Well, I finally had to do it. I made the mistake of not doing a fresh install when I first got my Toshiba M200, but a year later I finally got around to it. Toshiba, like most computer manufacturers, installs a ton of useless utilities and applications that just end up slowing everything down. I uninstalled most of them, but there were some I couldn’t get rid of. (failed uninstalls and such) Then there was Service Pack 2, after installing that I seemed to have even more issues… I have always found that installing service packs over existing installs leads to alot more issues then installing service packs with the OS install. (not sure if there is a technical explanation for this or not) I was having more and more Windows issues, weird startup problems, and all around general sluggishness of the OS.
So I decided to do a clean install even though I knew it would take forever and that I would forget to move something (haven’t figured out what it is yet). The problem was that Toshiba only includes a “system restore” CD, which is only XP SP1 and also includes all the crappy applications and utilities that were part of the problem in the first place. I tried using the Windows XP Tablet Edition SP2 from my MSDN CDs, but my key would not work and I had read of people having problems trying to do that. That is where TabletPCBuzz came to the rescue, this forum post details how to create a new XP CD and to “slipstream” SP2 into the install. The process required some files from my current install, so I did a restore from the restore CD, copied the files over, then made the custom install CD using a very cool .NET application called nLite. In the end I got exactly what I wanted: a fresh install with SP2 and without any of the annoying Toshiba stuff.
I just love having a fresh install, maybe this time around I will do a better job of organizing my programs and documents… (I say that every time)
-James
{ 3 comments }
Hmm, that may be something I need to do with my new Tablet. Do you know if they fixed the memory leak with TabTip.exe?
Everytime I re-install, I think I’ll organize better. Never happens. Maybe we need to build a Flickr type service for organizing our own hard-drives.
"Nah Mate, that should go into the Utilities folder."
Real world experience has always shown nothing beats a fresh install, but the logical side of my brain tells me that uninstalling any app I no longer use (and deleting the folder afterword if needed) should, in theory, be just as good.
Personally I’m disgusted that Win2000 or XP should "act funny" after using it for a couple years. My home XP box is starting to feel sluggish (I do run Panda AV and MS AntiSpyware) and I’m tempted to fresh install. I’m trying to wait for RC1 of Longhorn and just install that fresh.
Ooooo… M200… I love that machine. I’ve been eyeing the M205 (the retail version) for a few months now.
-Joe
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