A reader email this week has me thinking about Microsoft's Signature PC program and whether this is still a recommended source for clean PCs.

Well, this is a welcome development. That Refresh Windows tool I discussed yesterday will be available from within Windows 10 going forward and will let users remove all of the crapware that comes with a new PC. Now that's progress.

The promise of the Windows 7 Convenience Rollup is that it will dramatically speed the process of clean installing and then updating a Windows 7 PC. And it does. But Windows 7 updating is still very much broken.

It's time to take a look at how you can have the best and most error-free Windows 10 experience possible, even when you buy a new PC with crapware.

Much of my email traffic is from people looking for help, but regardless of that it’s full of mostly positive exchanges. Sometimes, however, I get truly ignorant feedback. This is one of those times. I don’t intend to normally share this kind of email, and I see the “Ask Paul” series as a way to […]

For years, I’ve railed against the openly hostile attitudes that most PC makers have towards Microsoft, and in recent months I’ve been pushing a Clean PC agenda to get them to clean up their act. Well, Lenovo isn’t the only one paying attention: HP collaborated with Microsoft on the Spectre x360, and the result is […]

In a startling yet overdue announcement, Lenovo said today that it would no longer bundle crapware—for the most part—on any of its PCs. This is exactly what I asked Lenovo to do in the wake of the Superfish fiasco, and I am now calling on the other major PC makers to do the same. Yes, […]

Whether you’re using my Clean PC principles or not, after you reinstall Windows, you need to reinstall all of your applications. And while this can be a time-consuming process, you can automate much of it with a handy little utility called Ninite. Looking at my own normal application install-set, what I see are several applications […]

If you’ve been following along with my Clean PC article series, you know that you can replace your PC maker’s crapware-laden version of Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 with a clean version. But if you find that process a bit too arcane, you have other options. Among them is the system image capabilities […]

You may recall that my original Windows 7 Ultrabook cleanup walkthrough was a bit of a slog. Determined to make this a bit more efficient, and armed with my previous experiences, I tackled a second, older Windows 7-based Ultrabook. And while cleaning up a Windows 7 PC will always be time-consuming, this one did go […]

If you followed my travails in cleaning up a Windows 7-era Ultrabook, then you know that the process was time-consuming and difficult. But if you have a more modern Windows 8.1-based device, your experience could be much, much better based on my initial experiment with such a PC. The phrase “night and day” comes to […]

It’s one of the biggest downers in personal technology: you buy a new PC, take it home and set it up, and then spend hours investigating and removing the crapware that PC makers put on there. But there’s a better way thanks to a small selection of utilities designed specifically to help remove this space- […]

In August 2012, I bought the first PC ever sold at the Microsoft Store in Boston. But while that PC was a Signature edition PC and thus cleaner than other PCs of its day, the software preload—Zune, an out of date version of Windows Live Essentials, and more—is outdated today. So I’ve put my Clean […]

Microsoft’s free Windows USB/DVD Download Tool will convert a Windows Setup ISO file into a bootable Setup USB drive or DVD disc. As such, it is a vital and important tool to have handy at all times. What: Windows USB/DVD Download Tool (also known as Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, though it’s not limited to Windows […]