Windows 7: How to completely remove preinstalled software?

Office Starter can be distinguished from a mile away. Reason? Its ad supported. Open any Office app say Word- you'll see an ad at the bottom right portion of the screen. Office starter also creates a tell tale Q drive on the hard disk which is a virtual drive used by its click to run tech. You'll also see several virtualization services in the services console.

If you dont have this, you likely have a trial version of Office 2010. In Office 2010, you can check the activation status by clicking Help on the File menu. On the right side of the dialog box, under the Microsoft Office logo, you will see a message that says, "Product activated" or "Product requires activation."

Excellent - thanks Bill, thats a much easier method.

Okay, I clicked Start\All Programs\then the msoft office... I see 3 choices...
1. I already purchased office 2010
2. Go online to purchase office 2010
3. Use office starter 2010

You're saying this will create an extra "Q" drive, it will run ads all the time, it doesn't sound like too good of an app to run. Also it will use a lot of room on my laptop hard drive which is only 640 gb to begin with. Perhaps I could try the Starter and then delete if I find I don't need it.

I have a Sony Vaio I bought very recently to complement my desktop and removed Norton, MS Office 2010 trial and various other bloatware using Microsoft's uninstaller with no problems whatsoever.

Actually its not as bad as it sounds. I used it for a while cos it came preinstalled, then reverted to Office 2007. But if you have to shell out money for an Office license and dont need to do anything exotic, Starter does pretty well. It has only Word and Excel, so if you need to make ppt presentations, this is not for you.

The ads are not obtrusive, the Q drive is a virtual drive, not a real one (it doesnt take up hard disk space). For viewing ppt, you can download the free ppt viewer from MS.

Yes, I understand the Q drive would be a virtual drive but the MSoft office program itself will use a lot of space for all the nonsense it will install. I always used office up until about 4 years ago when I realized I really didn't need it because Wordpad was sufficient for my needs. I do have the ppt viewer so really no need for office I guess but we'll see.

I ran the norton removal tool on my new laptop and it only took a minute. At first glace, the norton internet security appears to be gone but I will do a thorough search of my system plus the registry to be sure. Now I guess I need to get the Nero removal tool as trying to remove that through Programs and Features on windows7 did not fully remove it. But that feature does that commonly (never fully uninstalls something).

Thanks to everyone for ALL your responses.
Sher