net.

i would like to know your experience of using the software rather than a huge list because i dont know what works best and not.

cheers, any help will be very much appreciated.

 

[alanuofm]

i've just ordered a dell inspiron 6000 and i have heard that dell's come with a lot of bloatware. i understand the easiest way to get rid of all this is to reformat and make a fresh install of xp and start installing only programs that i want or that will be useful.

i used to have a disk, pcdoctor or something that i used to reformat an old computer but cant find it now, so how would i go about reformating the new laptop? are there any free ways to do this, freeware programs or anything?

also can anyone offer any experience with using anti-virus, firewalls, media players, spyware or any other useful programs. i would prefer to know about freeware programs, for obvious reasons. but from the security aspect i dont mind paying to make sure im safe while surfing the net.

i would like to know your experience of using the software rather than a huge list because i dont know what works best and not.

cheers, any help will be very much appreciated.

did you order the xp cd from dell for 7$? all you do is boot up with the windows cd and reformatt. dell comes with an extra partition that is around 7gb. if you want to get rid of it just delete the partition when you follow the reformatting procedures. then using partition magic you can reallocate the space back to your c:.

i actually am not a fan of using any firewall or antivirus program. i just use the windows firewall. usually if i do have to do a virus check i use trendmicro by pccillin, or panda from their website. great virus scanners. you can also try avast. for spyware try adaware and spybot. then if you would like post a hijackthis into computer security and buzz will have you virus/spyware free very quickly. hope that helps