Bloatware removal tools to recommend to friends?

By Mockingbird
in Microsoft (Windows)

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Grand Master

Mockingbird

Posted
Posted

Hi fellow Neowinians,

 

I've had a lot of friends who bought PCs latent with tons of bloatware that makes the laptop runs poorly.

 

I've recommended that they remove software that they don't use to speed up their laptops, but all too often, they end up removing crucial drivers and I ended up having to reinstall them.

 

What are some software that I should recommend to them that would remove bloatware, but leave the drivers alone?

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Romero

Posted
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If you're willing to spend some time and do them a real favor (maybe they'll repay you in some way) I'd recommend reinstalling from a clean copy of Windows, with just the latest hardware drivers installed. Most OEM utilities are pretty useless and can be safely dispensed with.

Proficient

purrcher

Posted
Posted

Reinstalling is the best option for decraping a system, but assuming its Windows 8+ then they could try a system Refresh / Reset (though OEM's are created bloated recovery images so that might not always work). Otherwise  PC Decrapifier I've used and it does a pretty good job.

 

Additionally a quick search pulled up a PC World article "Beat it, bloatware: How to clean Superfish and other crap off your PC" that also talks of a " Should I Remove It? utility", It seems useful, but I havent tested it out yet.

 

But as said before PC Decrapifier has been around for a while and works quite nicely.

Grand Master

Mockingbird

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  • Author
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Sometime I think that people expect too much from their computer.

 

A friend of mine has a Dell I3135-3751SLV and she's not too happy with the performance.

 

She did run PC Decrapifier, but there's still a lot bloat left over (she's too cautious about what she is removing) so she's going to drop her laptop off this week.

 

Anyway, the laptop isn't exactly a speed demon esp. because it has an AMD A6-1450 processor and I have to keep her expectations in line.

 

That said, I also plan to disable a lot of the Visual Effects to increase performance.

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Romero

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Posted

LOL gotta love the people who buy the $200 POS and complain that its slow.

You know what's funnier (and I've actually seen this happen), some will then happily pay for those scam RAM/system speed booster utilities. Yeah, don't spend on the hardware but on stupid sh*t and then complain about how everything's still so slow. How intelligent. :rolleyes: And of course more often than not these people will end up loading their already POS system with every toolbar and other crap imaginable. :pinch: I swear, next time some relative or acquaintaince asks me to clean their system I'm gonna start charging real $$$ for my time. :crazy:

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sinetheo

Posted
Posted

PC Cecrapifier works well, http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

 

I used that before I discovered Windows 7 isos on digitalife. Now Microsoft offers them freely and legally if you have the serial key.

 

After the Lenovo incident I always recommend a fresh copy. Too much openCandy and SSL busting malware. It is downright criminal what these OEMs get away with these days.

On the plus side the new Lenovos wont come with any but many still come with Superfish from old inventory

Grand Master

T3X4S

Posted
Posted

You know what's funnier (and I've actually seen this happen), some will then happily pay for those scam RAM/system speed booster utilities. Yeah, don't spend on the hardware but on stupid sh*t and then complain about how everything's still so slow. How intelligent. :rolleyes: And of course more often than not these people will end up loading their already POS system with every toolbar and other crap imaginable. :pinch: I swear, next time some relative or acquaintaince asks me to clean their system I'm gonna start charging real $$$ for my time. :crazy:

EXACTLY !

Another thing that was always frustrating for me is - they would call me to fix their computer, then completely ignore my recommendations/advice  & listen to "the guy down the street who's son is a computer genius"   (of course kid down the street is nothing more than a web developer or some IT job that requires zero knowledge of computers).

  • goretsky, +Nik Louch and Romero
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Grand Master

Mockingbird

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Well, she originally had a Dell Inspiron 1564 with Intel Core i3-330M and 4GB RAM, but one of her drunk friends broke it.

 

Anyway, after I removed all the bloatware from that computer, she was generally happy with it.

 

The Intel Core i3-330M is faster then the AMD A6-1450, but not by an outrageous amount.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3+M+330+%40+2.13GHz

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A6-1450+APU

 

She said that her Dell Inspiron I3135-3751SLV has a lot of lagging and freezing issues.

 

 

LOL gotta love the people who buy the $200 POS and complain that its slow.

 

She bought it for $350.

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Romero

Posted
Posted

She said that her Dell Inspiron I3135-3751SLV has a lot of lagging and freezing issues.

If the laptop's not heating up a lot (which might require cleaning the insides and possibly reapplying thermal paste) and she's still complaining about performance after a clean install, recommend to her that she (or her father) spend a little money. Easiest thing to do is drop in more RAM and an SSD. If she's not running anything too heavy for the CPU this should definitely help.

Grand Master

Mockingbird

Posted
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Romero, on 11 Mar 2015 - 23:23, said:

If the laptop's not heating up a lot (which might require cleaning the insides and possibly reapplying thermal paste) and she's still complaining about performance after a clean install, recommend to her that she (or her father) spend a little money. Easiest thing to do is drop in more RAM and an SSD. If she's not running anything too heavy for the CPU this should definitely help.

 

She writes her reports and do research online as well as use it for entertainment.

 

The most demanding thing she uses it for is to watch Netflix on her TV via a HDMI port.

 

As for as upgrade is concern, this computer already has 4 GB of DDR3 RAM and I doubt that it needs more than that. I am not so sure about putting SSD in a budget laptop.

 

I want to note that she hasn't actually given me the computer yet, so I still need to wait for that.

Proficient

purrcher

Posted
Posted

She writes her reports and do research online as well as use it for entertainment.

 

The most demanding thing she uses it for is to watch Netflix on her TV via a HDMI port.

 

As for as upgrade is concern, this computer already has 4 GB of DDR3 RAM and I doubt that it needs more than that. I am not so sure about putting SSD in a budget laptop.

 

I want to note that she hasn't actually given me the computer yet, so I still need to wait for that.

I would definately start any system with a check for crapware / unneeded programs / other types of bugs. After that I would look at whats all running and what can be turned off or delayed.  Next a disk cleanup solution.

 

Then as a last resort hardware and while I would always recommend a SSD for best performance I have been impressed lately by how much a good hybrid drive can bring to the table as a cheaper upgrade over standard laptop hard drives.

Grand Master

goretsky Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
Posted

Hello,

 

I tend to build my own PCs (desktop) and buy business-grade laptops, so I do not have much experience with consumer-grade systems these days.

 

So, question for all the people who are recommending to blow away the preloaded image and load a generic Windows ISO:  Is it really quicker to do this than just removing whatever [bloat|crap|trial]ware was preinstalled?  And is performance that much different?

 

The last time I got a consumer laptop in my hands was a Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro (this is one of the models that didn't get the Superfish adware treatment) and there were probably around ten (or maybe slightly less) programs that I didn't want on it, counting both classic desktop Windows programs and Modern Windows apps).  I doubt I spent more than 10 minutes uninstalling these, including time required to reboot. 

 

Admittedly, I did not check the drive afterwards to see if any files or folders were left on the system, but as part of the process of configuring the system, I did checking of various autoload entries in the registry, scheduled tasks, etc., examining the processes which ran on startup and so forth to make sure no orphaned drivers, services or programs continued to run.  That's something I do separately after I've finished configuring the computer, but I'm guessing that's another 20-30 minutes of time.

 

In any case, total time spent was under an hour.  Call it 45 minutes to be generous.

 

Is it still quicker for you to load an image, even a slipstreamed one with the majority of your third-party programs on it?  Also, did you try benchmarking the system to measure the difference in performance between your own cleaning operation versus a generic Windows install?

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

Grand Master

Noir Angel

Posted
Posted

You really can't beat a clean install of Windows from a blank ISO, though I use Advanced Uninstaller to remove bloatware, it's pretty thorough at getting rid of the junk most uninstallers leave behind.

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Romero

Posted
Posted

In any case, total time spent was under an hour.  Call it 45 minutes to be generous.

I can install Windows faster than that from a good USB stick, even on an HDD (not SSD) based system. That should answer your question. And while I can waste time rooting through the registry, Program Files, AppData, Windows and all the other places crapware 'uninstallers' leave residue behind in, why should I bother? Clean install from unmodified ISO = 100% guarantee of no extraneous crap whatsoever. Couldn't be simpler.

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Grand Master

Brian M. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

One thing I loved recently - I bought a HP Stream 7 tablet from a microsoft store recently to play with - it was what they call the "signature edition". It had no bloatware at all, other than one tiny little warranty check utility. 

 

It was quite refreshing.

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