All of my friends including my wife’s friends knows that I am a computer guy. I work on computers to make a living and has been doing that for the past 13 years. For that reason, many of them ask me to check their laptop periodically to see if there are problems that causes slow down. Recently one of my wife’s friend bought a new laptop and asked me to check if it was worth buying it. In terms of hardware specifications, everything is faster and more powerful than my laptop but weirdly my laptop boots up and shuts down faster than hers. Not only that, I can even feel that there is a slight delay whenever I run any installed application on the new laptop.
At first she thought she was cheated by the salesperson in buying a lousy and slow laptop but I told her that it is the unnecessary bloated software running in background that is causing the problem. If configured, tweaked and installed the correct software, the new laptop should run much faster. Unfortunately all of the branded computers or laptops comes pre-installed with a lot of junk and unnecessary software that runs when Windows is booted up. I personally have NEVER used the recovery disc provided by the manufacturer on my computer or laptop. I prefer a clean installation of Windows followed by a step by step driver installation and finally installing the third party software that I “need”.
Some manufacturers such as Dell gives a “reinstallation DVD” that allows you to install a clean version of Windows 7 without any of the pre-installed tools. If not, you can use ABR tool to backup the Windows 7 OEM license and either borrow or download Windows 7 to install and activate it. You probably don’t even need to look for drivers because Windows 7 has a huge database to support a lot of hardware devices. But if you need to, you should have a drivers and utilities CD provided by your computer manufacturer.
If you don’t want to reinstall Windows 7, you can also manually uninstall the software IF you know which ones are not needed and is safe to remove. Uninstall wrongly and it would only cause more problems with some features not functioning. If all that seems to be too much work and too risky, then the easier method is to use SlimComputer or PC Decrapifier. Both SlimComputer and PC Decrapifier helps identify unnecessary software that comes pre-installed on a new computer such as promotional programs, toolbars, links to advertising or trial offers, then giving you the option to uninstall them. In fact both of them can also be used on a non brand new PC.
PC Decrapifier is a single portable executable file and works in a wizard style series of questions. You get to choose what you want to uninstall that PC Decrapifier thinks that it is unnecessary from the built-in database. It relies on the Windows System Restore to restore what you have removed with PC Decrapifier.
As for SlimComputer, it needs to be installed and comes with a nice looking graphical user interface. Other than identifying software that comes pre-installed on a new computer, it is also bundled with a couple of helpful tools such as startup optimizer and supercharged services. It is also possible to restore back the items that you’ve removed.
A big difference between SlimComputer and PC Decrapifier is that SlimComputer uses community-sourced feedback to get up-to-the-minute recommendations for any PC, unlike PC Decrapifier uses a fixed definition.
[ Download SlimComputer | Download PC Decrapifier ]
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