Acer bloatware VS The perfect recovery point

Hello fellow laptopers

I bought an Acer Aspire 4520 some time ago, and I`m quite pleased with it thus far. However, as most of you know, Acer comes with quite a bit of bloatware. I did not get a Windows Vista DVD with this machine, and in Acer eRecovery Management there is no option that suits my needs. This is the case:

I am allergic to bloatware. I cant stand having useless processes running and so forth. I really want to make a perfect recovery point, either with Acer eRecovery or with Vistas built in recovery tool. I dont want to "reset the system to retail standard" or whatever, because in that case all the bloatware is installed along with it.

Is there any way to go about this? I want a clean lean Vista, and not Vista + lots of bloatware. I know i kind of paid for Vista indirectly when i Bought this laptop, so in theory and in the name of fairness it should be possible...

Thanks in advance for all help!

 

Uninstall all the bloatwares that you don't want and back up the entire system with eRecovery.

 

Thank you I already tried that, but its still not perfect.

For example: one or more of the Acer-programs is causing the menu-line in windows to be non-removable. Seriously, I`ve tried everything. Its pretty annoying quite frankly.
Here is a look:



(I will not be able to reply until 10 hours from now, as it is midnight here )

 

What r we looking at? Anyway, have you tried going through the registry and manually removing anything related to Acer? You could borrow someones Vista OEM and install that. Then add all the necessary drivers...someone will point you in the direction of their European ftp site.

 

If I'm not mistaken that bar you're pointing at is part of Vista itself. I'm not sure how you can remove it.

 

The bar you are pointing at can be hidden by pressing the ALT key.

 

Nice info thanks.

 

Ok nevermind the menubar-thing, it was just meant as an example for showing that Vista is not as lean and clean as it otherwise would have been, without all the Acer programs.

However, for those of you who are interested, i will describe the situation in this section: When my laptop came out of the box, the menu-line had 3 additional buttons on it. That is 3 Acer-programs - related buttons, 3. party buttons, none of which is found in an orignal, clean Vista. But even after I uninstalled all Acer-programs (except for eRecovery Management), the menu-line would not hide (Even though all 3 acer-related buttons disappeared). I`ve tried the ALT-key, Ive tried Control Panel -> Folder Options -> uncheck "always show menuline", Ive tried them all. As I said, just an example.

Yes thats a good idea, I will see if i can find anybody that has the OEM version.

I have never tried messing around with the registry before. This is very interesting to me indeed. How do i go about this business? Sorry for the noobishness (and the rusty english too)

 

Keep in mind that messing with the registry can be a dangerous thing, back up your system first. And always try to do an uninstall before resorting to deleting entries from the registry. If removing software, I start by looking under Current User and Local Machine then under Software to find entries for Acer. Check them out and if you don't like what's there, delete it. Then run a search through the registry on "acer" and continue deleting. Then go out to the Program Files and look for Acer folders and kill'm. Then run a Windows Search on acer and keep going. Hopefully, you won't damage anything you don't intend to kill off. At some point, I'll probably do the same thing, but so far, none of it annoys me enough to bother (mostly using it for web browsing).

 

Thank you for that very insightful post! Thats exactly the kind of know-how i was in need of. I`ve been trying to play around a bit with these tips you gave me, without any luck so far. I will let you guys know if I am able to succeed.

Oh and by the way, I tried the Vista buildt in recovery tool, and it is far superior to eRecovery IMO. But i will keep eRecovery just in case i some day may have to reset C: to "retail standard". Again, thanks for all your help so far.