What's the best way to remove bloatware?

[yrneh12]

I just received my Inspiron 1520 and I want to increase performance by removing all of the unnecessary software and such. What's the best way to remove all of the bloatware, or what's a list?

[farelli09]

reinstalling windows vista is the BEST way to annihilate the bloatware in one shot. after you reinstall you'll have a clean slate to work on.

[Matt is Pro]

A complete reformat and reinstall on Windows. Will do the trick in giving you a clean operating system.

Look around the forum, there is a guide somewhere.

[knightingmagic]

Reformatting. Bloatware tends to un-install very haphazardly, leaving all sorts of crap that slows down your computer. It's close to impossible to remove every little piece, and then, you'd have saved time by reformatting. Borrow someone's Vista OEM disc and use your license key with it to reformat.

[Pivus]

Take a look at this guide if you don't know what you're doing: Dell E1705 / E1505 Windows Vista Clean Install - Step by Step

Its for the 1505/1705 but it should still work all the same.

[ATR90]

A clean installation of Windows Vista is the BEST way to get rid of the bloatware. However, there are many other options.

You can try uninstalling all the programs you decided are unnecessary. You may also want to run a registry cleaner to clean up the registry after uninstalling.

[yrneh12]

Take a look at this guide if you don't know what you're doing: Dell E1705 / E1505 Windows Vista Clean Install - Step by Step

Its for the 1505/1705 but it should still work all the same.

In the OP, when he talks about downloading the drivers, does he mean the nVidia (or whatever graphics card is being used) driver?

[hlcc]

I just received my Inspiron 1520 and I want to increase performance by removing all of the unnecessary software and such. What's the best way to remove all of the bloatware, or what's a list?

there are very few bloatwares on a Dell and none of them should have any significant impact on performance even if you don't remove them. the biggest impact should be the antivirus software installed,,, assuming you call that a bloatware

remove AOL, earthlink, or whatever ISP software, remove Wild Tangent, remove some or all of the Dell programs. thats should be it for bloatware, leave those digital line detect alone, they only take up 1-2mb total anyways.

[bizekiel]

I don't think a total clean install of Vista is necessary with the new inspirons. Just uninstall any trial offers (AOL, Earthlink, etc) and perhaps Google Taskbar/Desktop. Those are about all that would really be unneeded.

[D.S.]

To be honest, I think the main benefit of a clean installation over uninstalling is purely psychological - it purges the thought that there might be some little program or messy registry rubbish taking an imperceptible .5% off your performance.

In fact, uninstalling, especially with the help of something like PC Decrapifier, is perfectly effective and relatively straightforward. Even if it leaves a few stray registry settings, these - on their own - are very unlikely to impact on performance. All uninstalling fails to do is give you that psychologically certainty of a pure, clean system.