How to Remove Pre-Installed Software from Your Computer

By Guest Author Amy Nutt

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When you purchase a new computer, it usually comes with an operating system already installed (Windows on a PC, for example). However, you are likely to find that your new toy also comes with a variety of pre-installed software that you may or may not want. If you aren`t interested in the programs that are already on your new computer when it comes home, then you will want to get rid of them before you get started using your computer.

Why Your Computer Has This Software One of the ways that computer companies earn more money is by selling "ad" space to software companies on new computers, installing their software trials or demos on new computers. This can be quite annoying to the user since these programs may use up to a quarter of the hard drive space before you even installed a thing!

Identify the Software You Want to Remove This software is often hidden, so finding it requires some diligent searching unless you know exactly where to look. To start, take a look at what is already on your computer. You can do this by clicking on the Start menu, then on Programs. This will show you a list of the programs that you have running on your computer. You will see many programs you do not recognize, but this does not mean you should eliminate them. Often, programs have odd names but can be very useful. If in doubt, go ahead and open the program to see if it`s something that you want to use or not, otherwise you might accidentally delete something that really was useful to you.

Find and Eliminate There are two ways to remove pre-installed software, the automatic method or the manual method. If you just can`t be bothered to search out all those pesky extras, then you can download a program that will do this for you. These programs are usually available for free and will seek out and eliminate any unwanted software.

The manual method is a little more difficult. First, go to My PC, and then click on Remove Programs. Here you can see all the programs that are "officially" installed and remove them with the click of a button. Unfortunately, they won`t all be in there, because some programs are hidden.

To find the hidden programs, take a look at what is installed again, but do so by going back to the Start menu and Programs. Then you can do a search in My PC for archives under that name and delete them by hand. This takes time, particularly if you have a lot of pre-installed software, but if you prefer to know just what you`re getting rid of, this is a good method.

Don`t just live with the demos and trials that pop up after a few days telling you to buy the full version. If you aren't using it, get rid of it. You`ll free up hard drive space and make using your computer a lot more pleasant. Supplier of the largest inventory of cheap software online and cheap office software including all the most popular programs from Microsoft, cheap Adobe software and more.

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