Step 1 - Boot the computer up, and wait as all the factory-installed software is configured.
Step 2 - Once Windows is fully loaded, start installing your programs and any updates.
Step 3 - If the new computer is replacing an older one, start copying your files and settings over.
Step 4 - If the computer came with Windows Vista installed, right about now you’ll be getting increasingly frustrated with its constant security prompts.
Step 5 - Realize that the manufacturer has used up 10 GB of your hard drive for a ‘Recovery’ partition containing a disk image of your hard drive in its original factory state. You feel that you could put that 10 GB to better use elsewhere, so you decide to delete the partition, after compressing and backing up its data to a DVD.
Step 6 - Marvel at the fact that even though only 10% of your hard drive space is used, Windows won’t let you use more than 50% of the C drive’s free space to create a seperate partition for data storage.
Step 7 - Accepting the partitioning limitations, find out that Windows won’t let you make a new partition, since the drive currently has 4, with 2 being hidden.
Step 8 - Become increasingly annoyed when you find that since the Recovery partition and the now-unallocated space occupy different physical locations of the disk, with the OS partition located between them, the two chunks cannot be combined.
Step 9 - Reinstall Windows, after deleting both the recovery and the OS partitions. Take this time to create the C and D partitions with the desired sizes.
Step 10 - Once Windows is reinstalled, format the D drive if you hadn’t done so during installation. Notice that it takes MUCH longer to format in Windows than expected. Selecting “Quick Format” would have been a much better choice.
Step 11 - Sit back and contemplate the fact that you’ve now spent almost a day ‘fixing’ a computer that had already been working fine.
Step 12 - While still waiting, worry that the Recovery Partition may have been a faster solution that is now lost forever. Soon the wait becomes more agonizing, because you want to restore those files (if you backed them up), just to make sure they still work.
Step 13 - With the new D drive FINALLY formatted, and the Recovery files restored, you decide to give it a shot, despite the fact that Windows is once again running fine.
Step 14 - Lose more hair when you find out the ‘Restore Factory Installation’ startup options described in the User’s Manual don’t seem to exist. Search Dell’s forums and Google to find a solution.
Step 15 - After finding and verifying a solution, print it out and tuck it into the User’s Manual for future reference.
Step 16 - After restoring the factory installation, reboot the computer, and wait for your head to explode when you are greeted by a logon screen asking for a user name and password that DOESN’T EXIST!
Step 17 - Waste valuable time talking/chatting to (potentially off-shored) tech support, only to realize THEY CANNOT HELP YOU. If you made it this far on your own, then the chances are good that you know more than the Tech ‘assisting’ you.
Step 18 - Dance through hoops as the tech tells you to do things you’ve already done, until THEY eventually realize the can’t help you, and choose instead to hang up on you and get on with their lives.
Step 19 - Feel vile, racist thoughts you didn’t even think yourself capable of bubbling to the surface.
Step 20 - Reinstall Windows (again) from the manufacturer’s DVDs. Curse yourself for wasting a whole day going in circles, when Windows was technically running fine before you started.
Step 21 - Drinking some hard liquor, take some solace in the fact that your hard drive is at least better partitioned than it was before.
Step 22 - In hindsight, realize it’s possible that when you backed up the Recovery files, some crutial files may have been hidden, and thus were not copied.
Step 23 - Get a copy of Norton Ghost, in hopes of avoiding having to go through all this crap again.