6 ms·

Step one, back in the day when computers shipped with cd drives and a windows cd, was to format c:, and then re-install windows from scratch to eliminate the cr

Step one, back in the day when computers shipped with cd drives and a windows cd, was to format c:, and then re-install windows from scratch to eliminate the crap ware. I haven't used windows in many years. I assume that's still the way to go.

gcatalfamo 6y ago
If you think the average user understands a single word of what you just said, you’re in for a rude awakening. Not meant to diss you the slightest.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bmurphy1976 6y ago
Download ISO, burn to USB, boot from USB and install is the modern equivalent.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Doing this for MacOS is surprising hard. Fortunately crapware isn’t a thing, although a few of the built in apps seem to try and drive me demented (looking at you Siri, Stock, Music, auto update).
  - pronoiac 6y ago
    I've bookmarked directions for it. For the admittedly out-of-date High Sierra, for instance: https://www.howtogeek.com/285922/how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-installer-for-macos-sierra/ https://www.howtogeek.com/285922/how-to-create-a-bootable-us...
  - bhj 6y ago
    It’s quite easy and well-documented: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
    - Lammy 6y ago
      > Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is connected to the internet and compatible with the version of macOS you're installing. Why does it have to be connected to the Internet? The point of using a USB installer is for it to work offline.
      - RandallBrown 6y ago
        > A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the internet, but it does require an internet connection to get firmware and other information specific to the Mac model.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      I thought you had given me a way for something that has troubled me repeatedly. Alas no. On trying to download Mojave from Catalina I get "Update not found. The requested version of macOS is not available." The system seems to try and be clever and uses software updater, and software updater says I can't have that version. So how do you get Mojave? Edit: On further testing, maybe this is a regional issue? I'm not in the US and the link is to the US app Store. This makes the App Store app unhappy ("Cannot connect to app store"). Changing the URL to my region doesn't help. Same issue for all downloads that predate my current version (Catalina). El Cap and Big Sur download nicely.
  - rzimmerman 6y ago
    You can (on most MacBooks at least) restart in recovery mode and do a partition wipe + fresh install with a WiFi connection.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    The presence of bundled apps which I don't use realy bother me, and always have. On old versions of macOS, I wiped all of them out with a post-installation script. sudo -rm did the trick, and never broke anything else. (They sometimes came back after major updates, but I had a "post-upgrade" script for that.) Big Sur makes this incredibly painful though, with its root filesystem stuff. Not sure what I'll do if I ever need to use that version. It may or may not be worth it to modify the snapshot...
nawgz 6y ago
Oh no, that's not the way to go at all. Windows itself is the crapware. Integrated ads in the windows menu, telemetry beyond Facebook's wildest dreams, a dumb search that goes to the internet for things that are on your machine... Fortunately it is great for gaming and I have macOS for everything else.
pickle-wizard 6y ago
Back in the early 2000s I worked in a small Mom and Pop computer store. One of big selling points was that our custom built PCs were not full of the crud you got from the big OEMs. If you didn't buy it, we didn't install it.
rodgerd 6y ago
Microsoft now have branding around "hardware that ships with vanilla Windows" to try and mitigate the problem; likewise you can download a USB key image and use it to reset to a blank Windows install. This sort of crapware feeds off the folks who aren't aware of the options, or comfortable performing them.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Microsoft's branding was called "Signature Edition" and seems to have been quietly killed with the shutdown of retail Microsoft Stores.
tedunangst 6y ago
This works until you plug in a Razer mouse. Then Windows will autodownload and run the Synapse installer. You can exit, and the mouse works fine (it's just USB), but the installer will run again after every boot.
- glenneroo 6y ago
  I'm fairly sure the Synapse software is also cloud-based and requires a login to even use.
  - encom 6y ago
    And it's Electron-based. I bought a Razor mouse a year ago (a mistake I won't repeat), and wanted to disable the pointless built-in LEDs. Can't do that without Synapse, and the settings are not retained when you exit the program. So you must keep it running at all times, or you'll be forced to have circus lights on your desk. I disassembled the mouse and tore out the LEDs. So much for the "just turn it off"-crowd that appears whenever I complain about RGB-infested hardware. Also, Razer hid the screws under the plastic feet of the mouse, so now they're all wonky since I had to remove them to take the mouse apart. Don't buy Razer.
    - userbinator 6y ago
      Also, Razer hid the screws under the plastic feet of the mouse, so now they're all wonky since I had to remove them to take the mouse apart. Most if not all mouses are designed like that. You can even buy sheets of replacement mouse feet, with varying levels of friction, if you find the current ones too slippery or sticky.
      - efreak 6y ago
        Or just use electrical tape. It's not the same, but it works
    - 05 6y ago
      Run shitware in a VM, capture USB HID traffic, write an app to replay the same packets using libusb, enjoy /s
GlennS 6y ago
I still do it. I've no use for Dell's live support app and whatever else they ship. The difference now is that you also have to: 1. Uninstall Candy Crush and similar. 2. Disable Cortana. 3. Disable ads and internet search for your Start button. 4. Click through several small greyed out buttons to have a local account instead of cloud account. 5. Do some of these things again whenever an update nukes part of your settings. As a bonus, they still haven't fixed the decades old thing in file manager where all your directories default to displaying in stupid mode. In short: pay for the professional version of Windows or prepare to be annoyed.
- bitexploder 6y ago
  Win Pro still annoys me. And they have telemetry baked deep into the OS. Pass. Same for macOS these days. Linux is quickly becoming the only viable privacy preserving OS.
- lupire 6y ago
  Seems fair. If you want to pay bargain basement prices, you get bargain basement junk.
- shscs911 6y ago
  Is there any way to disable web search in Start Menu without Registry hack?

gcatalfamo 6y ago

If you think the average user understands a single word of what you just said, you’re in for a rude awakening. Not meant to diss you the slightest.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bmurphy1976 6y ago

Download ISO, burn to USB, boot from USB and install is the modern equivalent.

lostlogin 6y ago
Doing this for MacOS is surprising hard. Fortunately crapware isn’t a thing, although a few of the built in apps seem to try and drive me demented (looking at you Siri, Stock, Music, auto update).
- pronoiac 6y ago
  I've bookmarked directions for it. For the admittedly out-of-date High Sierra, for instance: https://www.howtogeek.com/285922/how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-installer-for-macos-sierra/ https://www.howtogeek.com/285922/how-to-create-a-bootable-us...
- bhj 6y ago
  It’s quite easy and well-documented: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
  - Lammy 6y ago
    > Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is connected to the internet and compatible with the version of macOS you're installing. Why does it have to be connected to the Internet? The point of using a USB installer is for it to work offline.
    - RandallBrown 6y ago
      > A bootable installer doesn't download macOS from the internet, but it does require an internet connection to get firmware and other information specific to the Mac model.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    I thought you had given me a way for something that has troubled me repeatedly. Alas no. On trying to download Mojave from Catalina I get "Update not found. The requested version of macOS is not available." The system seems to try and be clever and uses software updater, and software updater says I can't have that version. So how do you get Mojave? Edit: On further testing, maybe this is a regional issue? I'm not in the US and the link is to the US app Store. This makes the App Store app unhappy ("Cannot connect to app store"). Changing the URL to my region doesn't help. Same issue for all downloads that predate my current version (Catalina). El Cap and Big Sur download nicely.
- rzimmerman 6y ago
  You can (on most MacBooks at least) restart in recovery mode and do a partition wipe + fresh install with a WiFi connection.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  The presence of bundled apps which I don't use realy bother me, and always have. On old versions of macOS, I wiped all of them out with a post-installation script. sudo -rm did the trick, and never broke anything else. (They sometimes came back after major updates, but I had a "post-upgrade" script for that.) Big Sur makes this incredibly painful though, with its root filesystem stuff. Not sure what I'll do if I ever need to use that version. It may or may not be worth it to modify the snapshot...

nawgz 6y ago

Oh no, that's not the way to go at all. Windows itself is the crapware. Integrated ads in the windows menu, telemetry beyond Facebook's wildest dreams, a dumb search that goes to the internet for things that are on your machine... Fortunately it is great for gaming and I have macOS for everything else.

pickle-wizard 6y ago

Back in the early 2000s I worked in a small Mom and Pop computer store. One of big selling points was that our custom built PCs were not full of the crud you got from the big OEMs. If you didn't buy it, we didn't install it.

rodgerd 6y ago

Microsoft now have branding around "hardware that ships with vanilla Windows" to try and mitigate the problem; likewise you can download a USB key image and use it to reset to a blank Windows install. This sort of crapware feeds off the folks who aren't aware of the options, or comfortable performing them.

WorldMaker 6y ago
Microsoft's branding was called "Signature Edition" and seems to have been quietly killed with the shutdown of retail Microsoft Stores.

tedunangst 6y ago

This works until you plug in a Razer mouse. Then Windows will autodownload and run the Synapse installer. You can exit, and the mouse works fine (it's just USB), but the installer will run again after every boot.

glenneroo 6y ago
I'm fairly sure the Synapse software is also cloud-based and requires a login to even use.
- encom 6y ago
  And it's Electron-based. I bought a Razor mouse a year ago (a mistake I won't repeat), and wanted to disable the pointless built-in LEDs. Can't do that without Synapse, and the settings are not retained when you exit the program. So you must keep it running at all times, or you'll be forced to have circus lights on your desk. I disassembled the mouse and tore out the LEDs. So much for the "just turn it off"-crowd that appears whenever I complain about RGB-infested hardware. Also, Razer hid the screws under the plastic feet of the mouse, so now they're all wonky since I had to remove them to take the mouse apart. Don't buy Razer.
  - userbinator 6y ago
    Also, Razer hid the screws under the plastic feet of the mouse, so now they're all wonky since I had to remove them to take the mouse apart. Most if not all mouses are designed like that. You can even buy sheets of replacement mouse feet, with varying levels of friction, if you find the current ones too slippery or sticky.
    - efreak 6y ago
      Or just use electrical tape. It's not the same, but it works
  - 05 6y ago
    Run shitware in a VM, capture USB HID traffic, write an app to replay the same packets using libusb, enjoy /s

GlennS 6y ago

I still do it. I've no use for Dell's live support app and whatever else they ship. The difference now is that you also have to: 1. Uninstall Candy Crush and similar. 2. Disable Cortana. 3. Disable ads and internet search for your Start button. 4. Click through several small greyed out buttons to have a local account instead of cloud account. 5. Do some of these things again whenever an update nukes part of your settings. As a bonus, they still haven't fixed the decades old thing in file manager where all your directories default to displaying in stupid mode. In short: pay for the professional version of Windows or prepare to be annoyed.

bitexploder 6y ago
Win Pro still annoys me. And they have telemetry baked deep into the OS. Pass. Same for macOS these days. Linux is quickly becoming the only viable privacy preserving OS.
lupire 6y ago
Seems fair. If you want to pay bargain basement prices, you get bargain basement junk.
shscs911 6y ago
Is there any way to disable web search in Start Menu without Registry hack?