How to easily clean your system of preinstall software

I've noticed a lot of discussion about how to do a "clean" install of vista or xp on new laptops inorder to get rid of the junk that Lenovo preinstall's on their systems. There's some pretty good guides out there but if you don't have access to the XP or Vista CD's your out of luck so I thought that this tool might be useful:

Lenovo offers a program called the "Base Software Administrator." Basically it allows you to select which programs you want installed when you do a restore from the recovery partition. This is a pretty handy feature as you can pick what you want installed, you'll be able to include all the appropriate drivers and none of the junk like AOL. This tool used to only work with XP but now they are claiming that it works with Vista too... definately good news for all of us that hate the junk they preinstall on these things.

Here's the link to download: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=TVAN-ADMIN#TBSA

And here's a link to Matt Kohut's blog entry about it: http://www.lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=63

 

I think this should be a sticky topic. It would sure save people from asking all these questions about how to do a clean install.

 

This is great! I am waiting on my T61 to be shipped but I was really concerned about all the bloatware.

Does anybody know if this is an easy thing to do? If someone could make a step-by-step guide on how the "Base Software Administrator" works that would be truly amazing. I just don't want to do something wrong and have to spend a lot of time fixing it.

 

Has anyone used this program yet? Also, as the post above me stated, can someone please make a step by step guide? Thanks.

 

I used the Base Software program with my new R61. It's easy to use, though not being a power user I did have to guess on a couple things as I went through. Also, though it seems to have successfully removed the offending software, for some odd reason the restore didn't reduce the number of processes running (~80). I'm still looking into that.

I didn't have to back up my system because I received the Windows Anytime Upgrade DVD, otherwise I would have used the ThinkVantage backup system before starting.

Once you download and run the program, click on "new" in the file menu. I understand there are two file types that the Base Software system can create, either a personalization file (which sets up the restore configuration for various things, like system time) or a manifest file. The manifest file determines which programs are installed when you use the recovery partition, so that's what I chose (it may be the default). I also picked the default directory for saving the file.

The manifest file has a couple different tabs - required programs and optional programs. The required programs include drivers, the Rescue and Recovery program, etc. that you can't mess with, so it would probably be hard to screw things up as you use this. I deselected most of the second tab, keeping only stuff like Diskeeper and anything that started with ThinkPad or ThinkVantage, mostly based on posts from people on these forums. All told I kept 8 of the 30ish optional programs.

Perhaps the most confusing thing in the process is that the file has a settings section where you pick "custom installation," "factory installation," or both. I'm really not sure what this does, but I chose both, anticipating I would be prompted for my choice as I did the restore. However, I did not see that I was.

After you save this file, then go to the Tools menu, where there is an option to "deploy" the manifest file. At that point, the program will give you the option of booting from the recovery partition the next time you start up. From there, everything ran smoothly.

It's a nice little utility, I just wish it got rid of some of the excess stuff I still seem to have running. If anyone can shed some light or has better insight as they go through this process, I'd love to hear it.

 

You probably had to choose the “custom installation” instead of installing both factory and custom. I bet this is why you still have all those programs running.

 

It might be worth a try, but the programs I deselected do appear to be gone from my hard drive. It's weird that the programs would be gone but the processes (apparently) still going. Unless I wasn't aggressive enough in picking what to get rid of?

If anyone has better success, I'd love to hear about it.

 

It did ask you - it must have if you left the settings for both. Just when you were doing the recovery, I think it is the last window to appear (before everything goes scary ) with two options: to do full recovery or custom recovery. You have to check the latter.

 

When I looked at it I thought it is quite likely that not everything that is in 'required' section is really required. It would be good to know though exactly what is safe to remove from there, so as to leave only those drivers/appl. that you need..

 

There were some things like Earthlink, AOL, and whatnot that were under the required section and if you want to remove them, just right click and put them into optional. I didn't do much to this particular section because I didn't know what most things were though.

 

When doing that, does it create a new image on the factory partitioned place of the original install so that if at a later time you wanted to revert back to factory settings you couldn't because you de-selected what items you wanted to install?

 

Custom recovery is the one you customized. Factory is "Everything".

There are very few things to eliminate in the factory preload. If it is not obvious, DON'T eliminate it. AOL and Earthlink are obvious. Many others you will want to leave in place. Be cautious. You can always visit Add/remove programs later.

 

The whole point of the clean install is not to have to 'visit add/remove programs later'. Cause many of them are not so easily 'removed' from there.

 

I am having the same problem as this guy. After I do the base software thing I still end up with over 80 processes

 

i've gotten my vista down to 64 processes just sitting on the desktop, no browser, just digsby and object dock.

at this point, is it worth it to try a fresh/custom installation? i have also cleaned out the registry with CCleaner.

even though i have the processes down to a lower number, are there still fragments or anything that could be slowing down my computer?