Re: Getting Rid of Dell Bloatware.
- From: "User N" <usern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 1 May 2006 03:25:39 -0400
"Clark Martin" <hpcm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:VOd5g.257$VV2.22468@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Much has been said in this group about getting rid of the unwanted programs
that come with Dell computers. I apologize if this issue has already been
covered. You should be able to remove unwanted programs by using the
Add/Remove feature in the Control Panel, but I've heard that sometimes there
are program bits still left in the Registry or in other places.
It is extremely common... arguably the norm... for things to be left behind.
Some residue is easy to find, some is hard to find, some is exceptionally
hard to find, particularly if you don't have a trace of the installation process
or a clean similar system for reference. Removing everything by hand can
be a challenge for experienced Windows programmers much less average
users. Thus the problem.
I found the following written in a user review describing a Dell E1505. Do
the instructions shown here make sense to you?
There are three sources for start up programs: the Startup menu, the Windows
registry, and the services.
There are many launch points, or places where a program can hook into Windows
so that it is run at startup and/or in response to a user action [possibly long] after
Windows starts up. Generally speaking the hooks are a) subkeys added under
specific registry keys, b) files added to specific directories, and c) lines added to
specific config/startup files. The details depend on which version of Windows
you are using, but regardless, this person's instructions fail to mention many of
them.
1) Click on the Programs, and then click on the Startup. Right click on item
and then Delete.
Via Programs->Startup you can delete files which are located in the User's
Startup folder and, IIRC, the All Users' Startup folder.
2) Click on Run, type in regedit, and then enter. This will bring up the
Registry Editor. Browse into the location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run,
rename the Run key into something like RunCrap.
You don't want to rename or delete the HKLM\...\Run key. The name/data
pairs visible under that key correspond to items which are run when a user logs
in. You'd want to identify which pair or pairs are related to the software you
don't want run and delete just those.
3) Go to Settings, then Control Panel, then Add/Remove programs. Remove all
of the junk or trial version software such as AOL, McAFee, ....
If you intend to uninstall the software, normally you would perform the
uninstall *first* and allow the uninstaller to do most (hopefully all) of the
work of removing the startup and/or other hooks. In those cases where
a subkey pair points to a file that no longer exists on the computer, the
dangling registry key will stand out when running registry/startup cleaners.
Since there are so many locations which can be hooked and such care
has to be taken when deleting things by hand, it is good to do some
reading on the subject (google for windows startup locations and similar
phrases) and then take advantage of a helpfull utility. SysInternals's
autoruns is one program that comes to mind. I'm sure there are other
reputable ones.
.
- References:
- Getting Rid of Dell Bloatware.
- From: Clark Martin
- Getting Rid of Dell Bloatware.
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