I've just been reminded just how much pre-installed junk we get on a store purchased laptop these days. I have been given by a close family friend their old laptops as they have gone Apple Mac so their old laptops were no longer required. One of them I sold pretty much straight away after making sure it was clear of any data. The other, oddly enough I have struggled to sell. Dual Core AMD 2.3 GHz chip, 4 gig of RAM, 17 inch screen. I've had people make me very silly offers on it, on a Facebook group I was offered £30 !! Anyway I digress from the main point I'm making I guess. After pretty much deciding I'm going to keep it as a backup laptop I set about looking at how much junk HP put on their. It's full of trials for this, trials for that, stuff the normal person would never look to use - not to mention the god awful inclusion of Cyberlink software. Whilst I get the fact that it helps keeps costs down etc I still don't see that there is any real need for it these days when people can get free legal alternatives which do in some cases a better job of what the paid for versions of software.
With every laptop I've ever had the first thing I always do, after confirming it works, is wipe the Windows installation (including the recovery partitions) and re-install with a fresh, clean, bloat-free version. The free software is almost always crap, almost always a version or two behind the current release, and almost always never gets used.
Since Windows 8 laptops have their Windows keys stored in UEFI. So just grab your Windows USB key/DVD media, and install it. Hell, if you want to use other serial number than the one stored in the UEFI, you have to create a PID.txt file on your install media to override the one in UEFI : https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824952.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
Thankfully the laptop in question is too old for UEFI Doing the windows 10 upgrade then going to get my code for it and then do a fresh install, bit of a PITA but meh having played with 10 and made it behave how I want it to, feeling better about the whole affair
It's been ages since I've delt with junk on an off the shelf system. I remember originally setting this laptop up for its original owner and he insisted it was kept as standard as possible in relation to its software if there was ever a problem he could claim under warranty. It wasn't long after he bought it that Comet went bust - yet he still insisted it was left as it was ! Never thought I'd actually end up with it myself - looking to upgrade the RAM in it next month - something I can't do with my own main Lenovo laptop.
Uninstalling the Lenovo crap-ware on some machines for one of our clients has turned into a very handy way of padding my timesheet recently. It can take up to 45 minutes as you have to wait through numerous uninstallers and several reboots.
After this one, I will never have another Lenovo laptop, the only reason I have kept it is because my Mrs bought it for me and she would be devastated if I sold it.
