The next best thing to a reformat

Instead of reformatting my XPS M1330 I just want to delete the bloatware through Add/Remove Programs. I've already removed most of the unwanted programs and utilities, should I remove the following items or is there any reason to keep any of these?:
Broadcom management programs
Browser address error redirector
Creative media siurce 5 (what is this?)
Dell getting started guide
Dell support guide
Dell support center
Dell touchpad
Live cam avatar creative
Live cam avatar v1.0
OutlookAddinSetup
Product Documentation Launcher

 

Uninstalling bloatware will never equal a clean format. There will always be crap and orphan files left behind.

 

what you could do is do a clean format, with either Dell's disks/utility or you own, then go ahead and reinstall drivers and only necessary files, like Khris said there will always be things left...

 

^^agreed^^, its hard to get rid of all those hidden files that sometimes don't show up unless you enable hidden folders, and go deep into the system files.

 

+1

best thing to do, setup partitions
wipe the hdd
put windows on
reinstall the drivers
put your programs on
do a backup acronis/ghost

that way you know whats on your system

 

Yep... even if you go into your C:\program files and clean out their left over files, you'll still have an altered registry and windows files. I would think the effects would be nearly negligible as far as performance goes... the biggest issue though, is stability.

That said, taking the programs out, deleting the program files and running a defrag is probably your best option, short of a full format. Dont try to mess with the registry unless you back up first, and confident you know what you're doing. Ctrl + F of the programs developer is a good starting point. Make sure you see what folder you're in, and the actual folder string name before you press the delete key though...

 

If reformatting and reinstalling Windows isn't something you want to try, give Decrapifier a shot. Follow up with CCleaner
and defrag your machine. Won't be perfect, but your computer should then run pretty well without stability problems.

 

Just out of curiosity why is everyone harping on stability? I've been using it for a week now, have installed all of the software I use and I'm having no stability problems at all. Granted a week is not very long but I think if I was going to have any stability problems regarding the OS or other software it would have happened already.

 

You will find that stability is key. Someone saying they have been a year without a BSOD is amazing. When you get everything down to a science, you are perfect. On computers, for me at least, I am constantly installing and messing and find that I BSOD fix it, and am fine untill something else conflicts. You can have a perfect system but when you update,etc... something may conflict. Take drive images and burn em to dvd when you have a good setup going that way you have a benchmark.

My 2 cents.

 

I have 3 PC's, 2 running XP and the XPS M1330 with Vista. The 2 PC's running XP are 2 and 3 years old. I have never had a BSOD on either of them.

 

I'm in the same boat as cosrocket. I haven't had a BSOD in a very long time on any of the machines I have in my house. I also buy new hardware (video cards, memory, CPUs, etc) quite often and swap parts successfully, without the need to reformat. The last time I had a BSOD was on a Windows 2000 Server machine due to a hardware fail - certainly not the fault of Windows.

 

Me too. I have two older P4 & P3 Desktop computers running XP and never gotten a BSOD yet? I think if you defrag & check for viruses regularly and get rid of junk, you'll be ok.

 

Well you guys are lucky. It seems that on both this laptop and my old laptop, BSOD in a clump at times. I have to older Dell desktops and get an occasional when the family are on them. I worked with 30 lab computers at a local cc, had one a day across the bunch when doing vmachine. Now it seems everything is going good, but never say never, always that potential. The funny thing is that I don't demand or tweak computers hard. I follow all the steps, clean em regularly, update em; I guess some just dont take kindly to my touch, well, too bad for them I also sincerely doubt that anyone with Vista has not had a BSOD, or 10...4 new local systems, all with atleast 1 if not 2 during intial install series, all simple errors to fix, but they happened.

 

Nope - no BSODs for any of my Vista machines (e1705, 1420, and custom desktop PC running D865PERL motherboard). Of course, all of my machines have "Vista ready" hardware and either stock Vista drivers or Vista drivers provided by hardware manufacturers.

Even at work, with literally hundreds of XP machines, we haven't had a software related BSOD in at least a year.