Removing Junk from Laptop

Professor Snugglesworth

Should be my last laptop-related thread for a while (probably).

Basically, I want to get rid of all the advertising/trial junk that was included in my laptop. I see shortcuts to Ebay, NetZero (that shit's still around?) and so forth. Control Panel helps with some of the bigger trial junk (Norton), but I wanted to know the easiest and surest way to completely erase this crap and free up my 250gb HDD space.

Erandus

Professor Snugglesworth wrote: »

but I wanted to know the easiest and surest way to completely erase this crap and free up my 250gb HDD space.

Format the hard drive and install a fresh copy of Windows, from a regular windows CD and not a recovery CD.

If that's not much of an option for you, use Add/Remove programs to uninstall absolutely everything you don't want. Then use WinDirStat for a simple graphical representation of what's using up your HDD, and start deleting. DISCLAIMER: Know what you're deleting before you remove it, or don't remove it. You can obviously fuck up your laptop by deleting essential files.

There's not really any such thing as a program that will "delete all the shit you don't need", so you'll have to do a lot of the removal yourself.

Professor Snugglesworth

I'll use the app. I've added too many programs and customizations that a clean format would be a waste at this point.

Erandus

I would also suggest that after you uninstall tons and tons of stuff, defrag your harddrive and run CCleaner. Even the cleanest uninstall almost always leaves some dead registry keys and useless files behind, and CCleaner helps to clear some of those up.

firewaterword

I like CCleaner (formerly Crap Cleaner) to get rid of... well... crap. It's add/remove tool is way faster than Windows', and you can use it to delete program entries as well. That comes in handy when you can't get the uninstaller to run and have resorted to just deleting files.

Erandus

Too slow, old man.

firewaterword

Clearly. Now git off'a ma lawn, sonny. Can't be havin' ya distractin' me while Matlock's on.

Professor Snugglesworth

Does CC Cleaner also check for anything that might've snuck its way to the System 32 folder, under Windows?

Trinis

This won't help with your hard drive space, but it will help with your ram. Start > run > msconfig. Click the startup tab. Uncheck anything you know you don't want, and look up anything you're not sure about.

Richard M. Nixon

Revo Uninstaller is also quite good as an uninstaller. It'll clear out old registry entries and wipe out pretty much all the leftover files. I don't know if CCleaner does this as well or not but I use Revo and have been very happy with it.

Henroid

Erandus wrote: »

I would also suggest that after you uninstall tons and tons of stuff, defrag your harddrive and run CCleaner. Even the cleanest uninstall almost always leaves some dead registry keys and useless files behind, and CCleaner helps to clear some of those up.

I'm keeping this link around for my upcoming laptop purchase.