Crapware

What are the ways that I can get rid of this stuff without re-installing windows or formatting the system. If there is no way, what are the essential items that I should delete.

 

You just have to pick and choose in the Add/Remove Programs menu. You are much better off just formatting the computer.

 

I ordered it with Office Home and Student, won't that be wiped away, it is a program that I vitally need.

 

If you paid for it, they should have sent it to you on CD as well. You'd just reinstall it.

 

Get PC Decrapifier. It's been designed to remove Dell's bloatware.

Also run CCleaner.

Those two will clear up most of the stuff... though a format would be the ideal solution.

 

The only thing you will need is the Powerdvd if you want to continue watching dvds on you notebook. You may also want the Dell's Media Experience/MediaDirect2.0/3.0 cd as well for the MediaDirect button. Call/chat/e-mail dell for the disc. Microsoft Office's cd should have been included with your purchased.

 

I must of reclaimed 15-20% of my hard drive doing a re-format i highly recommend it. before the re-format i had like 89-95 gigs free space on a 160 gig HDD, after a re-format and re-install of all my apps and music i have 118 gigs free now. and thats with installing more programs that weren't on there before.

 

This is gonna sound stupid, but how do you reformat?

 

If You have a plain XP install CD, after selecting the install partition there are options to either format or quick format the partition/drive.
Alternatively You can download and burn a third-party "Boot CD", which contains the neccessary tools. One such Boot CD compliation is " Ultimate Boot CD".

 

Go to add/delete programs and delete whatever programs you don't want.

 

Dell format guide