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Well, considering that a large percentage of channels are nothing more than ads 24/7 for "Do you Poop Enough?". I mean how many shopping channels does one need, in addition to all the other channels that have infomercials running half the time.

I just wish i could http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ my TV lineup.

Because it pays... At one point Dell was making more from bounties on preinstalled crap then they were from the margin on the computer itself. And people will give away all of there personal information for a $5 off coupon these days. https://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

And there is always PC Decrapifier for those PCs that come with "restore partitions" filled with crap, so I really don't get the big deal either.

Of course this is one more reason to go to your local system builder, the only software I install other than Windows is freeware that people can use like a full AV, Libre Office, Pale Moon and Comodo Dragon browsers with Adblock Plus,all spyware free.

No but the PC Decrapifier will... https://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

My PC is hobbled to near-uselessness with crapware installed by Lenovo

We've recently purchased some Lenovo machines, and yes, they came with a metric assload of shitty software that nobody could possibly use or want, and that soaked up RAM and CPU like a drunk in a vineyard. But you do know you're allowed to uninstall all that shovel-ware, right? And if you don't know what to remove or how to uninstall them yourself, a useful tool is the PC Decrapifier, which is so simple anyone can run it.

The Decrapifier is not perfect, though, as the authors seem to be dodging some legal lines by not being particularly aggressive in what they recommend you remove. And it won't get everything. My sister asked me to help her as her machine had slowed to the point of unusability. At some point her machine had become infested by some particularly nasty McAfee "free" malware that required a ludicrous amount of effort to destroy. It took me far too long to discover I had to surf to their site to download a custom uninstall tool. I think I spent almost two hours downloading updates and scrubbing the malware from three machines simultaneously. But once all the crapware was gone, and they had current patches, they actually became some decent machines. (Then I had to go home and take a shower, because that McAfee software made me feel filthy.)

I consider that wasted time as an expense that jacked up the cost of owning the machines by a couple hundred dollars. It would not be worth the investment on a cheap Lenovo, which I would never recommend unless you have the nothing but time to waste, but as I was getting a big SSD, fast CPU, hi res screen, and lots of RAM, I overlooked it. But I'm not forgetting it.

Lenovo, if you're reading this, know that I'm the senior buyer for all computer and electronic equipment purchased by my two extended families, and that $20 in kickbacks you got for installing the shitware on my machine will never recoup the costs of even one of the never-buy-Lenovo recommendations I've been handing out. Multiply that by the thousands of nerds who feel like I do, and that's millions of units you're not selling because of your own stupidity.

That's why you run decrapifier as the very first thing. http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

Only then do you run your ninite selection. https://ninite.com/

PC Decrapifier used to be quite good. I haven't used it in a few years, though, so YMMV.

You can probably kill all of that stuff, although evernote is useful for taking notes. I'm using it as part of my job and it's been great for tracking all the little notes and thoughts that spring up in development.

That said, if it was me, I'd just wipe everything and install clean.

Oh please! You make it sound like its some big hard problem! Just use PC Decrappifier takes five minutes IF that, and call it a day. It'll not only clean out the trialware but any extra crap the OEM puts to sell their own stuff (such as all the HP services crap) and it takes just a couple of clicks and all done.

And I would remind everyone that Sony offered a few years back to sell any PC you wanted crap free for just $50 extra, they had so few takers they quit bothering. Personally I'll keep the $50 and take 5 minutes to clean the crap on a laptop, desktops i build my own.

"How is this a Windows 8 Feature though and not something that the developer embedded into her app?"

No worries, Decrapifier will handle it soon.

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/download

Yes you do sound fanboyish, just FYI. Having less choice may seem like a positive to you, but its a negative to the rest of us. You can do the same thing with a PC BTW, its called "buy the same laptop" although frankly I've yanked drives out of Dells and slapped them in Samsungs, all it took was about 20 minutes to remove the old drivers and install the new, followed by a 5 minute call to MSFT to re-activate. Despite all the "ZOMFG M$ won't let you re-activate ZOMFG" FUD we have seen in many places I have honestly never had a problem with them and a re-activation, just 5 minutes and you're good to go.

Although I really don't know how many "settings" your average user even has anymore, most of my customers only care about their bookmarks and any pics and docs on the drive. For the bookmarks I have them on Comodo Dragon (or if you like the Firefox way of doing things they have IceDragon) with Comodo set to back up their bookmarks to their Gmail, easy peasy. And as far as trialware? Dude if you are actually manually uninstalling ANY of it ur doin it wrong, that's what PC Decrapifier if for. Simply check the boxes of anything you don't want, trialware or not, hit the next button and there is no step 3, its all automatic. For pics and docs I carry USB drive enclosures, not only do they get their data but it makes a handy backup unit and you can buy enclosures all day long for less than $6

That said if paying the "Apple Tax" for less powerful hardware at more expensive prices does it for you? I'm happy for you, I really am. I support everyone from college students to grandmas, backhoe operators to bank managers, and the nice thing about the Windows PC landscape is there is a perfect model for every single one of them.

Where is the Apple equivalent of my netbook, where I can run all my X86 software on a unit just 12 inches and 2 pounds that gets 6 hours plus battery life? That's right, it doesn't exist, instead they'll try to offer me an iPad that doesn't do what I want at a higher price...no thanks. With Windows I can find a unit for nearly any job or price point, upgrade it any way I want, and unless they are literally spilling cokes down the damned things they'll last for years. BTW if you have a relative THAT destructive? Far cheaper to slap them on refurb netbooks and have their data in the cloud, hell you can buy 7 or 8 netbooks for the price of a single macbook and then they can just toss or give them away on freecycle.

PC decrapifier can be your friend.
http://pcdecrapifier.com/
Free for personal use. :)

You can use this tool for free http://pcdecrapifier.com/removes Why the hell would someone want to charge you to remove bloatware that you never asked for in the first place... hang on don't tell facebook they will remove your profile, photographs etc for $300.

Uhhh...did you not read my GP post? It takes less than an hour on average and the ONLY thing that will be running on startup besides the standard Windows services is the graphics icon in the taskbar. I could of course kill that since it isn't STRICTLY needed but ATI for some damned reason doesn't put a control panel icon when you install so if you disable that many would have trouble finding where to call up the controls.

Hell if all they wanted was just the crapware tossed with no reinstall that is even quicker, just run PC Decrapifier which takes MAYBE 10 minutes. Now if you wanted to argue that I should be charging based on my years of experience then maybe, but that then gets into economics. i find that with the lower price i get much more customers and due to the tiny amount of my time it takes i can crank them out and make more money. It simply makes more sense to charge $50 if you can do a dozen in a day than it is to charge $100 and only get 2 through the door a day, its just simple math.

So I'm sorry friend but you are wrong, server is a completely different beast. With server you have to set up groups, password policies, permissions, it takes much longer and you have to know a lot about the org to do it right. With home users there really isn't anything to know, you set the password to blank so they can put in their own, you give them a bog standard clean system with the basic apps they will require (which thanks to Ninite all but two of the apps I give them is fully automated), there really isn't all that much to it honestly.

This one is free too: http://pcdecrapifier.com/download

Why not do it for free by using http://pcdecrapifier.com/. sworn by it for years now. disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the project just a happy user.

http://pcdecrapifier.com/

http://pcdecrapifier.com/

I tell everyone who gets a pre-installed PC to run this.

For the future... http://pcdecrapifier.com/ Sony may be the worst, but it is in a crowded field...

Exactly, what happened to free will and the right of the consumer to choose? I run a little mom and pop PC shop so naturally I sell and service MSFT products. I knew that going in and have had to deal with more than one headache thanks to MSFT dumbshit, like having to wipe Vista and install XP for a year and a half because nobody at MSFT had enough sense to listen to the beta testers which included me. But you know what? That is MY choice. I've tried Apple, Linux (several flavors) BSD, and back when it existed Opensolaris (yes I know there is an offshoot but it is no longer supported by the parent corp) and for me and the needs of my customers the MSFT products were the best fit.

Do I wish they did some things differently? Oh Lord Yes, fire the damned monkey and put the Office team in charge of OSes for one thing, or actually listen to the beta testers! But quit whining like a bunch of little girls and if you don't like a product be man enough to NOT BUY IT instead of coming up with this lame "tax" bullshit. News Flash: OEMs GET PAID FOR TRIALWARE so Windows will ALWAYS be cheaper than Linux, okay? Not a conspiracy, its that nobody will pay to install 30 day trials onto Ubuntu and most of the time those trials when added up are worth MORE than the OEM cost of Windows, which last I heard was something like $15 for Windows HP, $30 for Pro, and $60 for Ultimate.

But I wanted to point out the connector "tax" just to illustrate the hypocritical bullshit. you have company A (MSFT) that unless you are buying a product that has Pro or better COSTS YOU NOTHING and actually in many cases SAVES YOU MONEY because of the nature of the cutthroat pricing in OEM PC sales they often apply the money they make on trialware to further lower the cost per unit, and on the other hand you have company B (apple) that due to its popularity is costing you money on every single item with a dock connector which of course is in all likelihood NOT absorbed by the company but passed straight to the consumer, yet one is called a tax and one is not.

Bullshit, you can't just change the definition because you think the products made by company B are nice and shiny, either they BOTH are a tax, and it should again be noted that in the first case it is a "tax" that can actually end up be rebating below its cost, or neither are. Or even better why not just fricking exercise free choice and buy what you like? i'm sure System76 and ZaReason would be happy for that business if you don't like MSFT. They even have some machines more powerful than the Apple offering. but you'll note the machines often cost more than a Windows machine with the same specs, again the crap everyone complains about on a new PC lowers the price. Personally I say just use PC Decrapifier or wipe and put on any OS you like and STFU with the whining. We're supposed to be geeks not not one of these bitchy politically correct groups. And as far as Apple goes while I think they make some great products I don't care for their policies so I DON'T BUY THEM, is that really so hard?

Actually if you want to know what is generally the cause of Windows being slow its all that OEM trialware crapola that gets loaded onto a machine before you ever get it. I consider the new Asus EEE I got pretty light in that it only had nine extra things running at startup, of which only two I found useful (hybrid engine and Asus Hotkey) whereas I've seen as many as nineteen on some dells and HPs. That is why PC Decrapifier is a handy tool to have around.

The second thing that slows Windows down is what I call "granny services" which thankfully MSFT is FINALLY fixing in Windows 8. granny services are the services that MSFT or the OEMs have running to keep granny from calling tech support. That's support for cameras and scanners,media sharing services, etc. It took them a fricking decade but they are finally gonna have services launch by trigger instead of the usual auto/manual crap.

I only hope the new services setting is backported to Windows 7 as many of us have settled into Windows 7 and won't be making the switch for quite awhile. I know in my case i've just finished getting the last of my customers moved off of XP and I doubt seriously any of them will be too keen on jumping onto a new OS next year. With Windows 7 being supported until 2020 it could become the new XP, which while i'm sure that wouldn't make MSFT none too happy without a killer app to make all these multicores obsolete I just don't see folks switching every couple of years like we did in the 90s. Back then thanks to the MHz wars it was worth your while to switch thanks to the huge increases in performance, but now? Frankly any dual core is "good enough" for the majority of the things your average Joe is doing with a PC.

So while I'm happy that MSFT is FINALLY listening to users and making speed a priority I have a feeling windows 8 adoption will be even slower than 7 was. Anybody who has gotten a new PC in the past 4 years frankly has more than enough power to do whatever they want. Why would they switch? Frankly if the best reason they have is Metro and a few speed increases they are gonna be looking at some slow adoption rates IMHO. For most of the new machines I've seen in the end its the HDD not the OS that ends up the bottleneck anyway.

I guess Decrapifier http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ will include that too.

Yeah, the Windows machine specs out nicer, but that doesn't mean much outside of test-bed environments, looking at performance from a clean install on a pristine new computer.

You cannot buy a pristine new windows laptop at this time. Only offered by Apple. Everything else is stuffed with bloatware by the manufacturer.

Yeah, I got my HTPC with Windows 7 and left it on the side while installing Linux as the primary OS. Windows was amazingly slow to boot and sluggish to use untill somebody here posted a link to the pc decrapifyier: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

Now Windows boots up about as fast as the minimal Ubuntu server / XBMC set up and works surprisingly well given the hardware (1.6ghz Atom). I still don't consider it a pleasure to use, but compared to the state it was when the machine was sold to me it's like buying a 2 generations newer computer.

is PC Decrapifier. It's free, lightweight, requires no install, and just works. http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ It's not perfect, but it removes a good hunk of the stuff.

Try PC Decrapifier. http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

Rather then cracking open that Add/Remove program list, just run this program and it will run through the process for you.

Windows doesn't bring in all that much money. Most people simply don't buy it retail. The real money is in the "software assurance" program, and in Office. Get rid of those, and Microsoft is a perennial money loser.

And linux has been used as a threat to dump the software assurance program, which most businesses don't need, since they can now get by with doing a cheap hardware refresh instead with the money they save. Desktops no longer cost $2k apiece.

The only reason anyone would buy a Windows site license is not for software assurance, it's because the OEM license has a clause which says "if you are the end user rather than the OEM, you're not allowed to use this as the basis for an image you roll out to your desktop PCs." - there's no such clause on the site license. Having said that, things like DeCrapifier and Ninite make most of the things you'd have to do to have an image unnecessary.

Veyron, Civic, E class Merc, Meh! These are all poor analogies. All I want in a program is if it does the job that I want and costs very little or nothing.

All you need to do is download the freeware program: PC-deCrapifier, which does a wonderful job of cleaning up your new computer

They need this kind of program for phones.

New or used PC, download and run The PC Decrapifier Below is a list of programs it will remove. Very simple to use.

AOL Install
AOL UK
AOL US
Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI
Corel Photo Album 6
Corel Snapfire Plus SE
Corel WordPerfect
Dell Search Assistant
Dell URL Assistant
Digital Content Portal
Earthlink Setup Files
ESPN Motion
Get High Speed Internet!
Google Desktop
Google Toolbar
HP Rhapsody
Internet Service Offers Launcher
McAfee
Microsoft Office Activation Assistant 2007
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003
Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003
MS Plus Digital Media Installer
MS Plus Photo Story 2LE
MusicMatch Jukebox
MusicMatch Music Services
muvee autoProducer 5.0
NetZero Installers
Norton AntiSpam
Norton AntiVirus 2005
Norton Ghost 10.0
Norton Internet Security
Norton Internet Security
Norton Protection Center
Norton Security Center
Norton Symantec Live Update
Office 2003 Trial Assistant
Orange Internet
PC-cillin Internet Security 12 Trial
QuickBooks Trial
Quicken 2006 Trial
Remove Empty Program Folders Looks for and removes empty 'Program Files' folders
Wild Tangent Games
Yahoo! Music Jukebox
Yahoo! Toolbar for Internet Explorer
Reset IE Home and Search Pages
Roxio Express Labeler
Roxio MyDVD LE
Roxio RecordNow
Sonic DLA
Sonic RecordNow Audio
Sonic RecordNow Copy
Sonic Update Manager
Tiscali Internet
Travelocity Gadget
Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security 14
Vongo
Wanadoo Europe Installer

1) Download: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/
2) Install
3) Run program.

Hell, I'll even give you free PC optimization months down the road after your PC looses it's new PC smell!

1) Download: http://www.ccleaner.com/
2) Install
3) Run program.

You're welcome.

I'm surprised the PC Decrapfier didn't make it on their list of cleanup apps. I haven't used it in a while (haven't had the money to buy a new computer), but it has served me well in the past.

I always use this first thing on new crap-loaded laptops that aren't going to get wiped with Linux.

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

Free as in beer for personal use.

The best one is not mentioned in the crappy article: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

Thank all the computer gads for the PCDecrapifier http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ Now we can add Google's browser to the list of unwanted pre-installed gunkware.

Dell small business sometimes has better deals than the "consumer" side for the same hardware. Yeah the label is different sometimes, but the threads on slickdeals/fatwallet/foo will usually let you know which model corresponds to which.
As far as crapware is concerned the dell decrapifier is now the PC decrapifier and one of the best free apps out there, everyone should use it before they do anything else on a prebuilt machine.

These HP, Dell, Lenovo systems all come pre-loaded with so much junk, it really does slow the system down a measurable amount. All these Security Suites with 30 running services, alternative media players, Vendor "Help Centers", "Imaging assistants" -- it's all junk.

Folks, the second you unbox that new system, run http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/, and let it clean this junk off. You'll have a much better experience, regardless of the base OS.

Isn't that the spyware bunch? I know I recently had to remove WildTangent software from my Dad's PC,and he has never played a PC game in his life. So all I can figure is he got zapped in a bundle or something,because WildTangent was running on his PC and slowing his PC and net connection down bad. Just the fact that Spybot detected them is enough for me to label them crapware,although someone here may know more about whether they are adware or spyware. I know I have been seeing it more and more on older folks PCs,and come to think of it they all had AT&T DSL. Does anyone know if this crap is being bundled with AT&T software?

According to Decrapifier it comes bundled with 70% of HP/Compaq PCs

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

I call shenanigans. An IT guy that has never heard of the PC Decrapifier

Depending on the company, why should they?

We purchase/lease various workstations from HP and laptops from Lenovo and never use the base install: we re-image things with Altiris (?) and get a pre-built corporate image ready to go with all the standard software (Office, Norton) ready to go.

I call shenanigans. An IT guy that has never heard of the PC Decrapifier

So they charge $30 to run PC Decrapifyer? http://pcdecrapifier.com/

A few tips. I work on a college campus, and I get stuck with XP and Vista reinstalls all the time. You may or may not be aware of some/a lot/all of these, but I'll take that risk if it could save you a few minutes. (It's loads of fun fixing exchange students' machines. They're all by "weird" manufacturers like NEC and I don't speak Japanese!)

Not much you can do with a crappy sysprep'd recovery disc. But, once the install is finished, run PC Decrappifier on the box. It'll yank out all the trialware/garbage bloat that comes with most PCs. It is a lot faster than having to manually remove all of them from Add/Remove programs.

(Remember to curse HP-Compaq and Dell for these programs, not Microsoft. Invoke not Crom's name on the wrong party.)

Keep Windows XP SP3, Vista SP1, IE7, Office 2003 SP3, and the Office 2007 patches on a flash drive. Find out what drivers the computer is going to need while Windows is installing and download them on another machine. This'll save you a few hours of Windows Update. Keep them stored somewhere, sorted by manufacturer and model so you'll never have to find them again. (For a while.)

If you are working on a fairly common model of computer, consider making an image from it. If you get a similar model again, it'll take minutes and not hours to fix it.

I can't speak for ways to reduce the XP install time, and I haven't installed a Linux distro recently. But in my experience, it's 30 minutes to install XP, and another 30 to install office, patches (from disk), and to register it on our network.

Good luck!

too bad you posted AC. Most of your points are correct.

My point is a new Visya machine out of the box from most retailers is not production worthy. It needed an Office Application. Office 2007 has it's own issues. Sorry I mentioned it. My Linux machine came with an office application installed and it worked, was intuitive and the minor bugs were easy to figure out. The biggest annoyance was the default printer paper setting of A4 instead of Letter. It did not require a Google search to fix.

The stopped to ask, I do blame on Vista. When updates are available in Ubuntu for a background task, it simply winks the toolbar item, not stop the foreground task like it did in Vista. This is a Vista fault. I've seen the same task done much better elsewhere.

The Shareware requesting updates being installed by the computer manufacture is a problem with Vista. They should not need the DeCrapifier right out of the box to fix a new machine.

The fix is here;
http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/home

I was assuming that PC Decrapifyer cleaned the plethora of extraneous Sony-specific applications, the list does not list one Sony item: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/apps
Still, is it is a very FREE and very Useful tool for new PCs.

Another link OTFA:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/21/sony-hates-you-offers-50-fresh-start-option-to-build-your-la/

Anyway, when helping a friend it's much easier to run a tool than to sit down for an hour with a handful of diagnostic tools and try to figure out which bits are important, and which ones are not.

it takes about 10 minutes to start up because the HDD is running virtually nonstop, thrashing as it pages in the minimal amount of stuff needed...

I bet you anything the disk thrashing is from the bloatware OEM applications installed on the laptop by Toshibia. Remove them using PC Decrapifier and see if that improves performance.

That is why we have the PC Decrapifier: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

Did you try using Decrapifier?

This:

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/