Reinstalling OS....safe?

[spathotan]

Im clueless when it comes to laptops really. Basically the deal is this..

The wife has a HP dv9000t (i think), shes had it for about 8 months or so, and here for the past 2-3 months its been acting funny and really sluggish, almost unbearable. Weve bought a cooler stand for it, xigmatek one with two 80mm fans since we suspected overheating, but that didnt help any. She defrags on a normal basis and runs spybot/adaware every once in awhile so all that mess has been eliminated as a problem. Anyways on to the question.....

We cant find the disk that came with the laptop, but I have a Vista Ultimate 64bit disk. Would it be safe to wipe the laptop drive and reinstall a copy of windows that was NOT the one that came with the laptop? My main concerns are USB/wireless not being installed/detected correctly and what nots.

 

[frozenlead]

You can find all the drivers for the machine online - just head to HP.com and enter in your model number in a driver search. You can, however, reinstall the OS she has on the notebook by getting an OEM version of whatever OS is on there and using the CD key on the bottom of the notebook. You can get the disc from a torrent or whatnot.
Notebooks are very the same as desktops software-side. Don't panic.

If the machine is running hot, take it out to the garage and give the heatsinks a blast or five of compressed air. Dust accumulates inside the heatsinks (like in desktops, but there's less space, so it happens faster) and clogs them up.

 

[spathotan]

Ok, thanks for the help.

 

[dwellman]

Installing an OS can't kill your computer. At least Vista 64 is much more in the way of compatibility than XP 64, though, I've never had any hardware issues with either. . . except wireless. Intel branded cards, I've never had problems with. Prism / Intersil based cards are viable too. . but I digress.

 

[spathotan]

Its using the standard intel pro wireless.

 

[dwellman]

Yeah Intel is pretty good about OS support.