June 18th, 2007
How to fully de-gunk a PC of Crapware
This information is also available as a PDF download.
One of the most hated things on the Personal Computer is Crapware. It slows your PC down to a crawl, often causes instability and crashes, eats up valuable screen real-estate, and may even border on Malware. I started on this topic a few months ago with a partial solution but it wasn’t the total solution that really scrubbed the computer clean. This time I’m going to show you thoroughly scrub a PC of Crapware but first I’m going to give a few definitions.
Definition of Crapware:
Crapware is software that you don’t want on your computer. Not everyone will agree on what is and what isn’t Crapware because a piece of software that one person wants might be something that another person doesn’t. Some software will fall in the grey area where people need - or they think they need - certain features of the software but it causes them grief by causing system slowdown or instability. Although we can technically define Malware, Spyware, or Adware as Crapware because it’s software that people definitely don’t want, those three typically get put in to the category of Malware.
Examples of Crapware:
Crapware might come in the form of a bloated driver CD that installs additional junk on top of the required driver. It might be software that came with a router, printer, or broadband service that the typical user unwittingly installs or it’s the stuff that came pre-installed on the PC you purchased. Often times you try to install something to play a simple video and it installs a massive music library manager or you install a piece of software and you get an extra toolbar added to your web browser even though you had never asked for it.
At the end of the day it’s companies trying to fight each other for every inch of your screen real-estate, monetize every search and every click, and capture every glance you make which turns your computer in to a messy battleground. What every user wants to know is how do you get rid of their crap and take back your PC. The following techniques aren’t guaranteed to get rid of every piece of Crapware on your Windows (2000, XP, or Vista) computer but it is one of the most thorough method available that a modestly computer literate person should be able to follow. The two free tools you will need to download are:
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George Ou is Technical Director of ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
