Fighting Bloatware

My new Asus laptop came with a ton of junk pre-installed, and even Windows 8.1 includes some.

The first thing I do is remove all games.  Not that I don't like playing occasionally, but many pre-installed games come with stuff you do not want on your computer.  The simplest thing to do is to delete them all, then selectively install the individual game apps you like.

Next, install the full SysInternals Suite.  Run AutoRuns, select the Everything tab, and take a look at what your system is firing at boot and/or login.  Uncheck the obviously bloatful programs, then do web searches on the ones that look suspicious.  Now, this won't remove the offending program from disk, but it will keep it from running at startup or login.

Sometimes a useful package installs bloatware: Uninstalling the entire package may not be practical, but the above procedure keeps it's junkware from running, which means only a bit of disk space is being wasted.