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Bought Laptop at Bestbuy - Bestbuy tour reinstall itself

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Well I just saw an Ad for a Toshiba Notebook I wanted (A105-S4284) and I called all the bestbuys in my residental area. Turns out everyone was out except 1 store which told me they had 1 left, coincidentaly this was the store closest to me :D . I get there 15 minutes later to find out it's already been sold :( but the sails clerk tells me I can buy the model on display for 10% off. Now me being kinda safe about things like this question him how long it's been there and if they would get all the crap off of it and grant me admin rights to be sure that everything would work correctly. He told me it had been there since the day before when the promotion started and I couldn't find any phsyical damage to it at all. So the guy "supposably" clearns all the BestBuy stuff and built-in crap that they put on the display models to make the look more attractive. Well they for some odd reason can't find the battery (they run it from the AC adapter) so they ordered a new one and I can pick it up in a week. So I take my new laptop home and it turns out the guy did nothing at all but give the accounts Admin privilages.

I boot up the machine, go into the account labeled Best Buy (ok I know I shouldn't be that picky I can always change it) and the frickin thing boots up 7 diferent McCaffe things which I have tried to uninstall numerous times by going into Add/Remove Programs but it wont let me telling me I need to shut off all instances of the program, I even stopped all process used by it indidivualy and kept getting the same error message saying I need to close all instances of it. To make matters worse the Best Buy Tour thing pops up everytime I boot as well which hogs a ton of Memory and procesor power.

I tried uninstalling it in Add/Remove programs but it doesn't even show up, only the installer for it does and to uninstall the installer I need to insert the origonal disk for it. Now theres an icon in my desktop for the program so I check the target and manualy delete the program in my (C]Program Files) + (Documents and Settings\All Users\Program Files) + any other instances I can find relating to the program all over the place, hoping to at least get it to F up and give me an error message instead of running everytime I boot-up the computer. Sure enough I turn it on and all the crap has reinstalled itself in every single directory that I had previously deleted it from.

Also for programs such as McCaffe where it asked me to select some options such as registering it, telling it to check for updates automaticaly or manualy, blocking/trusting Deep Freeze 6, it's like it never saved the options I had chosen last time at all as the same windows popped open again as if I had done nothing and just freshly installed it.

Can you guys help me please, this started out looking like a really great value but with all the effort required to clean it up I'm not so sure I saved any money at all seeing as I could have the $70.00 I saved back easily in the same amount of time. It was a clearance sale though so they won't be getting anymore and most online retailers I've chcked didn't come close to Best Buy's price. Hope you guys can help me figure out this shit.

Edit: Here's the link for the laptop for those interested.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspag [...] 7067806867

Thanks, Nick.

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Yes, we can help - and it's fairly easy.

Do you have an XP installation disc? (Not Recovery)

Do you have a COA pasted to the bottom of the laptop?

Is there a product key there?

What flavor is the XP on the machine? Home or Pro?

If you don't have a disc, can you "borrow" one from a friend - the same flavor as your XP?

Reply to pscowboy
- 0 +

Quote :

Yes, we can help - and it's fairly easy.

Do you have an XP installation disc? (Not Recovery)

Do you have a COA pasted to the bottom of the laptop?

Is there a product key there?

What flavor is the XP on the machine? Home or Pro?

If you don't have a disc, can you "borrow" one from a friend - the same flavor as your XP?



Do you have an XP installation disc? (Not Recovery) - No I only have a homed ition CD and I really want to keep Media Center on my laptop.

Do you have a COA pasted to the bottom of the laptop? Yes

Is there a product key there? Yes

What flavor is the XP on the machine? Home or Pro? Media Center

Honestly, I don't know anyone at my School who would know anything about computers besides the common magic-app people.

Reply to NiklasK

To get rid of all that baggage, AND KEEP MEDIA CENTER, would require extensive rooting around in the Registry.

Considering that you're school aged & inexperienced, there is no way I could instruct you to accomplish that task.

From my viewpoint, you have two options, and both will start by killing the existing partition and installing fresh:

1. You find anybody who's willing to let you borrow their MC cd; then fresh install using the key on the Toshiba.

2. You use your Home XP to do a fresh install & use its' key - NOT THE LAPTOP'S.

Reply to pscowboy
- 0 +

All retail PCs/Laptops come with a recovery CD and if BestBuy didn't give it to you, I'd go back and insist they give it to you and if they tell you that don't have it, tell them to either take it back or give you copy of Windows Media. If they refuse, contact Toshiba. The Toshiba CD will have have some adware but all of these recovery CDs do but you can it it off pretty easy

Reply to g-paw
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