Has reinstalling Vista32 left old files?

[hemmick reef]

Could somebody give some advice with reinstallig Vista please:

I have had random freeze-ups with my Dell Studio Desktop for a couple of months now (10 month old computer). Dell support advised a hardware check which showed no problems. I had run virus checks etc.

Dell advised using their D drive recovery option. I reverted the computer to its original state but it kept crashing randomly

I then found out from Dell that using their Recovery partition is not the same as reinstalling windows vista - I don't understand this as I thought that the recovery takes it back to its original windows state?

I was then advised to do a clean install from the Vista disc, to over right all files, which I carried out without too many problems (driver update issues finally resolved)

My question: I re-installed Vista by putting the disk in and running the installation from that rather than booting to the disk. I found that the recycle bin had some of files from my former installation. Does this mean that I have other old files not overwritten (registry)?

I needed to clear any offending conflicts that may of been causing the freeze ups... does it make any difference how the clean install is made - either from windows or by booting from the disk?

Thanks

 

[Dwarf]

Hi hemmick reef and welcome to Vista Forums

A recovery partition, such as that supplied on many systems such as yours, will return the system to its factory condition. This includes the bloatware which many vendors install. I would suspect that it is one of these bloatware items that is giving you the problems.

Reinstalling from a Vista disk will eliminate those problems. However, there are 2 ways to install. The first, which is usually called an in-place upgrade install, upgrades your current installation and maintains your existing OS, placing it into a directory so that you can access files from it. This is done by running the installation from within Windows. The other method, a true clean-install, is run by booting up from the Vista DVD itself. If you have the upgrade version, you can use the well-documented trick to clean install.

For more information, see the following Tutorials:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/117366-clean-install-full-version-vista.html
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/68767-clean-install-upgrade-vista.html

 

[hemmick reef]

Hi hemmick reef and welcome to Vista Forums

A recovery partition, such as that supplied on many systems such as yours, will return the system to its factory condition. This includes the bloatware which many vendors install. I would suspect that it is one of these bloatware items that is giving you the problems.

Reinstalling from a Vista disk will eliminate those problems. However, there are 2 ways to install. The first, which is usually called an in-place upgrade install, upgrades your current installation and maintains your existing OS, placing it into a directory so that you can access files from it. This is done by running the installation from within Windows. The other method, a true clean-install, is run by booting up from the Vista DVD itself. If you have the upgrade version, you can use the well-documented trick to clean install.

For more information, see the following Tutorials:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/117366-clean-install-full-version-vista.html
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/68767-clean-install-upgrade-vista.html

Thanks for the reply Dwarf.

It looks like I have spent the last day doing the wrong install - I did it from inside windows, although I have the full version of Vista and it did say clean install when I ran it, so I am not sure. It's just that I had some files still in the recycle bin.
The problems didn't start happening untill 10 months after having the computer so I am not sure what happened. I will use the computer for a couple of weeks now and see if the problem has been resolved - if not I will do the install from the booted disk as you suggest.

 

[Dwarf]

You're welcome. Please let us know how you get on.