Acer Bloatware and Vista

BanzaiBk

Hey, I use an Acer 5051 (2GB RAM, Vista Basic) in work and have noticed that the preinstalled Acer programmes listed;

• Acer Arcade
• Acer eData Security Management
• Acer eLock Management
• Acer Empowering Technology
• Acer eNet Management
• Acer ePower Management
• Acer ePresentation Management
• Acer eSettings Management
• Acer GridVista
• Acer Mobility Center Plugin
• Acer Tour

max out my CPU/RAM processes almost all of the time. Am I right in assuming that uninstalling these programmes via the control panel is ok and won't do any damage to the OS? Or will uninstalling them damage the OS? I'm particularly worried about the Acer Empowering Technology Framework because it totally eats RAM like theres no tomorrow. I would reinstall Vista but Acer don't provide disks (it's on a partition on the drive and I presume that version of Vista is preloaded with the bloatware also, am I wrong?). I'm a total Windows n00b (mac user) so any help is appreciated.

Cina

Nah, there is no chance they'll damage the OS, the only programs likely to do that are Microsoft updates, or actual viruses that you download.

Uninstall them, it's safe.

Capt'n Midnight

look up decrapifier if you want to uninstall the acer apps

but first run msconfig
or download autoruns from microsoft.com
these will allow you to still have the programs but you can tell them not to load on startup - so you have the best of both worlds

BanzaiBk

Merci beaucoup for the replies! I'll get straight on it at work tomorrow.