hellomoto

that was the first thing I tried when I got the laptop. I re-installed via recovery disc, but it was not a clean install. I'll try your second suggestion, but most of my friends have XP. I also have XP on my desktop. HP doesn't ship their products with original OS disks anymore. also, correction: i think I have vista home premium on the laptop, not basic.

I just found this thread and have not read through the many posts. Pls bear with me.... I have a HP pavillion laptop, and also have created the recovery boot discs (obviously because recovery disc are no longer provided). However, the pre-installed OS (vista home basic) includes a lot of garbage. So what's new... I did a google search and came across "unattended windows," which led me to this forum. To keep this short, am I on the right track? Is it possible to use the recovery discs and somehow trick it to only install the OS without the gunk? The following is just me whining: what ever happened to "clean installs"? We paid for the OS, why can't we just get the install disc(s) for the OS? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance