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Removing stock software from HP

stoney

Part of the unwashed, middle-American horde
Jul 26, 2006
21,519
7,068
Colorado
I just installed CS6 on Wifey's desktop, so I'm trying to get rid of some of the HP junk that comes pre-installed. I don't know what most of the HP specific programs are, so I'm not sure what to delete. Any help would be appreciated.

Major installed programs:
Office
Itunes
Adobe CS6
Adobe CS3 (can I safely uninstall this with CS6 now?)
Pandora
Norton

Just a base so you know what I'm trying to save.

The snapshot from my uninstall programs window is below.






Any help would be appreciated.
 

canadmos

Cake Tease
May 29, 2011
20,190
19,156
Canaderp
If it were me, I'd start fresh with a new installation of Windows. From my experience in the past it has been hard to completely get rid of some of that stuff. Even if you uninstall certain things, folders, files and even processes will get left behind adding to the "clutter".

And also, Norton was always a resource hog on any computer that I've used that has had it installed.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
Everything with a publisher of CyberLink, Hewlett Packard, Symantec, WildTangent, RoxioNow, Zinio... I'd probably start there.
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,565
24,183
media blackout
second the fresh install. that is, assuming they even gave you a full copy of winderps on a cd, which i know some companies aren't doing anymore - you only get a "repair/recovery" cd.
 

stoney

Part of the unwashed, middle-American horde
Jul 26, 2006
21,519
7,068
Colorado
I didn't get the full cd, which is quite annoying. I'll start with BV's lead and come back once I've knocked that out. I am intending to keep the Norton though, as this is one of the business computers, and I can't risk losing anything to virus.
 

stoney

Part of the unwashed, middle-American horde
Jul 26, 2006
21,519
7,068
Colorado
Get rid of norton, and download Microsoft Security Essentials. It is free.
I am just coming back to this now. I cleaned out just about everything that is HP, which gave me a GB back. I still have Norton 360, as I just bought it. I've been looking at the difference between the two, and only see the firewall as the major option. I'm running a firewall currently, so I'm hessitant to get rid of it. Thoughts on that piece?
 

syadasti

i heart mac
Apr 15, 2002
12,690
290
VT
Get rid of norton, and download Microsoft Security Essentials. It is free.
MSE sucks, its failed security testing twice so far. Avast and AVG are better free options:

http://www.techspot.com/news/51367-microsoft-security-essentials-fails-av-test-certification-again.html

Microsoft Security Essentials has once again failed to make the grade for certification at AV-Test, an independent but non-required honor that most anti-virus programs enjoy. By extension, Windows 8's built-in virus protection, Windows Defender, likely suffers the same shortcomings as it is essentially a rebadged version of MSSE. The anti-virus utility marked its first failure for Sept/Oct.
http://www.inquisitr.com/422680/microsoft-security-essentials-fails-tests-loses-antivirus-certificate/

Fortunately for those using Windows-based computers on a small budget, there are plenty of other free antivirus options that are good. Avast scored 14 points to edge out competitors AVG (12.5 points) and Avira (12 points). Bitdefender is not free but it’s the reigning champion, scoring a knockout with with an almost perfect score of 17 points
Windows has a firewall built-in and its likely you are behind a consumer NAT router. Malewarebytes and CC cleaner are good free utilities too. After uninstalling all that crap you should run CC cleaner.
 
Last edited:

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
I am just coming back to this now. I cleaned out just about everything that is HP, which gave me a GB back. I still have Norton 360, as I just bought it. I've been looking at the difference between the two, and only see the firewall as the major option. I'm running a firewall currently, so I'm hessitant to get rid of it. Thoughts on that piece?
If you have a router of any kind (i.e. you aren't plugging directly into your cable or DSL modem), a firewall is almost useless for consumers.

See, you've got one public IP address, and a bunch of private IP addresses on the other side of the router. So your router uses network address translation (NAT) to let all of your private IP addresses use the one public address. Consequently, when a hacker gets your IP address and tries to attack it, he's hitting a router and not a computer. Since the router doesn't know what computer he's trying to get to, it just drops the traffic.
 

stoney

Part of the unwashed, middle-American horde
Jul 26, 2006
21,519
7,068
Colorado
If you have a router of any kind (i.e. you aren't plugging directly into your cable or DSL modem), a firewall is almost useless for consumers.

See, you've got one public IP address, and a bunch of private IP addresses on the other side of the router. So your router uses network address translation (NAT) to let all of your private IP addresses use the one public address. Consequently, when a hacker gets your IP address and tries to attack it, he's hitting a router and not a computer. Since the router doesn't know what computer he's trying to get to, it just drops the traffic.
Huh... you learn something new every day.