This sometimes causes problems with computers that had Windows pre-installed. When installing a fresh copy of Windows you would normally have to enter the licence key at some point. Also, Lenovo has admitted to pre-installing verified malware and we all know that simply uninstalling doesn’t get rid of all malware components. Of course, you could go to the control panel and just uninstall all the extra software but to be sure of a perfectly clean Windows installation you have to install from scratch. …and there is even more when you tap the down arrow to show all apps! Clean Windows 8.1 Installation At the end of this process you are presented with the Windows 8.1 Start Screen with all those bloatware tiles. That is probably the stuff about letting them install 3rd party crap software on your computer that will slow it down and share all kinds of stuff without you realising. Out of the box you power up the Lenovo and you are taken through what looks like a regular Windows initial setup – albeit with a little bit of Lenovo licencing blurb at the beginning. This is how I took the brand new laptop from un-boxing to running a completely clean, super fast, bloat-ware free Windows 8.1, downloaded directly from Microsoft, with the only contributions from Lenovo being any drivers which Windows doesn’t have built in. I choose what software I have running on my computers, not the manufacturers – who are often paid to add the unnecessary stuff (also called, ahem, “crapware”) that can actually make their new computers run much slower than they need to, which is like shooting themselves in the foot!

Lenovo have since provided users with a tool to completely remove the offending software.Īs a bit of an IT professional I know the other benefits of raw, clean, Windows installations. Lenovo recently came under serious fire ( as reported by Computerworld) for pre-installing known malware including something called Superfish. Here’s my shiny new full HD semi-convertible laptop (and a cat) with a selection of unnecessary software (the laptop, not the cat). A fresh Windows 8.1 installation was surprisingly easy. I bought a Lenovo Flex 2 14 laptop and like many new computers it came with lots of software pre-installed – often called bloatware – that I didn’t really need.

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