How do you ID and get rid of bloatware on the Aspire?

Have the same problem trying to figure out what to throw out at home.

It was easy to get rid of the Acer games--most of those are trial versions anyway.

But what about these?

Acer Arcade Deluxe - Acer games have been deleted, keep the arcade for videos, music, pictures, or let WMP, Media Center handle these?

MS Office - trialware At some point I may buy MS Office. Do I need these as placeholders?
Activation Assistant
Excel 2007
One Note 2007
PowerPoint 2007
Word 2007 - haven't used, but have some old Word docs may need to open. M$ replaced Word with "Works Word Processor" in MS Works.

MS Office Live Add-in
Office Live Add-in help
Office Live Add-in workplace

Windows Defender - replaced by MSE--still needed?

Vista "My Stationary" - have one letterhead template created from MS Works. rest probably won't get used.

NTI Backup Now 5 - think these two were freebies from Acer "partners" for registering, and solicit you to buy the "full" version
NTI Media Maker 8

Software Informer - must've downloaded this, but don't know if it's reliable, and if it's a good idea to let third-party software update by itself.

EarthLink TotalAccess - must've been a reason this wasn't deleted before, but I can't remember what it is!

MediaRECOVER Lite - another Acer partner freebie in crippled form with prompts to "upgrade"

MS Office 2003 PowerPoint Viewer - will this even work if PowerPoint 2007 trialware is deleted?

Personal Photo Manager Deluxe - think this is another Acer partners freebie. Redundant with a couple of MS photo organizers and Picasa. Keep anyway?

I've held off with the backup and the recovery disks until now. Should I use Acer's eRecovery Mgmt or MS's Backup and Restore? Please pick one!

OK, I'll go with Acer. Should I select full or incremental? I've only made one full bkp 8-1-09 and one incremental 8-21-09.

The other question is about PSD, which I haven't used yet. If a restore is performed from a MS Backup Disk instead of an Acer Backup Disk, would that complicate decryption?

Hi qhn

Yes, I'll keep the partition. Wanted to downsize D partition since 1/2 of 250 GB HDD is allocated for D, but only uses small portion. And a full backup overwrites existing backup.

Hope I wasn't too aggressive with my bloatware cleanup. I removed the MS Office validation app in addition to the Office trialware. I also removed the Vista upgrade app. Hope I don't have to go back and restore the whole pre-bloatware-removal setup!

OK. I made two sets of full backup disks, one b4 and the other after removing the MS Office trialware, the Acer Arcade, and the other stuff listed above.

Then I ran the w7 upgrade. It completed all its steps, but looked like I was gonna have to back out at the end. There was a prompt to manually reboot "to repair [something]" so I was thinking "Uh oh!" But it seemed OK and then took me to a validation screen where I repeatedly entered the 21-char upgrade PID which it wouldn't accept, and then the 20-char Vista OEM PID, which it also wouldn't accept. (The MS example showed a 25-char PID.) Once a valid PID was recognized, the 'NEXT' button was supposed to activate. Finally got this to occur by leaving the PID field blank. This completed the upgrade.

Afterward, I noticed that the Acer hotkey "empowering technology" gave me a "not supported" response, but could be accesed through the program list. Also learned that Acer still refuses to display W7 drivers for the 5735.

However, a few hours later, MS provided security patches for W7 and driver updates for everything except my Canon camera and VuPoint Solutions film scanner. Way to go MS! This makes Acer's total lack of support for the upgrade--unless you buy their "upgrade package"--annoying but manageable. The day after the upgrade, the Acer empowering technology hotkey mysteriously started working again, bringing up the console buttons. But note the following changes to system info:

System Info a/o 8-1-09

Product Name
Aspire 5735
Operating System
Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium , Service Pack 1
Processor
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6400 @ 2.00GHz
System Memory
4096 MB
Hard Drive
Hitachi HTS543225L9A300 ATA Device, 232.88 GB
Hitachi HTS543225L9A300 USB Device, 232.88 GB
CD/DVD Drive
TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-L633A ATA Device
Video
Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio
Network
Generic Marvell Yukon 88E8071 based Ethernet Controller
Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN
Agere Systems HDA Modem


System Info a/o 10-16-09 after W7 upgrade

Product Name
Aspire 5735
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Processor
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6400 @ 2.00GHz
System Memory
4096 MB
Hard Drive
Hitachi HTS543225L9A300 ATA Device, 232.88 GB
Brother MFC-210C USB Device, 0 Bytes
Hitachi HTS543225L9A300 USB Device, 232.88 GB
CD/DVD Drive
TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-L633A ATA Device
Video
Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio
Network
RAS Async Adapter
Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN
Marvell Yukon 88E8071 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Agere Systems HDA Modem

Particularly with regard to the Brother printer now grouped with the HDD, is this just an odd Acer journal entry, or will this present performance and/or system recovery problems, and does this need to be corrected?


Questions about the Acer restore functions:

a) When the internal HDD is replaced, will the computer boot up from Acer MyBackup1 disk on the newly-installed and unformatted HDD?

b) How does restore from the backup recorded on the D vol differ from selecting a rollback date in MS System Restore?

c) What is the function of the Acer incremental backup? Does it update the last recorded full backup, so that if disks are made, they'll include all subsequent incremental backups?

Sorry this is so long-winded.

Hi qhn. I was still editing my earlier post when you replied. Can you take a look at these changes to Acer system info (in red) and advise if they need to be corrected before I run a full backup?
I'm not familiar with the MS Recovery/Restore program, but if both a full backup image and an incremental are recorded, do the recovery disks that are then made capture an updated version of the full backup image?

Sorry for the confusion. Sure hope you can follow this! Thanks.