Which Dell loaded junk to delete?

I will be ordering a new Dell Inspiron 6000 this week and know it will come loaded with a lot of unwanted junk. My current 7 year old sony came that way and when I looked at "Programs" to delete some of the junk.....I really didn't know what was junk and what was not. I was afraid to mess with it! As you can tell I am not a PC guru and any help would be appreciated.

 

I'd do a full reformat, but you can always pick out the programs via Control Panel

 

A format will not fix the problem. Those programs are included in the recovery CD/partition. I would suggest looking in your Add/Remove window and writing down all the programs you see with the exception of any that say Windows Update or Windows Hotfix. Those should be obvious keepers.

After you taken note of what you have installed on your system. Look at your Start > All programs menu, what programs do you see that you don't think you need? If you're in question about any program, just do a google search. Really this isn't Computer Guru stuff, this is simply knowing what crapware is vs actual software you'll be using. This is as far as I would go in offering help. I don't know your skill level and I don't want to recomend something that's beyond your ability only to have you mess up your computer even worse.

Dell also has a message board of their own, I'm sure they'll gladly offer you additonal help. Just try not to get swamped by the "How do I Email" and "My Cup Holder Thingy Broke" posts; after all were talking about Dell users here.

 

actually full format will solve the problem. If you use the burn utility under start-->programs, you can create a disk that will give you a clean OS or if you ordered a backup CD from Dell, this will also give you a clean system.

If you use the recovery partition, then no...you will still have the junk software.

Add/remove will still leave a ton of junk behind including registery keys, folders, etc..

If you want to reformat and need help, I'm am in the middle of making a post about it. It should be up sometime today.

 

I agree that a reformat will do the trick. I have bought 2 Dells and with each of them, the first thing I do is reformat the computer. If you just install the OS and then the necessary drivers for sound and video and what not you should be free of all that garbage that Dell gives you. What you might also want to do before hand is go online and download the manufacturers version of the drivers and burn them onto a CD, that way you are sure not to get any of Dell's quirky add-ons.

 

another vote for reformat

 

The first thing I did was reformat. But before I did this, I made sure to visit dell's website, under support, and downloaded the necessary drivers that I would need to connect to the internet in order to download the rest of the drivers. If you choose this path, make sure you download the chipset drivers, network card drivers (for wireless connections), and the 10/100 drivers for your ethernet connection (if it's wired). Once you have your pc up and running with internet connection, you can proceed to complete your dell drivers installation. In my case, during the reformatting phase, I made sure to delete Dell's partition.

 

if you decide to reformat, here is a detailed guide
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=22982