So, since I had to remove quite a bunch of bloatware yesterday from an old notebook of a family member and encountered my “favourite” bloatware the Norton Trial version again (that thing always makes a ruckus).
And that got me thinking - what is your “favourite” bloatware that you’re “loving” to pieces and will be happy to not see on your V 
Whenever I get a computer (or, more often, someone else gets a computer and asks me to “set it up”), the first step is always reinstalling fresh Windows from original install medium. So I don’t really care about bloatware, even if there’s just one little app preinstalled, I will still reinstall Windows because:
I remember several years ago, on a Notebook… it was full with software from Cyberlink, just horrible… Since than I’ve build every desktop PC on my own with clean Windows
The realtek audio manager.
I recently have been having some problem with the on-board audio on my desktop. Even though in the end the problem was not actually on the audio driver/software (it is actually a buggy driver of the PCIe wifi adapter, again, realtek chipset…), the time I spent on the realtek audio manager gets me so fed up with it…
But that’s not bloatware, as it’s a part of their driver… I think we need to define “bloatware” more clearly
I’m pretty sure they can just provide the driver without the manager…They install stuff that I didn’t ask for on my computer, i think that classified that as a bloatware…
If you install it with either a) the right-click on .inf method, or b) via “Have Disk…” on the Device Manager or c) from Windows Update, it will simply install the necessary driver without all the mumbo jumbo, and the audio will still work.
So I agree, it technically still counts as bloatware in my book, same with Nvidia’s GeForce Experience, AMD’s Raptr, etc.
My god, Raptor. I’m 100% with Patrick on this one. Yikes. Nvidia’s isn’t so bad because it is NOT intrusive, but Raptor always wants to pop-up with some crap. I’ve JUST about bought a cheap Nvidia card to go into our Media PC because of the AMD card in there and Raptor, but it’s an “older” PC that I don’t really want to spend money on.
I’ve liked ATI (now AMD) for a while, but I can’t STAND their software. That alone pushed me into nVidia’s camp.
+1 here.
May be better now since I haven’t used them for a while but the software made me stop using AMD/ATI.
Nope, that’s hard-baked into their driver and how else would you configure it?
Oh jeez. Probably the 1000 utterly useless Toshiba things on my wife’s laptop. She refuses to remove them in case they are important. Even the one to register it for a warranty, even though it is several years out of warranty.
There’s so many to choose from… but if I have to choose one, it would be McAfee Anti-Virus. That thing is annoying af. Just pops up when you first boot.
Edit: everytime a friend or family member of mine bought a laptop that doesn’t have Signature Edition or isn’t a Surface, I always borrow it from them for a day or two to reinstall Windows, just the way @pauliunas does it.
I have to say that as I’ve gotten an AMD GPU since Mid 2013 or so - their software has improved quite a bit.
They got rid of their old ControlCenter and now have Crimson which is faster & sleeker looking and recently ditched Raptr which made me happy as hell as I agree that Raptr was the most annoying thing you “got for free” with your drivers.
“equalizer”? You sure we’re talking about the same thing? 
#1 - Norton Malware. . . .er, I mean “Antivirus” - had this installed on my family’s first ever desktop computer, and it couldn’t be removed! Tried Windows uninstaller, tried Norton uninstall tool (that’s for when nothing else works). IT DIDN’T COME OFF! Eventually the hard drive in this computer died, so we ended up getting the hard drive replaced and a fresh install of Windows XP. (This was back around 2008, before I knew much of anything about computers.)
#2 Avast Malware (Antivirus) - it just simply doesn’t work
#3 MacAfee - not as bad, it actually does work, and removes itself when asked, but last time I used it, the interface was quite clunky.
#4 Candy Crush - useless waste of time game that Microsoft decided (in their “infinite wisdom”) to include on every install of Windows 10
As you can see, I have had bad experiences with Antivirus products. I currently just stick with Windows Defender, as it seems to work “good enough” and I generally stay away from questionable websites.
Don’t know how I did that - I didn’t mean for it to be in large letters, maybe that’s what happens using a #number sign??
I did uncheck it - but when it’s time for a driver update and people I know made those they sure as hell did not uncheck it all the time - even I did not always see the option to uncheck it back then.
So I’m pretty glad that it’s gone now
Yup, # creates a header, ## a smaller header and so on. You should just use 1. 2. 3. instead of #1 #2 #3 
Fixed it for you. Let’s get back on topic, guys!