New HP laptop arrived. Full of bloatware. Fresh install okay?

[Zyre]

Hey all,

 

I just got my new laptop after having used my MSI GP70 for 4 years. Unsurprisingly it comes with pre installed software which I want to get rid off.

 

Would I be fine with doing a fresh install? Won't I lose the Windows license by doing that.

Also, I want to keep the HP recovery partition, so when I ever give the laptop away, I can simply do the HP recovery to bring it back to factory settings.

 

Hope someone can assist me :).

 

Edit:

It comes with Windows 10 Home, and it's a HP Pavilion 15. Link: https://www.laptopshop.nl/product/794496/hp-pavilion-15-ck093nd.html

[ZackCodesAI]

Yes, but then install almost all hp products back, because they have some value or the other.

Trust me, have experience

[kerradeph]

The key should be on a sticker somewhere on the laptop generally the bottom. Other than that the only thing to be concerned about would be if you can find the drivers for everything. Sometimes things like the wireless and bluetooth won't have readily available drivers. 

[Eduard the weeb]

Yeah you can reinstall windows to clear it out.

also reinstall drivers and HP stuff.

[Zyre]

2 minutes ago, kerradeph said:

The key should be on a sticker somewhere on the laptop generally the bottom. Other than that the only thing to be concerned about would be if you can find the drivers for everything. Sometimes things like the wireless and bluetooth won't have readily available drivers. 

Did a quick look on the bottom. There is no Windows sticker.

[Gung Pow Chicken]

I would personally stay away from HP Partition Recovery, and wipe all of the drives while performing a fresh install. You can easily download a clean Windows image from Microsoft and use a tool like RUFUS to install the image on a USB.

 

You shouldn't have to worry about key management as the keys are stored in the BIOS and your computer should activate once it connects to the Internet,

Just be sure to download all of your drivers first so the install goes smoothly.

 

 

DRIVERS:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers

 

Windows:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

 

RUFUS:

https://rufus.akeo.ie/

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, Zackbare said:

Yes, but then install almost all hp products back, because they have some value or the other.

Trust me, have experience

Hm, I've never done that. We've gotten quite a few HP PCs for work, and I always do a clean install because His Windows 10 ISO is unstable and prone to bugs (thus why newer HP laptops get a bad rap). Once the clean install is done then they're usually stable.

[ZackCodesAI]

2 minutes ago, kerradeph said:

The key should be on a sticker somewhere on the laptop generally the bottom. Other than that the only thing to be concerned about would be if you can find the drivers for everything. Sometimes things like the wireless and bluetooth won't have readily available drivers. 

HP is pretty good about keeping those up on their website.

[Gung Pow Chicken]

Just now, Zyre said:

Did a quick look on the bottom. There is no Windows sticker.

Laptops haven't had keys on the bottom in years..

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

I usually just jank out the original HDD or SSD and put a new SSD in, on which I then install my OS of choice (which would be Linux actually). 

That way I can always put the original drive back in if I ever need to RMA the laptop or when I decide to sell it.

[ZackCodesAI]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

Hm, I've never done that. We've gotten quite a few HP PCs for work, and I always do a clean install because His Windows 10 ISO is unstable and prone to bugs (thus why newer HP laptops get a bad rap). Once the clean install is done then they're usually stable.

But features are lost, sometimes even you cannot switch the wireless on/off or use function keys at all.

Laptop is unable to boost, so you'd be using underclocked hardware

[kerradeph]

2 minutes ago, Zackbare said:

HP is pretty good about keeping those up on their website.

About 10 years back I wasn't able to find an official wireless driver for my HP pavilion laptop and had to use a generic one for the card which meant that I couldn't use the hardware button.

[ZackCodesAI]

Just now, kerradeph said:

About 10 years back I wasn't able to find an official wireless driver and had to use a generic one for the card which meant that I couldn't use the hardware button.

But then you're talking about 10 yrs ago..

[Gung Pow Chicken]

Just now, kerradeph said:

About 10 years back I wasn't able to find an official wireless driver and had to use a generic one for the card which meant that I couldn't use the hardware button.

But that's 10 years ago, and Pre Windows 10 which generally finds the drivers for you.

[ZackCodesAI]

1 minute ago, Icuw1pc said:

But that's 10 years ago, and Pre Windows 10 which generally finds the drivers for you.

But I won't recommend windows 10 drivers, almost every company has a autodetect app to find and install drivers now.

Amd

Intel

And Nvidia has, which is almost everything, rest HP support page will help for sure.

[userzero]

Just uninstall the bloatware. If it were me. Pretty straight forward.

[Gung Pow Chicken]

1 minute ago, Zackbare said:

But I won't recommend windows 10 drivers, almost every company has a autodetect app to find and install drivers now.

Amd

Intel

And Nvidia has, which is almost everything, rest HP support page will help for sure.

I know.. I linked the HP drivers site.

 

I would have mapped them all, but they didn't provide a model #.

[ProjectBox153]

18 minutes ago, Zackbare said:

Yes, but then install almost all hp products back, because they have some value or the other.

Trust me, have experience

What “value”? I’ve had years of HP systems, and none of the preinstalled bloat was worth anything. Just wipe the whole system and reinstall the same version of Windows 10 (Home or Pro) that it came with. 

[ZackCodesAI]

2 minutes ago, Jamiec1130 said:

What “value”? I’ve had years of HP systems, and none of the preinstalled bloat was worth anything. Just wipe the whole system and reinstall the same version of Windows 10 (Home or Pro) that it came with. 

Value as in their features, quick access fn keys, boost, and sometimes even aesthetic benefits

[Zyre]

Hey, So I went ahead and wanted to do a fresh install.

 

I removed the partitions except the recovery and Windows RE tools partition.

But I cant install windows, it says the partition is GPT.

 

Plus when I want to use HP recovery it says there is no hard drive

[NumLock21]

Windows setup drive must be in UEFI.

[Gung Pow Chicken]

3 hours ago, Zyre said:

Hey, So I went ahead and wanted to do a fresh install.

 

I removed the partitions except the recovery and Windows RE tools partition.

But I cant install windows, it says the partition is GPT.

 

Plus when I want to use HP recovery it says there is no hard drive

If you removed some of them, you will have to remove them all. HP needed files from all of them in order to perform a recovery. You could just set your boot mode to legacy for the time being while doing the install, and just create a new HDD partition. Another plus to doing this is, you will have more storage available.

 

I've never had to use recover mode, except when people are doing things they shouldn't have been doing in the first place. Just have good security and only download software from trusted sties. You should never need to, Unless it's a security update hold off on some updates to see if they brick systems .

[Zodiark1593]

11 hours ago, Zackbare said:

Value as in their features, quick access fn keys, boost, and sometimes even aesthetic benefits

And the likelihood of your drivers being frozen in time. My own laptop I got in November 2010 never got a graphics driver update past 2010, and AMDs reference drivers didn't work because they didn't support pre-Enduro switchable graphics (this was entirely on OEMs). This was a problem as Starcraft 2 crashed anywhere above the lowest settings on the official drivers. With some hacked drivers, it worked, though the Sleep mode was borked in turn.

 

So forgive me if I don't put much faith into HP's software team.

 

Edit: this laptop is still in service btw. New SSD and Win 10 with a more stable variant of said hacked drivers as Win 10 didn't like the official drivers. It also got a cpu upgrade as well.

[Not_Sean]

Produkey and Fresh install. we are HP Gold partners and I do this on Every laptop I move onto a client, just so so so much bloatware!!! 

[ZackCodesAI]

2 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

And the likelihood of your drivers being frozen in time. My own laptop I got in November 2010 never got a graphics driver update past 2010, and AMDs reference drivers didn't work because they didn't support pre-Enduro switchable graphics (this was entirely on OEMs). This was a problem as Starcraft 2 crashed anywhere above the lowest settings on the official drivers. With some hacked drivers, it worked, though the Sleep mode was borked in turn.

 

So forgive me if I don't put much faith into HP's software team.

 

Edit: this laptop is still in service btw. New SSD and Win 10 with a more stable variant of said hacked drivers as Win 10 didn't like the official drivers. It also got a cpu upgrade as well.

No offence, but why everyone are alking about way back!? 7-10 yrs old HP is not the same as today.