Obligatory; It’s called linux
It honestly worked for me. I have a decade old laptop that runs better now that I installed Mint. I only use it for web browsing and occasional word processing, handles office libre just fine.
Definitely do not pay for a bloatware remove tool… That sounds like paid malware.
Also be careful with any advertisement that says it will remove bloatware. It’s likely also malware
There are some popular open source / source available scripts that are more reliable. Someone else mentioned one in this thread
The only thing I would trust for that is a clean install of the OS and then using Chris Titus’s WinUtil to remove the now standard windows bloat.
Hate that I have to run it after every Windows update now since they reactivate the crap.
This one seems pretty active: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
I try not to use anything other than canned air dusters
ooshutup10 . has a nice copiolet removal tab to.
Originally read that as “bioware”.
Piggybacking off this, is Ccleaner still any good?
I’m not going to elaborate, but no it hasn’t been something you should be installing for over 10 years
TBH its probably been close to that since I used it. Shame, It used to be a solid tool.
I am not sure about the bloatware, but this seems good even for Windows users (I use this regularly on my Linux boxes, but have not used Windows in years): https://www.bleachbit.org/features
The top tool and the only tool open source
These sorts of software tend to cause as many problems as they solve.
I don’t know if they’re still any good, but my go to suite back when I used to do this kind of thing regularly included C Cleaner, Revo Uninstaller, Malwarebytes, Hitman Pro, and a couple others that I’ve forgotten the names of. Each tool had a specific function or two that I needed for fixing various issues.
Of course, a wipe and reinstall is the more effective option, and since windows itself is bloatware these days I’d recommend some flavor of linux. Personally, I’m having a good time with Mint.
