FIX SOFTWARE THAT’S KILLING YOUR PC
6 BUILT-IN BLOATWARE Pre-installed programs kill PCS at birth
Even a brand new PC is slower and less stable than it could be, thanks to the commercial bloatware installed by its manufacturer.
This rubbish eats up hard-drive space before your PC even leaves the shop. It feels like fraud. You pay for a 1TB hard drive and only get 700GB of usable space (you’ve probably noticed similar problems with new tablets and phones). Then, of course, the bloatware starts wasting processor power when you switch it on.
Pre-installed junk can even be dangerous. The Superfish adware bundled in Lenovo laptops earlier this year was actually spyware (see Named & Shamed, Issue 444). Lenovo was forced to create a Superfish Removal Tool ( www.snipca.com/17410) and the business faces a struggle to win back customers’ loyalty.
Decrapify your PC
Free tool PC Decrapifier ( www.snipca.com/17405) is designed to ditch junk that comes pre-installed on PCS and laptops. It works on older PCS too, though – and if your PC isn’t new, it’ll invite you to create a system restore point before wiping out any software.
Our antivirus (Kaspersky) didn’t seem fond of Decrapifier, which may be testament to Decrapifier’s power. We can confirm the tool is safe, so tell your antivirus to ‘trust’ it when prompted.
Run Decrapifier, click Analyze and wait for the lists to populate. Innocuous programs appear under Everything Else; dodgy programs appear under Questionable or Recommended (recommended to remove, that is). Tick what you want to ditch and click Remove Selected. They’ll be uninstalled in one go.