Which programs can I safely remove?

WeAreGhosts

the family computer has loads of programs on it, most of which I don't know what they do or if they are important.

Which of the ones listed can I remove safely?


1. Compatibility pack for the Microsoft 2007 Office System - Microsoft

2. Microsoft Silverlight - Microsoft

3. Aimersoft DRM Media Coverter - Aimersoft Software

4. Web Companion - Lavasoft

5. Unity Web Player - Unity Technologies

6. Treesize Free - JAM Software

7. Bonjour - Apple Inc

8. Windows Live Sign-In Assistant - Microsoft

9. MSMXL 4.0 SP3 Parser - Microsoft (there's a few of these with random numbers after them)

10. LoiloScope Download - Loilo Inc.

11. Nero 9 Essentials - Nero AG

12. Realtek High Def Audio Driver - Reatek Corp (I have Realtek speakers - do I need to keep this?)

13. Canon printer stuff - I have a Canon printer, but do I need to keep all the stuff it comes with like 'Network Tool', 'Solution Menu' etc?

14. NVIDIA Drivers - is this to do with the graphics?

macman

How much free disk space do you have?

WeAreGhosts

macman wrote: »

How much free disk space do you have?

er .... not much!!

Cyberman60

Do you have an external hard drive that you can save stuff to ? If you do have then save stuff just in case you do decide you need it.

12 and 14 you definitely need as they are drivers

1, 8 and 9 almost certainly keep

13.. keep drivers but perhaps dump other stuff

2 get rid and use Adobe flashplayer

The rest can go methinks.

Red_Army

Install a program called "Should i Remove It?"

Should I Remove It? is a very simple but extremely powerful Windows application that helps users, both technical and non technical, decide what programs they should remove from their PC. This typically includes finding and removing all sorts of crapware and bloatware such as adware, spyware, toolbars, bundled unwanted applications as well as many forms of malware. The program is very lightweight and extremely fast. Should I Remove It? simply scans your computer for all its' installed programs and then ranks what should be removed by leveraging the wisdom of the crowd.

If you don't know what the program is or does then the program will tell you what it is and you can decide if you want rid or not.

http://www.shouldiremoveit.com/

Jivesinger

WeAreGhosts wrote: »

6. Treesize Free - JAM Software

You can remove this safely, but if your free disk space is this...

WeAreGhosts wrote: »

er .... not much!!

...then it's probably worth keeping TreeSize to work out where space is being used.

I would also say that removing programs in themselves won't always save much space and won't always remove files they created.

If your objective is to save disk space, then instead of removing programs I would start by using Treesize to find where most space is used on the disk.