Is there a way to thoroughly clean a new installation of Windows?

Is there a way to thoroughly clean a new installation of Windows? My last couple computers have been name brand laptops with OEM installations of Windows. Of course those installations come with each manufacturer's system utilities, help files, and recovery tools, and this annoys me. Is there any way to clear everything except the vanilla OS off the HD after installing from these OEM discs?
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 258

Total answers/comments: 3

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Guest [Entry]

Get a utility such as PCDecrapifier and after doing your restore from the OEM disks run it. After running PCDecrapifier, use one of the many HDD imaging tools available to snap an image of your system in pristine condition and burn that image to a disk. When you next need to restore your system, pop in your image and away you go.

Guest [Entry]

"You could use Nlite to customize and clean your Windows before installing.

http://en.wikipediadotorg/wiki/NLite_and_vLite"

Guest [Entry]

"I don't believe that Revo ""misses a lot of the miscellaneous files"".

So I wouldn't go to such lengths as reinstalling the system just to save up to the last tiny megabyte. Hard disks are really cheap today, no reason to break a working system."