How to get rid of bloatware in Windows 7?

Option A: Reinstall Windows 7 without bloatware

Microsoft used to provide pure Windows installation media images with which Windows could be reinstalled without using the vendor-specific (e.g. Asus etc.) recovery partion on a PC or laptop.

Unfortunately Microsoft stopped providing these installation media images and currently I'm not aware of an easy, legal and secure way to get them.

Option B: Reinstall Windows 7 from recovery partition and clean up afterwards

There are several tools that could help uninstalling bloatware more conveniently than doing it manually. The ones I tested are Decrap annd Revo Uninstaller.

Decrap is a tool that promises to uninstall crapware nearly automatically. When testing it with my Asus N61J laptop I discovered certain disadvantes of the tool:

Revo Uninstaller is a tool that shows all installed software in a convenient panel and in addition offers advanced features to scan and remove leftovers in the file system and registry. I definitely recommend using the Trial Version of Revo Uninstaller Pro because it has much more features. Here are the things I liked about Revo:

Why should I used those tools instead of uninstalling manually? Those tools have advanced features to also remove leftovers from the file system, the Windows Registry and so on. Uninstallers often do a sloppy job in this regard.

Recommended way to reinstall Windows 7 without bloatware

Since Windows 7 installation media images aren't available anymore I would recommend to use the excellent tool Revo Uninstaller Pro. For sure you'll have to spend 1 or 2 hours to manually click through the uninstaller dialogs but it's worth it.

I also recommend doing a Windows system image afterwards (built-in into Windows 7). Also check out the links below to get more detailed information about the available options.

Further Resources