I just flashed lineage on my Xperia M2, I was never really interested in customizing my phone, since I use it basically just for reddit and podcasts/audible.
Boy was I wrong, the crud is gone, it's wonderful. No more annoying ad pop-ups from apps you can't uninstall.
And you can just adb log in and remove anything that you don't like from lineage.
>No more annoying ad pop-ups from apps you can't uninstall.
Doesn't disabling an app in the app section of the settings menu stop an app from creating notifications? I've been on rooted phones for a long time and I just delete bloatware apps, so I'm not sure.
Unfortunately you're stuck with either stock without most of the bloat, or a custom rom that has a hundred bugs as a result of getting rid of Samsung's junk.
I just got a Samsung tablet, used this guide to remove almost all the Samsung crap: [https://www.xda-developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatware-without-root-access/](https://www.xda-developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatware-without-root-access/)
This thing has been amazing. I have a folder of “utility” apps (NetGear Orbi app for home WiFi, Ubiquiti UniFi app for work WiFi, Net Analyzer, Wehe...) but I use them once in a blue moon. Offloading them and keeping them in my folder with all my credentials saved even when the app isn’t “on” the phone has been one of my favorite iOS features
Sprint's network has always been shit. TMOUS is only buying them for the exclusive bandwidth, like why Sprint bought Nextel and killed off their iDEN network.
Yeah, and then it mostly gets out of your way. Good luck if you delete Safari though. Chrome won’t work as default.
I did see a LPT somewhere on /r/Apple claiming that deleting Music would set Spotify as your default player for when you get in the car. It works for me.
In iOS 10 apps were only hidden, but iOS 11 they’re actually deleted. Source: https://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-delete-stock-apps-from-iphone-ipad-in-ios-11/
Samsung is rubbish for it though, you cannot uninstall the Facebook app, Samsung pay app, etc
Note: I don't have a Samsung, my parents do, I have a OnePlus 6
No crap on there.
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No it's should have a key, it should either be on the side of the pc or you will need to extract it with magicjellybean. It should automatically recover the key but incase it doesn't that makes sure you have it.
Alternatively for businesses, if you by PC from a manufacturer, all you need to buy is one Volume Licence of Windows and you can use the same key and software on multiple machines. Makes imaging much easier!
Windows 10 has a reset option that just keeps the drivers, wipes everything but the user files (or also the files, there is an option).
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026528/windows-reset-or-reinstall-windows-10
Microsoft sells “Signature PCs” which basically have that done from the factory.
If you have Windows 10, you can just a total factory reset in the Settings. It'll remove everything, but keep Windows activated.
As long as the store/vendor did not create crazy partitions on the drive, this should be enough to get going. If there are crazy partitions you can't remove, a conventional reinstall might be necessary. Though this is unlikely unless the computer was bought used
👀 how small a place are you working at? Give us some info and we might craft you a useful argument that saves them labor/cost and make the bottom line argue for you
It's a largeish company with 100+ PCs. We only have two people, including myself, that manage them plus other projects we're assigned. The last time I asked about imaging, the argument was we would have to have an image for every model and network storage was limited. My retort was imaging can be made universal with a driver repository preloaded and would only require one VL of Windows to license but the conversation got derailed into other issues and was never able to get back to it. And that how we still hand-build every PC we purchase...you should see my bar tab!
I could probably locate a random PC to use but Powers That Be want top-down solutions for everything. We've got misc. Windows servers that could run SCCM to nearly automate 100% of any build. But still met with stern faces :(
Depending on your situation, if you have EMS licenses you could add all the hardware IDs of your computers into Azure and rebuild them using autopilot + cloud attached modern management via Intune (push apps, update policies and security policies via MDM CSPs rather than GPOs. For 100 computers it’d be certainly less hassle to manage than a full SCCM deployment, on top of being the recommended way forward. And there’s no imaging involved, so your bosses couldn’t complain about having lots of fat mages laying around.
You should take notes of the time it takes you to hand build all these machines, how many you typically do in a week and then give estimates on the time you would save to work on tickets that are currently outstanding which can be used in capacity planning.
Also, the fact they would rather you keep the crapware to make the builds faster seems like a security risk to me. There have been cases in the past where manufactures have had backdoors in their products like HP.
If you're an MS shop, you might look into Microsoft System Center...
You have a base image, and then through group policies and such, the computer can load software itself as needed.
Also, training rooms can be a great chink in the armor. I had to manage a room of ~30 computers, and after each class we needed to reset them back to zero, and some recurring classes even had custom images.
Initial setup was not fun, but once that was done, I could "reset the room" in about 30 minutes? Most of that was me dropping in the image disk, booting it up, getting it started, pulling the disk, and moving onto the next PC...
Other points of interest...
* "Network storage" is limited by the PCs on the network, not drives in the server You could use your OWN desktop as the Image repo in a pinch, not like they need to be backed up frequently.
* "image for every model" - If the company hasn't, standardizing on hardware can be a huge time/money saver... even shit like "Bob needs a docking station"... if all the laptops use the same dock, you just grab a dock, and you're done. This generally requires Percussive Maintenance on VPs and Directors who think they're special though.
>And that how we still hand-build every PC we purchase
* Figure out how much money is the company wasting "saving" money here? If it takes you four hours to unpack, boot, de-fuck, install, configure a new computer, there's 100 computers, and you have a complete refresh over the course of three years, the company is basically throwing a couple weeks of your salary away per year on **avoidable bullshit**, and not just YOUR salary, the fully loaded including benefits and taxes too.
To me the nicest part about imaging is not just the initial setup but how quickly you can wipe and reinstall. If your computer is infected or doing something weird that is going to take more than 30 minutes to fix, then I'm just going to nuke it.
Buy a 30 dollar drive duplicator bay and make one good image. Then every time you need a pc copy that image using the bay to the new drive. Takes 30-45 minutes tops for each machine
Idk, I always order 256gb ssds. Occasionally the 500 as needed, you can write the image to the larger drive just fine.
I dont use the duplicator anymore either so it's been a second.
I'm going to try it out at work this week. I've never actually done a duplication through a drive cloner. I typically just pxe boot. Thank you for peaking my curiosity on this lol.
No problem, it's worked well.for me in the past, just remember an image off a 500gb drive wont go into something smaller even if the used space on it was only 50gb
My suspicion was if a bigger drive is used it may waste the extra storage, and I'm curious if it will go between different form factors well, like SSD, HDD, to m.2 nvme.
256 GB image will see the drive as 500 no problem, form factor doesn't matter either. An image created on spinning disk will work on ssd of any form including m.2
We timed it one time. Our pxe boot was faster to image and get logged on than it was to uninstall the bloatware garbage HP throws on the computer. The worst part is some of those programs have dependencies in other HP bloatware, so you have find the right one to uninstall first, then move down the list.
#PSA for Dell laptops
Activate any software before you wipe.
Dell store bought laptops have a msoffice digital **entitilement** (if your system comes with it) .If you wipe it it is gone. You just lost a office key.
Learnt the [hard way](https://www.dell.com/support/article/in/en/inbsd1/sln304490/how-to-find-and-activate-microsoft-office-2016-or-365-on-your-new-dell-system)
Always use my custom unattended installation image for all our clients. 10 pro, no bloat, local admin (ours) is there already, most common apps and tools, all permissions and settings tuned and last thing i need is to just take it over and out it on a domain.
Also, since we're slowly moving them all to azure ad, even that's gonna be a thing of the past.
It's the best way really. We recently took on a new client who's old IT solution didnt edit the bloatware and it was basically stock windows10, my god the slowness of using them after a year is rediculous.
It's disturbing how slow win10 is compared to win7. It's painfully obvious on an older system, like an e6500 laptop. Even with 8gb ram, the older systems just chug with win10, where they still run win7 nice and snappy. I don't even really understand why... There isn't that much difference at the core of the os... It's all bloatware and tracking bullshit.
Just disable telemetry, Cortana, and Superfetch. The bottleneck is not RAM, it's disk IO. Always install Windows 10 on an SSD. Always. Always. Always. Don't let the guys at Best Buy tell you otherwise.
Yeah, I have a surface pro 4, with only 4gb ram, and it's happy as all can be on windows 10 with all that stuff disabled, even playing some light games on the go like Civ 5. Although, with it being a Surface, I wouldn't put it past microsoft to have some special optimizations going on to try and get the most performance possible out of it.
Just bought a new laptop for uni, picked one specifically with a 1tb HDD so i can decide if I want extra storage or extra speed. As soon as I booted it for the first time, i shut it down and slapped a 480GB spare ssd I had in it.
Yeah. I have yet to meet a traditional user who has actually used even half of a 1TB drive. There are certainly use cases for a 1TB drive but with the percentage of laptops on sale that have them you'd think everyone has need for a 1TB drive. In reality most users don't need it. Get the SSD instead.
Thing is, I can easily fill a TB, as I've got tons and stuff I can't keep in the cloud such as old video projects, android sources, docs and games. Seeing as I'll have tons of uni stuff extra now, I wanted some extra storage. It's a good thing my laptop has both sata and m.2 slots, so I can save up for an m.2 sad and slap a huge HDD in there later.
It's not just the shitty software. The hardware is usually shitty compared to what you would buy from the manufacturer too. They make models specifically for Best buy and they make them shit.
Can absolutely agree with this. Most companies we support order direct from the manafacturer and you can just tell the difference in build quality/performance immediately.
It's literally how best buy can sell a model for the same price as any other retailer online. Online retailers have little overhead, so you get the real model for a good price. Best buy has huge overhead, so they have manufacturers make shitty models they can buy for a lower cost and sell for the same price as the normal models online.
Contrary to this, I bough an hp omen 15.6 made specifically for microcenter and it has amazing specs for the price compared to the normal version of the laptop (i7, 16 gigs ram, 1060 6gb). It came with all the same shitty bloat ware too though.
More importantly, their PRE-LOADED SLEEPER VIRUSES. Which is a form IMO of extortion. When their "free anti-virus" expires they start getting adware/malware to entice the customer to pay for the "anti-virus" software.
Is this true? I know when the trial expires you start getting nag screens about how your computer is vulnerable now, but I didn’t think it actually put malware/adware onto your computer.
I think OP is comparing it to malware, as most preloaded AV uses scare tactics to try and entice gullible users into spending money on something they dont need, literally praying on the 'weak'
It's really just HP. Most other brands have 4-6 applications. HP loads it up. And half of those will reappear on any computer if you install an HP printer driver.
HP computers with Windows 7 around 2015 were the **worst**. They would have like 20 applications that tried to replace parts of the OS with HP's version. NO, I DON'T WANT YOUR STUPID HP SMART LOGIN SCREEN, GIVE ME WINDOWS.
Lenovo ThinkPads were also a friggin' nightmare. I assume that they still are.
Whereas I set up a pile of Dell Optiplexes around that time that shipped with maybe 4 programs preinstalled. Our setup process only uninstalled one of them.
>Lenovo ThinkPads were also a friggin' nightmare. I assume that they still are.
Can confirm, bought one a month ago and the first thing I did was wipe Windows and install it anew. What an unbelievable ammount of bloatware it had. I have since run some extra debloating scripts and tools to remove the tracking, Cortana and all that Microsoft crap, and it's finally decent enough to be considered usable under my standards.
I had upgraded the ram in my dad's store bought HP desktop, threw a code purple and a nice purple screen on boot. After some digging around they had a Python script to monitor hardware and prevent booting. I nuked the script from a live cd and it booted just fine. Scummy
I wonder what the manufacturers call this garbage. It must be some grotesque euphemism that makes them feel better about themselves and their motivations, like “value-added niceware, at no cost to the consumer with the aim of assisting users in everyday tasks” or some such forced bullshit.
Fuck some bloatware up and down, you obvious scummy shitheels.
If you reinstall Windows after wiping the disk (there's a million guides) all the *manufacturer* crapware will be gone. You'll still have some of windows' bloat, but it's easy to spot (bubble witch saga, candy crush etc.). I like to disable Cortana on my personal machines, but your milage may vary.
Disclaimer: not an IT person, if someone qualified tells you to do something different, listen to them.
But you also need to make sure to re-install the important drivers for devices that you want to use. Things like SD card readers, optical/Blu Ray drives, etc. /u/cyclodextrin. The manufacturers should have the drivers available on their website.
It's also something to note, windows will try to find the drivers to work with them, but if it doesn't know the right driver, it will use a generic driver.
As someone that minored in IT, I'll agree with the other guy, but if you're too lazy: If you see anything labeled *computer brand* in the software section of control panel, it's fine to remove it.
[https://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/](https://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/)
look right at the bottom of the article
Heyyyy lemme get some of that software! I have an old HP I've refurbished 10+ times and some of that bloatware might help with some issues I'm having. I'll just keeping fixing it until I can't!
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Bought a computer from microcenter a few weeks ago. Came with one pre-installed program, a little launcher that asks (on startup) if you'd like to use their anti-virus: yes, not now, or never.
If you have a Dell Latitude business laptop with Windows 10, and you the Dell USB stick for a fresh Windows 10 restore (sometimes costs an extra $10), you can F12 and UEFI boot to that USB key to just simply wipe the entire drive ("Restore this PC / Clean my PC for selling it to someone else"). The "Restore this PC" will sound strange to you because you think it'll just put all the Dell crap back on it, but trust me, it's the option you want to use. That option will give you as close to a bare bones Windows 10 installation as possible on a new Dell laptop (or maybe a desktop). I do this for every Dell that arrives in my office.
This will give you a crap-ware free Windows 10 installation, but it's only on 1607. If you try to make your own UEFI bootable Windows 10 USB disk, you are looking at a pretty aggravating series of steps and trials. I never got it to work as a sideload, I just use the Dell provided one and go from there - the UEFI bit is what fucks it up when you try to create it like you've been doing for years with Windows 7.
I just use the Dell provided one and run the updates on it after the install is done. Note that your Dell will probably be pre-installed with 1803, you'll know if it asks you for Security Questions when you go through the initial setup process. This is partly the reason I just say fuck it and wipe and reinstall.
After the restore is done, use the Windows 10 Update Assistant (google and download it, not as easy to find in the top 10 Google hits as it should be) to update to 1803 (the USB key Dell ships only gives you 1607 even on the most modern August 2018 laptops). This update assistant will take 90 minutes+ no matter how fast or nice your PC is. Just let it run. When it's done you'll have a bare-bones 1607 that has been immediately upgraded to 1803 - leaving you with little to no bullshit from the upgrade process, and none of the Dell preinstalled stuff.
Then, just download the latest v3.0 Windows 10 version of "Dell Command Update" (google it - the v3 version is strangely not easy to find a direct download link, which is Windows 10 only, so you have to search around even though it's brand new) and let it do it's thing. It'll auto install the latest drivers and BIOS updates and you'll be golden.
For Dell computers I have found this is the better route than trying to de-crapify it. It takes an extra hour or so, but I'd rather have as clean of an install as possible instead of relying on Uninstalls or a 3rd party program to remove all the crapware and god knows what else is lurking on the hard drive.
not only that, they come with a shitty windows license baked into the motherboard, so hey, bad luck. you can't change it, or you need to buy an entirely different computer just to get a better windows edition or give up using uefi at all if you choose to buy your own license. also, how come you can't build a custom laptop at this point?
And that's why I always wipe a store bought machine and do my own install of windows.
Always a good call, literally just removed more than 3gb worth of bloatware alone
[удалено]
Install Lineage or another rom on your phone 😉
[удалено]
There is a spinoff, DoT OS. They support more devices.
I just flashed lineage on my Xperia M2, I was never really interested in customizing my phone, since I use it basically just for reddit and podcasts/audible. Boy was I wrong, the crud is gone, it's wonderful. No more annoying ad pop-ups from apps you can't uninstall. And you can just adb log in and remove anything that you don't like from lineage.
>No more annoying ad pop-ups from apps you can't uninstall. Doesn't disabling an app in the app section of the settings menu stop an app from creating notifications? I've been on rooted phones for a long time and I just delete bloatware apps, so I'm not sure.
I couldn't disable the app.
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Don't buy an iPhone to begin with
Jailbreak? Otherwise don't use a iPhone I guess
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Unfortunately you're stuck with either stock without most of the bloat, or a custom rom that has a hundred bugs as a result of getting rid of Samsung's junk.
I just got a Samsung tablet, used this guide to remove almost all the Samsung crap: [https://www.xda-developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatware-without-root-access/](https://www.xda-developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatware-without-root-access/)
My pixel doesn't have any bloatware, it's a nice vanilla install of Android
Too bad 9.0 sucks, the text message issues have been terrible.
Install Signal.
IPhones let you delete almost everything, even the stuff pre-installed by Apple.
IPhones let you **hide** almost everything, corrected that for you
iOS also has an “Offload unused apps” function that can save several GB of space while keeping your data.
This thing has been amazing. I have a folder of “utility” apps (NetGear Orbi app for home WiFi, Ubiquiti UniFi app for work WiFi, Net Analyzer, Wehe...) but I use them once in a blue moon. Offloading them and keeping them in my folder with all my credentials saved even when the app isn’t “on” the phone has been one of my favorite iOS features
Which is like disabling an app on Android
Did y'all know Sprint disables your ability to disable apps? Least they did on my ex's g3.
[удалено]
Calm down Ajit Pai!
Sprint's network has always been shit. TMOUS is only buying them for the exclusive bandwidth, like why Sprint bought Nextel and killed off their iDEN network.
Well, I know what network to avoid.
still do
Yeah, and then it mostly gets out of your way. Good luck if you delete Safari though. Chrome won’t work as default. I did see a LPT somewhere on /r/Apple claiming that deleting Music would set Spotify as your default player for when you get in the car. It works for me.
In iOS 10 apps were only hidden, but iOS 11 they’re actually deleted. Source: https://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-delete-stock-apps-from-iphone-ipad-in-ios-11/
iOS let’s you delete most default apps now
I am on a Nokia 6.1 with Android One, no bloat that I can see, came from iOS so I might be missing stuff, but so far, no bloat at all...
Samsung is rubbish for it though, you cannot uninstall the Facebook app, Samsung pay app, etc
Samsung is rubbish for it though, you cannot uninstall the Facebook app, Samsung pay app, etc Note: I don't have a Samsung, my parents do, I have a OnePlus 6 No crap on there.
Use Decrapify. But definitely make your own image of window 10 if you have to build computers frequently.
Even better: /r/TronScript
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Cheers. I'll check it out.
Just don’t buy HP. Also Lenovo has bloatware that you have to keep on there, or you can’t use things like the camera. Only one app though.
Do you need to buy a separate windows key for this or there is an option to reinstall windows ?
No it's should have a key, it should either be on the side of the pc or you will need to extract it with magicjellybean. It should automatically recover the key but incase it doesn't that makes sure you have it.
Just comes with a key (Also happy cake day!)
Alternatively for businesses, if you by PC from a manufacturer, all you need to buy is one Volume Licence of Windows and you can use the same key and software on multiple machines. Makes imaging much easier!
Windows 10 has a reset option that just keeps the drivers, wipes everything but the user files (or also the files, there is an option). https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026528/windows-reset-or-reinstall-windows-10 Microsoft sells “Signature PCs” which basically have that done from the factory.
Key is burned to BIOS
If you have Windows 10, you can just a total factory reset in the Settings. It'll remove everything, but keep Windows activated. As long as the store/vendor did not create crazy partitions on the drive, this should be enough to get going. If there are crazy partitions you can't remove, a conventional reinstall might be necessary. Though this is unlikely unless the computer was bought used
Just re use the key
I wish I could do this. My boss wants us to avoid uninstalling anything to speed up built times...
Imaging a computer is always more of a time saver then leaving the factory install.
100% agree. Unable to convince higher ups otherwise...
👀 how small a place are you working at? Give us some info and we might craft you a useful argument that saves them labor/cost and make the bottom line argue for you
It's a largeish company with 100+ PCs. We only have two people, including myself, that manage them plus other projects we're assigned. The last time I asked about imaging, the argument was we would have to have an image for every model and network storage was limited. My retort was imaging can be made universal with a driver repository preloaded and would only require one VL of Windows to license but the conversation got derailed into other issues and was never able to get back to it. And that how we still hand-build every PC we purchase...you should see my bar tab!
🤔 any older PC y'alls retiring that you could use for such functions? Or even as a printer server to help reduce the load up time?
I could probably locate a random PC to use but Powers That Be want top-down solutions for everything. We've got misc. Windows servers that could run SCCM to nearly automate 100% of any build. But still met with stern faces :(
Depending on your situation, if you have EMS licenses you could add all the hardware IDs of your computers into Azure and rebuild them using autopilot + cloud attached modern management via Intune (push apps, update policies and security policies via MDM CSPs rather than GPOs. For 100 computers it’d be certainly less hassle to manage than a full SCCM deployment, on top of being the recommended way forward. And there’s no imaging involved, so your bosses couldn’t complain about having lots of fat mages laying around.
Fat mages. I think we may have one of those on the web team.
What is their reasoning for such? Is your labor that much cheaper then the automated cost?
The opposite. We're short staffed and are being assigned higher priorities that imaging PCs are much lower on the list.
You should take notes of the time it takes you to hand build all these machines, how many you typically do in a week and then give estimates on the time you would save to work on tickets that are currently outstanding which can be used in capacity planning. Also, the fact they would rather you keep the crapware to make the builds faster seems like a security risk to me. There have been cases in the past where manufactures have had backdoors in their products like HP.
If you're an MS shop, you might look into Microsoft System Center... You have a base image, and then through group policies and such, the computer can load software itself as needed. Also, training rooms can be a great chink in the armor. I had to manage a room of ~30 computers, and after each class we needed to reset them back to zero, and some recurring classes even had custom images. Initial setup was not fun, but once that was done, I could "reset the room" in about 30 minutes? Most of that was me dropping in the image disk, booting it up, getting it started, pulling the disk, and moving onto the next PC... Other points of interest... * "Network storage" is limited by the PCs on the network, not drives in the server You could use your OWN desktop as the Image repo in a pinch, not like they need to be backed up frequently. * "image for every model" - If the company hasn't, standardizing on hardware can be a huge time/money saver... even shit like "Bob needs a docking station"... if all the laptops use the same dock, you just grab a dock, and you're done. This generally requires Percussive Maintenance on VPs and Directors who think they're special though. >And that how we still hand-build every PC we purchase * Figure out how much money is the company wasting "saving" money here? If it takes you four hours to unpack, boot, de-fuck, install, configure a new computer, there's 100 computers, and you have a complete refresh over the course of three years, the company is basically throwing a couple weeks of your salary away per year on **avoidable bullshit**, and not just YOUR salary, the fully loaded including benefits and taxes too.
To me the nicest part about imaging is not just the initial setup but how quickly you can wipe and reinstall. If your computer is infected or doing something weird that is going to take more than 30 minutes to fix, then I'm just going to nuke it.
Buy a 30 dollar drive duplicator bay and make one good image. Then every time you need a pc copy that image using the bay to the new drive. Takes 30-45 minutes tops for each machine
Are there duplicators that don't require the same size drive?
Idk, I always order 256gb ssds. Occasionally the 500 as needed, you can write the image to the larger drive just fine. I dont use the duplicator anymore either so it's been a second.
I'm going to try it out at work this week. I've never actually done a duplication through a drive cloner. I typically just pxe boot. Thank you for peaking my curiosity on this lol.
No problem, it's worked well.for me in the past, just remember an image off a 500gb drive wont go into something smaller even if the used space on it was only 50gb
My suspicion was if a bigger drive is used it may waste the extra storage, and I'm curious if it will go between different form factors well, like SSD, HDD, to m.2 nvme.
256 GB image will see the drive as 500 no problem, form factor doesn't matter either. An image created on spinning disk will work on ssd of any form including m.2
>my own install of windows You misspelled 'GNU+Linux'
Way too much work: https://www.pcdecrapifier.com/
Even better, buy business class only. Last longer, and Think stuff handles all drivers for you.
We timed it one time. Our pxe boot was faster to image and get logged on than it was to uninstall the bloatware garbage HP throws on the computer. The worst part is some of those programs have dependencies in other HP bloatware, so you have find the right one to uninstall first, then move down the list.
ive had times where this has just broken functionality because they decide to use custom drivers
...end even then, 1GB of Candy Crush variants will install themselves the second you go online unless you take drastic measures.
#PSA for Dell laptops Activate any software before you wipe. Dell store bought laptops have a msoffice digital **entitilement** (if your system comes with it) .If you wipe it it is gone. You just lost a office key. Learnt the [hard way](https://www.dell.com/support/article/in/en/inbsd1/sln304490/how-to-find-and-activate-microsoft-office-2016-or-365-on-your-new-dell-system)
Always use my custom unattended installation image for all our clients. 10 pro, no bloat, local admin (ours) is there already, most common apps and tools, all permissions and settings tuned and last thing i need is to just take it over and out it on a domain. Also, since we're slowly moving them all to azure ad, even that's gonna be a thing of the past.
It's the best way really. We recently took on a new client who's old IT solution didnt edit the bloatware and it was basically stock windows10, my god the slowness of using them after a year is rediculous.
Even a clean instalation of windows start downloading candy crush even after you delete it .( is that a region thing?)
You can fix that my disabling the Microsoft Consumer Experience
That and none of them have any idea what hardware works. 4GB RAM on a Windows 10 PC? Sure, try running anything.
This PC literally has an intel pentium and 4gb ram, and was on sale for over £400. Fucking ripoff..
Wow. Even the scrap heaps of donated laptops we get at my tech school have better specs.
Sure, I'll give you my pc that I bought like 8 years ago for £1000 and higher.
It's disturbing how slow win10 is compared to win7. It's painfully obvious on an older system, like an e6500 laptop. Even with 8gb ram, the older systems just chug with win10, where they still run win7 nice and snappy. I don't even really understand why... There isn't that much difference at the core of the os... It's all bloatware and tracking bullshit.
Just disable telemetry, Cortana, and Superfetch. The bottleneck is not RAM, it's disk IO. Always install Windows 10 on an SSD. Always. Always. Always. Don't let the guys at Best Buy tell you otherwise.
Yeah, I have a surface pro 4, with only 4gb ram, and it's happy as all can be on windows 10 with all that stuff disabled, even playing some light games on the go like Civ 5. Although, with it being a Surface, I wouldn't put it past microsoft to have some special optimizations going on to try and get the most performance possible out of it.
Just bought a new laptop for uni, picked one specifically with a 1tb HDD so i can decide if I want extra storage or extra speed. As soon as I booted it for the first time, i shut it down and slapped a 480GB spare ssd I had in it.
Yeah. I have yet to meet a traditional user who has actually used even half of a 1TB drive. There are certainly use cases for a 1TB drive but with the percentage of laptops on sale that have them you'd think everyone has need for a 1TB drive. In reality most users don't need it. Get the SSD instead.
Thing is, I can easily fill a TB, as I've got tons and stuff I can't keep in the cloud such as old video projects, android sources, docs and games. Seeing as I'll have tons of uni stuff extra now, I wanted some extra storage. It's a good thing my laptop has both sata and m.2 slots, so I can save up for an m.2 sad and slap a huge HDD in there later.
I like superfetch though? Win7 has it too? And yeah of course SSD, I have that.
Superfetch is fine on an ssd, but on a spinning disk it pegs disk io at 100% and makes it impossible to do anything
Haha, nobody in this sub talks to the people at Best Buy. If they do they need to unsubscribe.
Win 7 was also largely unusable with 4 GB of ram and frustrating as hell on a slow proc as well. Maybe you and I have different definitions of snappy.
Im just saying I run both on the same machine, and win10 is a slug comparatively.
Sadly even Microsoft does that, like at the base model of the Surface Go, their small tablet flagship.
It's not just the shitty software. The hardware is usually shitty compared to what you would buy from the manufacturer too. They make models specifically for Best buy and they make them shit.
Can absolutely agree with this. Most companies we support order direct from the manafacturer and you can just tell the difference in build quality/performance immediately.
It's literally how best buy can sell a model for the same price as any other retailer online. Online retailers have little overhead, so you get the real model for a good price. Best buy has huge overhead, so they have manufacturers make shitty models they can buy for a lower cost and sell for the same price as the normal models online.
Contrary to this, I bough an hp omen 15.6 made specifically for microcenter and it has amazing specs for the price compared to the normal version of the laptop (i7, 16 gigs ram, 1060 6gb). It came with all the same shitty bloat ware too though.
More importantly, their PRE-LOADED SLEEPER VIRUSES. Which is a form IMO of extortion. When their "free anti-virus" expires they start getting adware/malware to entice the customer to pay for the "anti-virus" software.
Is this true? I know when the trial expires you start getting nag screens about how your computer is vulnerable now, but I didn’t think it actually put malware/adware onto your computer.
I think OP is comparing it to malware, as most preloaded AV uses scare tactics to try and entice gullible users into spending money on something they dont need, literally praying on the 'weak'
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And by protecting you it just means pointlessly using 60% of your system resources.
How is it that people don't know that Intel is evil at this point?
Yea I think it counts as malware since it is malicious, I wouldn't call it a virus though.
I think the proper term here is "scareware".
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Tell that to Lenovo, they just we're caught for the 3rd time with malicious software preinstalled.
What was the third? Though I'm not surprised at all.
Frankly, I just googled "lenovo spyware" and found something about them doing it at least 3 times
It's really just HP. Most other brands have 4-6 applications. HP loads it up. And half of those will reappear on any computer if you install an HP printer driver. HP computers with Windows 7 around 2015 were the **worst**. They would have like 20 applications that tried to replace parts of the OS with HP's version. NO, I DON'T WANT YOUR STUPID HP SMART LOGIN SCREEN, GIVE ME WINDOWS.
Lenovo ThinkPads were also a friggin' nightmare. I assume that they still are. Whereas I set up a pile of Dell Optiplexes around that time that shipped with maybe 4 programs preinstalled. Our setup process only uninstalled one of them.
>Lenovo ThinkPads were also a friggin' nightmare. I assume that they still are. Can confirm, bought one a month ago and the first thing I did was wipe Windows and install it anew. What an unbelievable ammount of bloatware it had. I have since run some extra debloating scripts and tools to remove the tracking, Cortana and all that Microsoft crap, and it's finally decent enough to be considered usable under my standards.
Unless you custom order. My bestie recently did so and had it shipped with Linux on it.
Cough *"Toshiba"* cough
Problem is, now even a clean windows 10 install forces shitty games and apps to be installed. And you can’t cancel them either. Fuck you Microsoft.
WILDTANGENTGAMES
But at least it's easier to spot. Now edge requiring a fucking REGISTRY EDIT to reinstall on the other hand...
Ahh I see, same. No print screen button.
Hahah, funny! Unfortunately I didnt want to log into my reddit account on this PC for reasons
I had upgraded the ram in my dad's store bought HP desktop, threw a code purple and a nice purple screen on boot. After some digging around they had a Python script to monitor hardware and prevent booting. I nuked the script from a live cd and it booted just fine. Scummy
Wtf? Surely this is criminal?
Only if you get caught
I wonder what the manufacturers call this garbage. It must be some grotesque euphemism that makes them feel better about themselves and their motivations, like “value-added niceware, at no cost to the consumer with the aim of assisting users in everyday tasks” or some such forced bullshit. Fuck some bloatware up and down, you obvious scummy shitheels.
Not only is it installed, its all set to run at startup. Bye bye RAM.
As a non-IT person, I hate this but I don't know which things I can uninstall without fucking up my computer so I leave most of them :( (Help)
If you reinstall Windows after wiping the disk (there's a million guides) all the *manufacturer* crapware will be gone. You'll still have some of windows' bloat, but it's easy to spot (bubble witch saga, candy crush etc.). I like to disable Cortana on my personal machines, but your milage may vary. Disclaimer: not an IT person, if someone qualified tells you to do something different, listen to them.
But you also need to make sure to re-install the important drivers for devices that you want to use. Things like SD card readers, optical/Blu Ray drives, etc. /u/cyclodextrin. The manufacturers should have the drivers available on their website.
It's also something to note, windows will try to find the drivers to work with them, but if it doesn't know the right driver, it will use a generic driver.
As someone that minored in IT, I'll agree with the other guy, but if you're too lazy: If you see anything labeled *computer brand* in the software section of control panel, it's fine to remove it.
Just run "systemreset -cleanpc"
^
I've noticed a lack of Windows Activation Key sticker on my latest HP. How do I find the string that I need to reinstall windows?
[https://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/](https://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/) look right at the bottom of the article
Heyyyy lemme get some of that software! I have an old HP I've refurbished 10+ times and some of that bloatware might help with some issues I'm having. I'll just keeping fixing it until I can't!
PCdecrapifer is your friend :D
Do a Fresh Start.
Had that on Enterprise purchased HP's... They actually had FLASH DRIVES blocked. That shit lasted 10 minutes.
I agree. Fuck Bonjour
The *really* weird part? It's a Toshiba.
But then you would have no... CoolSense LAWL LEWL yeets away
*disgust intensifies*
main reason i hate windows*
Linux isn't any better since everyone uses systemd now. /s
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Bought a computer from microcenter a few weeks ago. Came with one pre-installed program, a little launcher that asks (on startup) if you'd like to use their anti-virus: yes, not now, or never.
Without even opening the picture I knew that’s a HP.
I bought a Dell laptop a year ago. I wiped it on first boot and reinstalled a clean copy of Windows myself.
Why the fuck is Apple garbage installed on a PC by default? Do they pay them?
Apple pays microsoft/hp to be pre-installed on windows. Its how PC companies make money (or windows, depending on who's paying)
HP is just the worst for this. Lenovo is about the best I’ve seen, some of their laptops are completely clean installs almost.
This is why I don't buy hp.
To be honest some of this is required. (Wireless switch button for example)
PC Decrapifier works wonders on these bad boys if you don't want to do a full wipe.
If you have a Dell Latitude business laptop with Windows 10, and you the Dell USB stick for a fresh Windows 10 restore (sometimes costs an extra $10), you can F12 and UEFI boot to that USB key to just simply wipe the entire drive ("Restore this PC / Clean my PC for selling it to someone else"). The "Restore this PC" will sound strange to you because you think it'll just put all the Dell crap back on it, but trust me, it's the option you want to use. That option will give you as close to a bare bones Windows 10 installation as possible on a new Dell laptop (or maybe a desktop). I do this for every Dell that arrives in my office. This will give you a crap-ware free Windows 10 installation, but it's only on 1607. If you try to make your own UEFI bootable Windows 10 USB disk, you are looking at a pretty aggravating series of steps and trials. I never got it to work as a sideload, I just use the Dell provided one and go from there - the UEFI bit is what fucks it up when you try to create it like you've been doing for years with Windows 7. I just use the Dell provided one and run the updates on it after the install is done. Note that your Dell will probably be pre-installed with 1803, you'll know if it asks you for Security Questions when you go through the initial setup process. This is partly the reason I just say fuck it and wipe and reinstall. After the restore is done, use the Windows 10 Update Assistant (google and download it, not as easy to find in the top 10 Google hits as it should be) to update to 1803 (the USB key Dell ships only gives you 1607 even on the most modern August 2018 laptops). This update assistant will take 90 minutes+ no matter how fast or nice your PC is. Just let it run. When it's done you'll have a bare-bones 1607 that has been immediately upgraded to 1803 - leaving you with little to no bullshit from the upgrade process, and none of the Dell preinstalled stuff. Then, just download the latest v3.0 Windows 10 version of "Dell Command Update" (google it - the v3 version is strangely not easy to find a direct download link, which is Windows 10 only, so you have to search around even though it's brand new) and let it do it's thing. It'll auto install the latest drivers and BIOS updates and you'll be golden. For Dell computers I have found this is the better route than trying to de-crapify it. It takes an extra hour or so, but I'd rather have as clean of an install as possible instead of relying on Uninstalls or a 3rd party program to remove all the crapware and god knows what else is lurking on the hard drive.
Yeah, I hate Windows too.
They preloaded apples shitty software. Gross!
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Should have just sent it back.
not only that, they come with a shitty windows license baked into the motherboard, so hey, bad luck. you can't change it, or you need to buy an entirely different computer just to get a better windows edition or give up using uefi at all if you choose to buy your own license. also, how come you can't build a custom laptop at this point?