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Good afternoon, I've been having some trouble recently with my Samsung devices to get them connected to Google's find my device app. Since updating to oneUI 6, the option of using Google's find my device has been replaced in settings with Samsung's own Galaxy find service. In my opinion, I shouldn't need a manufacturer account to use my device, so I refuse to use any services requiring a Samsung account, instead using the google equivalents. However I've been unable to get my devices to appear in the google app, as it requires a setting to be enabled to get them to show, and Samsung has now hidden that setting to encourage their users to use the more limited samsung service. I would have thought that completely removing the alternative would violate anticompetitive laws, so there's probably still a way of enabling it somewhere? Does anyone know a way to enable google find on oneui 6? Thanks.

I have a decently beefy pc (RTX 3090, ryzen 7 5800X3d, and 32GB 3600MHz cl18 RAM) and I like to install programs that I occasionally use and pretty much not delete them. The vast majority of them only launch when I click on them, and I never let them open on startup. Will having tons of programs that aren't open in the background affect the pc? I also have a decent amount of programs that DO open whenever I start up my computer which are: NVIDIA settings, MSI afterburner and riva tuner, AutoHideMouseCursor, remote mouse, steam, and razer central (which have razer synapse and razer cortex)

Hello, Shopping for a MOBO for i7 13700k, i watched Gamer's Nexus's recent rant on MOBOs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEjH775UeNg He mentioned that ASUS installs, directly on the freaking board, practically a rootkit that installs Armory Crate on your system. I didn't want to believe this, but a quick search yielded some results where people complained that after clean Windows install on an Asus laptop, some bloatware just magically installs itself, circumventing all OS-level restrictive measures by the user. Beyond how freaking annoying and invasive this is, this is also a huge vulnerability begging to be exploited that I'm not willing to buy into. So, please help me: 1. (Rethorical) How the hell is the PC building community not foaming in the mouth? 2. Is this real? 3. Is this only Asus, or do other board manufacturers embed similar artificial vulnerabilities to push their bloatware? 3. a) Are all 700 chipset Asus boards affected? 3. b) Are there manufacturers that don't do this? (If you think Armoury Crate is a great tool, good, more power to you. But frankly I don't care, this is not what the question is about.) Thank you!

tl;dr (Adding this here since people can't be bothered to read carefully or research on their own): Pixel System usage is around 17 GB. Samsung's is roughly only 4 GB more than that at 21 GB. (Apparently if you don't round everything, it actually comes out to a difference of around 2.6 GB ) Yes this accounts for A/B System partitions. That ArsTechnica article is full of misinformation, gross overexaggerations, heavily biased language, and actual lies about how much evidence supports their claims; and the update they tacked on is loaded with errors as well. I know how this sounds, but if you disagree with this, you're probably wrong. Take a moment to actually understand what's going on and ask questions to better understand instead of assuming I can't do basic math. I can't believe that bullshit ArsTechnica article is still causing issues this long after people have debunked it into the ground and straight through to the other side of the earth, but here we go. Honestly, I've typed so much about this already, so the bulk of this will just be copy pasted from my comments on other articles. There's another post over in the phones section that is a bit more technical, but they also missed a big part of the issue, so I'll be covering everything again. Much of the below is copy/pasted from my own comments elsewhere, with additional notes added by me in superscript: The original ArsTechnica article (which is the source for all this misinformation that every other news outlet ran with) claims to have gathered the evidence from responses to a tweet by Mishaal Rashman: There are multiple issues here, beyond the GB to GiB conversion issue, which is actually something all Android phones(Turns out not every, but many. See below.) do, not just Samsung. In fact this is a rather well-known practice and you can find posts about it dating back years. This is probably the most disappointing thing. Not only did someone try to inform you about this in chat—which you instantly dismissed rather than looking into it, because you thought they were talking about gigabits for some reason when Luke said "GB vs. GiB"—but this is one of the most widely known and discussed aspects of Android phone storage reporting, and a quick search would have yielded answers going back YEARS regarding this. (Edit: Here's a Reddit post from eight years ago discussing this happening on a 32GB phone.) EVEN WORSE, the notebookcheck article you pulled up explains all of this, but instead of looking at their explanation in the VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH, all you read is the "it couldn't be true because x" section and stop there. Well here's the explanation: Android (as almost everything else with storage) advertises storage capacity in decimal GB. I believe that's actually law in some places including the US. However, like Windows, the OS measures it in binary GiB, but uses the symbol GB (for which we can blame JEDEC's asinine standards). Many vendors quickly got fed up with users complaining that their X GB phones were only Y GB, so they started adding the numerical difference between the capacity measured in decimal GB (gigabytes) and the capacity measured in binary "GB" (actually GiB/gibibytes) to System, so that the measured total capacity adds up to the advertised decimal capacity. The difference for each capacity tier is as follows and needs to be subtracted from the reported System utilization on affected phones: 68.677 GB for 1 TB phones 35.163 GB for 512 GB phones 17.581 GB for 256 GB phones 8.791 GB for 128 GB phones 4.395 GB for 64 GB phones etc . . . In case this wasn't clear the first time, no, you are not losing any space. The "advertised capacity" vs "real world capacity" terminology (which the update added to the ArsTechnica article uses) is nonsensical and misleading. You might as well argue that you lost distance because the 1 kilometer you measured is only 0.621 when measured in miles. That space never existed and only exists imaginarily. It's like trying to measure 1 km in miles, but you start at .379 mi at the 0 mark so that it ends at 1 mile. That first .379 mi never existed. Many Android phones do this, and it's disappointing that you didn't consider this when you noted that the reported System utilization scales with capacity. There are exceptions, and while many vendors do this, some don't. Notably, Pixel devices do not do this (Adding the fake "difference" that is. The OS still measures in gibibytes while using "GB".), as numerous screenshots exist of stock 512 GB and 256 GB Pixel devices with well under 35.16 GB and 17.58 GB (respectively) of reported System usage (the value that would be added for those respective capacities as mentioned before). That would leave no room for the OS itself, if you subtracted those amounts from the reported System usage. This doesn't change that discussion about manufacturers who do add the difference has been ongoing for years. However this does make the "correction" that ArsTechnica added to their article (see below) even more laughable. If you go to Twitter and check the responses to Mishaal's tweet, focusing specifically on screenshots from Samsung devices, you'll notice the vast majority of them have an "i" icon next to the section that is supposed to measure user apps. That's because the Samsung My Files app (which is used to measure storage within the Settings app) does not have the permissions necessary to measure this by default. As the device is aware that something is using this space, it gets added to System by default, until the user gives the My Files app the necessary permissions. As it's impossible to know how much storage a user has taken up with user apps, any screenshot with the "i" icon is therefore useless as a data point. If you look at the remaining screenshots, they all fall in line with what's expected at their storage tier (after accounting for the GB to GiB issue) and not a single 128 GB device ever approached the kind of scenario this suggests: Honestly, this might just be me, but that "i" icon sticks out like a sore thumb, and it is surprising to me just how many people don't even think twice about it and try pressing it. It's basically second nature for me to press something like that if it comes up while I'm checking something important. But I guess even other tech geeks look right past it. But it gets worse still. If you search Twitter for image responses to Mishaal that include the string "s23", ignoring whether or not the screenshot has the "i" icon, there are only five screenshots of unique S23 devices (the sixth is the same device again, after the owner gave the correct permissions to the My Files app), and only two of them approach anything near 60 GB (one other is under 50 GB, and the rest are under 40 GB). Of the two, only one of the screenshots are taken with the correct permissions, but let's assume the author was ignorant and put that aside for now. That still doesn't excuse this line in the article: As any statements without screenshots can't be assumed to be true, this is either seriously negligent journalism at best, or at worst, a blatant lie about how many sources supported his claims. Beyond these two factors (which are by far the most impactful) any other discrepancy with true System usage can probably be attributed to partitioning, file systems, reserved spaces, and whatever else Android likes to add on to System to make everything add up to the decimal total. One final note here because you mentioned A/B system partitions: Google has been using virtual A/B since Android 11, so no, Pixel devices aren't carrying two full system partitions. Edit: One FINAL (for real) thing I'm adding here. Enough people keep hearing "gibibyte" and immediately start going off about how that doesn't make any sense, since converting 57 or whatever GB or GiB to the other unit doesn't result in nearly enough of a change to make up for the difference (despite my warning at the top of this post). Obviously, anyone who has actually read this understands that at no point did I ever claim it would, since it wasn't ever suggested to convert the reported system usage. Nevertheless, these doorknobs keep going off about it, so I'm adding this here to quote later when people want to make fools of themselves. (End of copy/pasted section) Summary: this is absolutely not a "developing story". Most of this has been discussed ad nauseam the last 10 years, and the rest is due to people not bothering to press "i" icon and give My Files full permissions. Furthermore, anyone who did read the original article can easily see just how biased the wording of the article is throughout nearly its entirety. They did add an update at one point, but it only addressed half the problems, and it did so in (yet again) a very poorly-worded way. Since I don't want to give them any more traffic, I'm copying the whole article down here for anyone to read:

Hey guys, I want to get rid of the bloatware on my phone but somehow no device is shown in the ADB Devices list on my computer. So I found out that I have to switch into PTP mode for my phone to get recognized. Somehow no matter what I do no phone is shown in that ADB Devices list and I don't know what to do anymore. Thanks

Short and sweet. Is there a go-to software for uninstalling the bloatware (video editor, xbox game bar and so forth) on Win10? Had to do a fresh install and now I have all the crap on my system again.

So I deleted the abomination that is Music Place by Toshiba on my old laptop in a spring cleaning mood. Now I'm stuck with a deleted icon on my desktop that I can't delete. I've tried shift + delete, and trying to see ownership of it but there is no option in the context menu (see pic). Anyone got ideas on how to fix this? Thx, bai

Hi all I have been having some trouble with my machine (any help appreciated: https://bit.ly/2UYFouq ) so I am doing a clean installation of windows. However, last time I did this (when I set up the PC), my motherboard (ASUS Prime X570 P) installed a load of bloatware (e.g. Armoury Crate, to name just one). Is there anyway I can prevent this. I am doing a clean install so I can install software one at a time to work out what may be causing issues. Additionally, should I create my boot USB on a computer separate from the one I have been having issues on (i.e., is there a way the issues could be "carried over" onto the clean install), or should I make it on another machine. Thanks

Ok I know that Windows 10 is full of Bloatware but WTH. I don't fully understand what happened, but what I can say is that yesterday I had to turn off my PC, After 2 hours I came back and turned it on, Explorer was showing 40GB of free space instead of the usual 60. (I Have a 256GB SDD :P). I free'd up some space, got back to 60GB, and kept editing on After Effects. Day later, I lost 4 GB of space, I'm hopeless. Don't drop me on this one. Specs: https://www.acer.com/ac/it/IT/content/model/DT.BAPET.030 I know it's in Italian, You can still understand. I hope.

Hi, my Omen 15-ce020ng has caused my some trouble recently. One core is always at 100% usage when cold booting, after a restart it is mostly fixed. Now I want to reinstall Windows 10 Home, to see if it fixes that. But the last time I did that and installed the drivers directly from the HP website, all the fucking bloatware was installed as well. Is there a way to install all drivers without the bloatware, or just dont install it at all? I really dont have much experience concerning notebooks, so I need some help here ?

Hi, In many websites and forum I find people talking about bloatware but I haven´t found a list of identified bloatware each company adds to their products. Do you know of any? Something Like for example: company name--> laptop Model name --> list of bloatware.

Just trying to free up some disk space and I noticed multiple different years of the same software. Is it safe to uninstall all up to the most recent?

Okay, so I'm putting an SSD in my laptop to replace the HDD and I also want to remove a bunch of bloatware because with only an i3-5010, I want as little happening in the background as possible. My question is, if I remove the bloatware like Asus EZ Fast Charge and the touch pad control center software, will Windows be able to auto grab drivers for the touchpad. And if the smart charge software is gone, will there be a negative effect on my charge times. Edit: it's an Asus F555L-A incase anyone was curious.

Hi, I've got constant 20% CPU usage in my task manager on the "windows explorer" process even while I'm running a prime95 stress test. I accidentally installed Avast antivirus the other day, but immediately uninstalled it. That's what's causing this isn't it? So anyways, should I use their avast removal tool instead or is that just going to cause more bloatware as well?

hey so i got this hp computer with windows 10 it says it vr ready it has a i5 5th gen, im gonna post my dxdiag so you can see everything im working with. Time of this report: 12/28/2017, 14:08:05 Machine name: DESKTOP-8S6FGOG Machine Id: {27B682A4-988A-4168-A5CD-7EB888AA8E64} Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 16299) (16299.rs3_release.170928-1534) Language: English (Regional Setting: English) System Manufacturer: HP System Model: 580-023w BIOS: F.10 Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7400 CPU @ 3.00GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.0GHz Memory: 8192MB RAM Available OS Memory: 8128MB RAM Page File: 4165MB used, 5882MB available Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS DirectX Version: DirectX 12 DX Setup Parameters: Not found User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent) System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent) DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled Miracast: Available, with HDCP Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported DxDiag Version: 10.00.16299.0015 64bit Unicode Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB Manufacturer: NVIDIA Chip type: GeForce GTX 1060 3GB DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC Device Type: Full Device Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1C02&SUBSYS_82FC103C&REV_A1 Device Status: 0180200A [DN_DRIVER_LOADED|DN_STARTED|DN_DISABLEABLE|DN_NT_ENUMERATOR|DN_NT_DRIVER] Device Problem Code: No Problem Driver Problem Code: Unknown Display Memory: 7060 MB Dedicated Memory: 2997 MB Shared Memory: 4063 MB Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz) HDR Support: Not Supported Display Topology: Internal Display Color Space: DXGI_COLOR_SPACE_RGB_FULL_G22_NONE_P709 Color Primaries: Red(0.651867,0.334484), Green(0.286633,0.600109), Blue(0.152844,0.075695), White Point(0.313977,0.329602) Display Luminance: Min Luminance = 0.500000, Max Luminance = 270.000000, MaxFullFrameLuminance = 270.000000 Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor Monitor Model: EQ2288F Monitor Id: EQD0000 Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz) Output Type: HDMI DirectInput Devices ------------------- Device Name: Mouse Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Keyboard Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Tt eSPORTS THERON PLUS Attached: 1 Controller ID: 0x0 Vendor/Product ID: 0x264A, 0x1003 FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Tt eSPORTS THERON PLUS Attached: 1 Controller ID: 0x0 Vendor/Product ID: 0x264A, 0x1003 FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Blackweb Gaming Keyboard Attached: 1 Controller ID: 0x0 Vendor/Product ID: 0x3938, 0x1095 FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Blackweb Gaming Keyboard Attached: 1 Controller ID: 0x0 Vendor/Product ID: 0x3938, 0x1095 FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Blackweb Gaming Keyboard Attached: 1 Controller ID: 0x0 Vendor/Product ID: 0x3938, 0x1095 FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Blackweb Gaming Keyboard Attached: 1 Controller ID: 0x0 Vendor/Product ID: 0x3938, 0x1095 FF Driver: n/a can someone help me get rid of some blaotware aka crapware, im trying to turn this into a pure gaming machine no daily use i have a q6600, gtx 650ti, with 8 gb of ddr2 ram for my daily/ work computer and that works fine because i mostly send emails and do normal web browsing on that since i am a real estate agent. but i wanna get rid of everything i dont need on my new computer. i looked up alot of videos about how to get rid of bloatware but they all tell me to go to comamndpromp and do things and i dont trust 99% of people on youtube, i only trust LTT, pauls hardware, bitwit, Jayz2cents and barnakles or how ever you spell it but his youtube name but the latestest bloatware videos from them are over a year ago so please, if anyone can help let me know :DD i also just did a virus scan and it says i have 429679 files and i only have like 6 games on here like cs:go, final fantasy 13, cod waw, fishing planet, and ark

whats the best program to get rid of all the bloatware installed on my computer

which of the programs in this picture are not needed anything that isn't necessary needs to go i also have some other programs like hp games and photo center walmart or something how would i go about getting rid of those

Hey ladies and gents, Just got myself a new Asus fx502vm, buncha bloatware on it. I was wondering what you guys recommended to remove or if I should just do a wipe of everything. I'll attach a screenshot of the programs installed. EDIT: I've already some obviously useless shit like evernote, fox pdf, etc

Hey guys I was wondering if anyone has a guide to prepare a windows 10 image for enterprise usage, or some tips on how to do it better. What I have available: - Active Directory setup on a local domain. - SCCM12 is available - Acronis software - Dell Latitude E5470 and E7270 with Windows 10 pro licenses What I need help with: Preparing the windows 10 image: Do I need to put certain settings in there to prepare it for active directory? How do I remove all the bloatware from installing when I image a new computer? Is there a list somewhere where I can find all the bloatware and how to uninstall the package installers? Are there any registry entries that I should change? Is there a better/easier way to do this? Any good guides are very welcome Thank you!

I couldn't tell if this for sure belonged here, in general discussion or tech news & with LTT loading so unusually slowly lately too I had to settle. Anyway, it seems Microsoft is now forcing unwanted apps & potentially bloatware down our throats too. I'm so happy I don't have Windows 10 right now although I probably will on my first build ever early next year so I am very concerned. As if the excessive telemetry data farming wasn't enough, now we've gotta guard ourselves against this. P.S: Yes I always clear my browser cookies, history, offline data & my 1.5Mbps down connection is normally more than enough for these forums. So it must just be my ISP's connection to Canada or a problem with the forum itself, maybe via Firefox who knows.

"Antimalware service executable" is CONSTANTLY running on my laptop, and since it's a pretty old, weak machine, it gets up to around 40% CPU usage. It also seems to take up about 2GB of space when it's running, and is constantly writing to my SSD. Not ok. So I went into settings and disabled Windows defender's real-time protection, which fixed the issue. The exe is still running but no longer using more than 2% of CPU and not writing to the disk. Also the 2GB of storage it was taking up magically reappeared when I turned this off. After a few days, however, I booted up the laptop and noticed it had turned itself back on. It's done this several times since: Taking up CPU and disk usage again, as well as that random 2GB of space. I basically have to go in and turn it off once every 3-5 days. Does anyone know a fix so I can ACTUALLY PERMANENTLY disable this garbage?

So I've read several articles recently that Windows 10 is extremely bloated with unnecessary services engaging the CPU and all the bloatware loaded onto the OS weighing it down and causing high amounts of user frustration. That being said, does anyone have a solid list of the services and bloatware that can be turned off / removed to alleviate what's landing on top of the CPU? I literally watched my CPU bog down periodically from this crap while gaming yesterday. I've heard a heap of streamers, YouTubers, and gamers have reverted back to W7 or simply not move to W10 so it's not too surprising.

Hi! I have to install an antivirus in my parents old notebook. It's running Windows XP so Windows Defender is not an option. What I want is a light option (1gb of RAM and a crappy Pentium) with the least amount of bloatware. I don't really need it to be perfect in virus detection, just good enough Thx!!!

Built into the firmware on the laptops' motherboard is a piece of code called the Lenovo Service Engine (LSE). If Windows is installed, the LSE is executed before the Microsoft operating system is launched. The LSE makes sure C:\Windows\system32\autochk.exe is Lenovo's variant of the autochk.exe file; if Microsoft's official version is there, it is moved out of the way and replaced. The executable is run during startup, and is supposed to check the computer's file system to make sure it's free of any corruption. Lenovo's variant of this system file ensures LenovoUpdate.exe and LenovoCheck.exe are present in the operating system's system32 directory, and if not, it will copy the executables into that directory during boot up. So if you uninstall or delete these programs, the LSE in the firmware will bring them back during the next power-on or reboot. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty/