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    Should We Remove Bloatware on Office PCs

    IT Discussion
    bloatware best practices
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      scottalanmiller @coliver
      last edited by

      @coliver said:

      The question is "Is it worth taking the time to uninstall them if you are not going to image the machine?"

      Right

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        Dashrender @coliver
        last edited by

        @coliver said:

        The question is "Is it worth taking the time to uninstall them if you are not going to image the machine?"

        If I wasn't going to image, I probably wouldn't remove them. Manufacture tools usually are the least of our concerns compared to the AV, PDF viewer, movie maker, etc.

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          angrydok Vendor
          last edited by

          I find annoying anything that was not installed by me (probably except free MS Office on windows machines).

          Have a relevant question: how often you kill the vendor’s recovery partitions? I literary hate those because vendors used to create recovery partitions at the end of the existing disk layout making the native shrink/expand impossible. That’s a pain to repartition the 1 TB C volume you know.

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            scottalanmiller @Dashrender
            last edited by

            @Dashrender said:

            @coliver said:

            The question is "Is it worth taking the time to uninstall them if you are not going to image the machine?"

            If I wasn't going to image, I probably wouldn't remove them. Manufacture tools usually are the least of our concerns compared to the AV, PDF viewer, movie maker, etc.

            There are not manufacturers tools in any case that I've seen. It's advertising crap put on to get users used to stuff so that they demand that it be put back on again.

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              scottalanmiller @angrydok
              last edited by

              @angrydok said:

              I find annoying anything that was not installed by me (probably except free MS Office on windows machines).

              Have a relevant question: how often you kill the vendor’s recovery partitions? I literary hate those because vendors used to create recovery partitions at the end of the existing disk layout making the native shrink/expand impossible. That’s a pain to repartition the 1 TB C volume you know.

              That too, I always remove those partitions. They use up part of the disk again to make the bloatware self-reinstall!!

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                Dashrender
                last edited by

                huh, I've never seen the bloat auto reinstall. Be prompted through those manufacture apps, sure, but never auto reinstalled.

                Again, Why not just drop kick it and image whenever possible. One less issue to worry about.

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                  scottalanmiller @Carnival Boy
                  last edited by

                  @Carnival-Boy said:

                  Can someone define bloatware for me?

                  It's a loose term and certainly not limited to what HP, Dell or whoever ads to the OS. The OS has bloatware too, like games for most people. Bloatware would be, to me, anything that is installed that is not needed or desired. Anything unnecessary.

                  I would not include drivers if they are lean drivers (HP has been known to put on huge drivers that you might want to replace anyway) but any extra software or features that are not for the purpose of use. Anything that uses disk, memory, CPU, menu space, etc. Anything that makes a PC bloat rather than be lean.

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                    scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                    last edited by

                    @Dashrender said:

                    Again, Why not just drop kick it and image whenever possible. One less issue to worry about.

                    That's another discussion and I agree, even at home I would image 100% of the time. Image meaning from VL disc, not an imaging server until you get to scale. I literally find it less work for the first time and since I install every machine more than once over a lifetime, it ads up quickly.

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                      Dashrender
                      last edited by

                      I never considered @scottalanmiller suggestion of a just a base install of the OS via an image before. Definitely an idea that gets to you a pure clean state much faster and guaranteed clean (save vendor bad drivers) that you can be assured of after uninstalling bloatware.

                      It also solves the partition problem at the same time.

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                        scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                        last edited by

                        @Dashrender said:

                        It also solves the partition problem at the same time.

                        You have to manually remove that or the image goes only into the partition available.

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                          gjacobse
                          last edited by

                          Before the newest (retail) sales model.. I would always toast and load my computers. But that was when you had a CD / DVD to work from to install the OEM OS.

                          Now that they are moving more and more to not including any type of media,.. you still end up with the bloatware on a 'new install' because it's part of the recovery system.

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                            Dashrender @scottalanmiller
                            last edited by

                            @scottalanmiller said:

                            @Dashrender said:

                            It also solves the partition problem at the same time.

                            You have to manually remove that or the image goes only into the partition available.

                            This depends on your imaging solution - Clonezilla for example removes all of the partitions automatically in my experience.

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                              Dashrender @gjacobse
                              last edited by

                              @gjacobse said:

                              Before the newest (retail) sales model.. I would always toast and load my computers. But that was when you had a CD / DVD to work from to install the OEM OS.

                              Now that they are moving more and more to not including any type of media,.. you still end up with the bloatware on a 'new install' because it's part of the recovery system.

                              So there are two options here - buy Microsoft Signature Edition PCs. these are machines MS buys and strips all the crap off of and then sells to you at the same price as the OEM would (full retail).

                              Option two, assuming Windows 10 (and probably 8.1 as well) you can these days download the ISO from MS and create your own media to reinstall your machine from.

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                                Carnival Boy @scottalanmiller
                                last edited by

                                @scottalanmiller said:

                                Bloatware would be, to me, anything that is installed that is not needed or desired

                                So would you include IE as bloatware?

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                                  Carnival Boy
                                  last edited by

                                  I don't know if there is value in HP's utilities. I install their Proliant utilities on servers. I even go out of my way to download HP's version of ESXi rather than the vanilla version. Why should I feel any different about their desktop utilities? What's the difference?

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                                    angrydok Vendor
                                    last edited by

                                    Found a good screenshot example over here - check all tools with HP prefix 🙂

                                    In regards to recovery partitions, the only problem I see – it could keep some OEM licenses (laptops usually do). Also this might be related to warranty, I’ve seen several legal where repartitioning or killing this partition automatically cancels your warranty.

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                                      scottalanmiller @gjacobse
                                      last edited by

                                      @gjacobse said:

                                      Before the newest (retail) sales model.. I would always toast and load my computers. But that was when you had a CD / DVD to work from to install the OEM OS.

                                      Now that they are moving more and more to not including any type of media,.. you still end up with the bloatware on a 'new install' because it's part of the recovery system.

                                      That's WHY they've done that. Makes it harder for people to remove without reimaging rights.

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                                        angrydok Vendor @Carnival Boy
                                        last edited by

                                        @Carnival-Boy definitely 🙂

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                                          scottalanmiller @Carnival Boy
                                          last edited by

                                          @Carnival-Boy said:

                                          @scottalanmiller said:

                                          Bloatware would be, to me, anything that is installed that is not needed or desired

                                          So would you include IE as bloatware?

                                          IE is an integral part of the OS. The OS doesn't work without it. That would be a really silly thing to see as bloatware or put on par with Minesweeper.

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                                            Dashrender @Carnival Boy
                                            last edited by

                                            @Carnival-Boy said:

                                            I don't know if there is value in HP's utilities. I install their Proliant utilities on servers. I even go out of my way to download HP's version of ESXi rather than the vanilla version. Why should I feel any different about their desktop utilities? What's the difference?

                                            There's a huge difference.

                                            The HP version of ESXi includes all of the hardware drivers for the HP hardware that the normal ESXi version doesn't have. You'd have to install those drivers manually if you didn't do that. But beyond that there is nothing special about the HP version.

                                            As for the those HP utilities that come pre installed on a desktop/laptop, not only do they include the drivers, they also often include the bloatware that was originally included on the system and tries to put it back after you uninstall when you run the next update cycle.

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