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Main Area and Open Discussion => General Software Discussion => Topic started by: zridling on June 25, 2008, 02:24 PM
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Curious how many Windows users do not originally install the OS themselves.
POLL CLARIFICATION: Even if your computer came with an OEM copy and you performed a clean install from a partition or disk, I'd count that more on the side of 'installing it" rather than "came with."
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Came pre-installed on my current laptop but have installed Windows way too many times to count.
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Does an upgrade count?
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My latest PC came with Vista pre-installed. I reformatted and put XP on.
So my answer is: both.
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My system came preinstalled with WinXP Sp-1a. Fortunately, I was given a real XP installation CD (albeit an OEM one) so I immediately wiped the harddrive and did a reinstall to get rid of all of the crud that had been preinstalled. So... my answer is *kind of* both as well... though I voted for "preinstalled".
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Even if it came pre-installed I would have voted for "installed myself" if I had formatted and installed it.
After all, I think the intention of the question is: When you get a new computer do you use the "preinstalled" Windows or do you install it yourself (including formatting preinstalled Windows first)?
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My systems when purchased had windows installed, it has since been reinstalled but on purchase day all i had to do to start was turn it on. ;)
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All my computers (so far) are/have been OEM with Windows preinstalled, but all of them have been formatted and reinstalled several times in their lifetime.
So I guess I'll opt for the "installed myself" option, as I have run through the XP install a good 60 times and Vista about 20 or so
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I also support deozaan's opinion. the question is whether you've already installed windows over the OEM install, or if you usually just use the OEM install.
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Hmph! Well then, off to change my vote :-[
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Only now did i notice i didn't actually reply to the question :-[
On my personal computers, i always install a new windows not only to change partitions, remove crapware and etc, but also because most of the time i replace the original OS with the pro/bussiness version supplied by my university :)
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Apart from one IBM ThinkPad I've installed Windows myself on every Windows-capable machine that I've owned.
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Well, the results are pretty conclusive (this assuming that the trend will continue).
But i wouldn't expect anything else from this community :)
In terms of the general public, i'd say that the people that actually install their own OS are a very small minory, probably arround 10% or less (that's just a random number based on the people i know, which is just as good as any other statistic :P).
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2jgpaiva
You counter is not good enough. You forgot about the rest of the world.
I could assume opposite way. Back in Poland I've seen hundreds of PCes with OS installed by owners / administrators. Many of them bought pretty new machines and "forgot" (or hoped for friends) about buying Windows itself. The most of them owns theirs computers from second hand. Only very small amount of people I've met bought PC with pre-installed operating system.
After all there is some kind of strange feeling which comes to me when I tell someone that I've spent more than one salary to own my Win XP Prof BOX ;)
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I have only ever bought one system with Windows pre-installed (98SE). Bad experience but at least at that time I got a proper copy on CD with the computer so I could wipe it and install it without all the rubbish.
Since then I have built my own systems.
I tell a lie - my laptop (bought in March) had Vista pre-installed but somehow XP magically appeared after I phoned the company and complained (they sent me an OEM XP Pro disc instead so I was happy to reinstall). I have to say the system was MUCH faster with XP (it only had 1Gb and Vista as preinstalled took up 70% of that). I have since added an extra Gb of memory and XP flies now.
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My first PC came with DOS6.22 and optional Win3.11 floppies, and my second PC came with Win95 (I think the vanilla version? I'm afraid I threw out the disc + license when I moved out on my own) preinstalled.
On every machine since that, I've installed Windows myself, and I've used nLite ever since I found it to enjoy the tweaks it can do (before that I did manual unattended setup, but nLites hotfix integration is just too nice not to use it).
I'm probably buying a laptop by September, which will no doubt come with windows preinstalled. Dunno if I'll keep it or install myself, depends on things like driver support etc.
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I've always installed Windows myself on my machines - the only exception being a laptop that came with a bog-standard XP Home OEM install. That lasted about half a day before it became an nlite'ned XP installation.
On every machine since that, I've installed Windows myself, and I've used nLite ever since I found it to enjoy the tweaks it can do (before that I did manual unattended setup, but nLites hotfix integration is just too nice not to use it).-f0dder
Me too :Thmbsup:
Plus the fact I can get rid of all those necessities that Microsoft thinks are absolutely essential to your well being.
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Every PC I have owned has come with Windows pre-installed...but only 1 of them was a factory install.
All of my computers have arrived at my home by making a detour to my dad's house for a bit, first.
In addition to installing Windows, and configuring it all to the way HE likes it, he has a habit of installing the OEM Bundle from Hell™ which means he hits some download site and grabs everything he can and keeps installing stuff till he falls asleep at the keyboard. The rest of the setup files of things he didn't get to, are included on their own partition.
Only after this, does the PC make its way from his house to mine.
The exception to this was the last PC he gave me, which didn't arrive in time for him to take out of the box, nevermind install the usual bundle. That had a nice factory pre-installed Windows, and a much smaller OEM bundle. ;)
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CLARIFICATION: Even if your computer came with an OEM copy and you reinstalled it yourself, I'd count that more on the side of 'installing it" rather than "came with."
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After the momentous battles I went through with Win95 and 98, installing XP is such a breeze that I wipe my drive regularly. I remember having to remove every peripheral on the machine, installing 95 or 98 and then adding modem, sound card, video card, 3D accelerator, printer and scanner one at a time so it wouldn't confuse poor Windows. Even then I often had to stop and go back to square one when Windows choked on one of the peripherals and bollixed up everything It took a couple of days of blood, sweat and lots of cursing to do a complete wipe and reinstall. Now I can get it done in a couple of hours. Of course I have a broadband connection for downloading updates now instead of the old 54k dial-up of yesteryear. The first time I did an install of XP I left all the peripherals except the printer and scanner attached and XP handled them with style. I wanted to kiss Bill Gates right on the lips.
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Yea, but even XP's installation is far more task-intensive for the user than Vista's. I think Vista is mainly an unattended installation except for two prompts. Ah, progress.
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Install!
I poke around the OEM install first to see if I can learn anything of value. That hasn't happened yet but you never know right? ;)
But after that, I flatline (i.e. wipe + low level format & recertify) and do a squeaky clean install of XP or some flavor of Linux on every machine. The only exception has been on those machines that had a diagnostics or recovery partition. In those cases I just reformatted the NTFS partition and did a clean install.
After all the updates and tweaks and product activations I also do a "Genesis" image with Clonezilla or Acronis TrueImage and burn it to a DVD just in case I need a recovery disk done the way I think it should be done.
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But after that, I flatline (i.e. wipe + low level format & recertify) and do a squeaky clean install of XP or some flavor of Linux on every machine.-40hz
There's no such thing as low level format for consumer since MFM disks went out of production :)
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But after that, I flatline (i.e. wipe + low level format & recertify) and do a squeaky clean install of XP or some flavor of Linux on every machine.-40hz
There's no such thing as low level format for consumer since MFM disks went out of production :)
-f0dder
"Great Googly Moogly" --- You're absolutely correct! :Thmbsup:
My fault for actually letting myself use the modern misnomer when I probably should have said "zero-fill erase."
I used to argue that point with clients all the time, but I eventually gave up when Seagate et al started abusing the term on their websites. Always difficult to explain to a non-technical type why their "Computer Guy" is disagreeing with the people that made the drive. Especially when the person you're arguing with is also writing your check.
Yes. We've come a long way from those days when you had to go into DEBUG and do a GO on a hexaddr. Tingatingatingatinga...ditditdit...such sweet music those gigantic 20Mb drives made as they formatted! Then along came RLE drives and all the little antics they could could get up to. So little time for the simple pleasures...
Sure don't miss them. ;)
BTW - after I read your response I suddenly got nostalgic. I took a look in my storage room and found my old Northgate Elegance 386-20 (s/n 54265-built in 1989) with 8Mb RAM and that exquisite OmnikeyUtra keyboard... My first "real" computer which was purchased for somewhere around $4K.
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I hauled it out, booted it, and damn if that old boat anchor didn't come up with WFWG 3.11! It even had a copy of TurboPascal and Smalltalk-V on it! That puppy has been sitting in storage since '91 and it still works. Amazing! Oh yeah, there's a 20Mb MFM hard drive in it too! Do I dare do a "g C800:5" in DEBUG and see if it will low-level for me?
:tellme:
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40hz: *big grin* :D
Btw, I would say that "full format" would suffice instead of "zero-fill erase", but after doing a full format (which takes long enough that it should be zero-filling every darn sector!) and looking with a hex editor, it seems like there was still data on the drive - bigtime weirdness. And more data than just partition table, boot sector, and (mostly blank) NTFS metadata. I'll have to look a bit more into this.
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...looking with a hex editor, it seems like there was still data on the drive - bigtime weirdness. And more data than just partition table, boot sector, and (mostly blank) NTFS metadata. I'll have to look a bit more into this.
Seems to confirm what the drive manufacturers say:
From Seagate (emphasis added - and note the "misnomer" comment ;D Does "somewhat" = "wrong"?)
What does "low level formatting" an ATA (IDE) drive mean?
Actually the term "low level" is somewhat of a misnomer. The low level process first used years ago in MFM hard drives bears little resemblance to what we now call a "low level format" for today's ATA (IDE) drives. The only safe method of initialising all the data on a Seagate device is the Zero Fill option...
Interestingly enough, Seagate discusses two different zero-fill options on their utility
Zero Fill Drive (Quick) will write over the beginning of the drive which includes the critical partition information, eliminating all partitions and information on the drive including the Master boot record. This is useful if you have a drive that has a corrupted partition, or that you wish to erase to reinstall a fresh operating system and new data.
Zero Fill Drive (Full) will write over the entire data area of the drive. This is useful if a drive has bad sectors that cannot be fixed by the operating system. This will also erase all the data on the drive, but it will take several hours.
I suspect the "full format" you ran would be similiar to Seagate's "Quick" option.
I guess the "easiest" way to get to the bottom of it would be to (1) fill the drive with something other than zeros first; (2)then format; (3)then do a "full format erase." After that you could examine it with a hex editor and see what's been left untouched. Be interesting to see if there was any difference if you repeated steps 2 and 3. If they're both the same you've nailed it.
I'll have to see if I have an old drive that wouldn't take an entire day to zero out and try it. Heck, if I have a 386-20 still floating around I'm bound to have a couple of old ST343's someplace back in The Tar Pit. (And yes, the Northgate has now been up since yesterday. It must think it's an IBM System36 mini. Easy to do since it's almost big enough to be mistaken for one.)
I suppose you could also try to back into what the utility you're using is doing, but that kind of reverse engineering is beyond my technical abilities. Probably should have studied harder when I had the time. ;)
In the meantime, I'd be interested in hearing what you find out.
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I deleted my partitions, made new ones, formatted and reinstalled an NLited XP. So, its definitely a clean install then.