Removing crapware on new Sony VAIO laptop

Hi, I just bought an ex display Sony VAIO and I'm just having a play about with it, familiarising myself and ideally looking at removing any possible crapware before I create a recovery disk.

First up, do I need to use Sony's Vaio care/care rescue software to do this? I just want a bare bond machine with windows 7 on it and would rather do without all this unnecessary software.

I also had a look at uninstalling some programs manually and noticed there are some strange stuff on there relating to AxtivX. Weird stuff i wouldn't even know how to type on this keyboard in all manner of foreign languages- Windows Live Mesh AxtivX and some foreign words, there's quite a few of them and they all appear to have been installed on the same date. It's got an NVidia Geforce with Cuda graphics cards. Is this normal? I hope it's not malware..

Any tips on how I should proceed with optimising my computer, ridding it off unnecessary crapware?

Just go into control panel and remove whatever you don`t want.

That's the question, or one of them, what can I remove?

EDIT I'm getting weird news updates on this VAIO help centre thing, even though I'm not even connected to the internet yet! What's that all about? I want rid. Can I rid my computer of all vaio software and do the recovery from there?

I'd take my time deciding what you don't want since it may be irretrievable after uninstall without running factory Recovery.

What you can do now is turn off all of the crapware starting up with Windows and freeloading on its CPU cycles, RAM, Startup time and spying on you. This is the biggest piece.

All of the steps are here to Clean up factory bloatware.

Remember that at any time if you want to experience Win7 in its native lightweight instantaneous state you can clean reinstall with the Product Key on COA sticker following these steps to Clean Reinstall Windows 7 Factory OEM

Flatiron said:

What's the full make & model number of the PC?

You have a link for that PC.

How to perform a custom recovery using the VAIO Care version 6 software.

Yeah I'm kinda trying to find that out as well!

Written on the bottom-

SONY VAIO PCG-81312M

Neat machine like, picked it up for £475 ex display!

Anything Activ X should stay. Live Mesh can stay too. The Sony recovery stuff should also stay for now. nVidia and Sony collaborate on the drivers and other video elements-so leave that alone.

What is crapware: It is anything in the Add-Remove programs group that you have put on the machine or that is "Trialware" (demo's etc). There are programs to help you with uninstalling things that will NEVER be used by you and that you have purchased; example is a trial of MS Word versus your bought copy of the 2010 version. By all means remove ANY anti-virus trial and use one like AVast (it is Free) and is not a system hog. Others here will suggest additional protection software but I find that Avast and Malwarebytes (both free) are sufficient.

Technical items to think about are various processes that do NOT need to run when you start up the computer. Again, I'll let someone else guide you on this.

My laptop runs great using Windows 7. The OS was installed along with the factory drivers and nothing else. Then and only when I was satisfied that the machine was stable di I install my programs. This is how I also build systems. If you elect to do this type of setup-make sure you have every driver that the machine came with-I cannot stress this enough. Also, burn the recovery discs NOW even tho there may be "crapware" on them.

Good luck

gregrocker said:

I'd take my time deciding what you don't want since it may be irretrievable after uninstall without running factory Recovery.

What you can do now is turn off all of the crapware starting up with Windows and freeloading on its CPU cycles, RAM, Startup time and spying on you. This is the biggest piece.

All of the steps are here to Clean up factory bloatware.

Remember that at any time if you want to experience Win7 in its native lightweight instantaneous state you can clean reinstall with the Product Key on COA sticker following these steps to Clean Reinstall Windows 7 Factory OEM

Thanks, sounds like good advice and a lot to take in. Not sure where to start! I miss Mac OS X and take back everything I ever said about it!

Not sure if uninstall or block the Vaio upside down Mac-esque dock then some of the features on the body of the computer might stop working, such as skipping tracks... maybe they only work with their own software.

Is this CCleaner safe then? I mean of course I will make a system recovery disk using windows 7 and not VAIO just in case it messes something up.

Oh and sadly I don't have the installation disk for windows 7... this would make matters a whole lot easier. Maybe I can find one on ebay or something..

"STU9000 That's the question, or one of them, what can I remove?

EDIT I'm getting weird news updates on this VAIO help centre thing, even though I'm not even connected to the internet yet! What's that all about? I want rid. Can I rid my computer of all vaio software and do the recovery from there"


The first and only time that happened was shocking. The PC's WiFi was turned on out-of-the-box. Somehow, the PC and the software were able to access the internet for updates and I had barely finished with the OS settings.

Like you, I wanted to get rid of the vaio software. But a few are NECESSARY, which I found out in hindsight. In particular, a few hardware components and devices like Bluetooth require Sony software to access.

In order to know what to remove, one must know what will replace it, if any.

Security. What is there now? Trialware? When does it expire? What are the alternatives?

Media (video, pics, music) handling. Does what Sony offer better or worse than Windows? Are there alternatives to these two?

Office productivity. Trialware? Alternatives?

Start with security! Then you can go search the "foreign" stuff at your leisure.