Reply to Beware the Restore Disk....

Evening Squires and Squirrels,

I am just working through rebuilding a new laptop that I purchased this week. Before I blew it away I wanted to see where it was at in terms of resource load once booted up using the shipped install. The amount of pointless trial apps and stoolware was no better or worse than other machines.

Once everything was loaded up Windows was into 1.5GB of my RAM. I like to use RAM as a gauge even though there are many other variables.


Performance Monitor after booting into default Factory load of Win Home Premium.

Once I did the format and reload with Win 7 Ultimate the figure dropped down to around 900MB. If go through my strip-down process I will likely drop that number again to 500MB-600MB like I have on a couple of other boxes.

The moral of the story: If you are looking to solve a problem (S4 related or not) or optimize your system through an OS reload - DON'T USE THE MANUFACTURER'S RESTORE/RECOVER DISK. It's a school boy tip but it might save someone a few hours banging their head against a brick wall.