Don't worry about looking for the activation key on a sticker affixed to your machine - if the computer arrived with Windows 10 already installed, you can reinstall indefinitely without the key.
To perform this task on a Windows 10 machine, you'll need to create an installation thumb drive (you can make your own here (opens in new tab) ). You can remove all that bloatware by wiping your hard drive, including any hidden partitions created by the manufacturer, and re-installing Windows from scratch.
HP, Asus and Acer have stayed silent, although HP's own updaters were relatively well protected.ĭuo's advice for saving computers from bloatware is as complete as it is drastic. Of the manufacturers that Duo criticized for software updaters that create security vulnerabilities, only Lenovo and Dell have publicly taken steps to ameliorate the situation. The bloatware report from Duo focused on manufacturer updater applications such Lenovo's UpdateAgent. In its advisory, Lenovo did not specify whether UpdateAgent was involved, but noted that Accelerator's vulnerability "resides within" the program's "update mechanism where a Lenovo server is queried to identify if application updates are available." Lenovo's advisory mentions only Windows 10, and it's not clear whether this vulnerability also affects Lenovo computers that shipped with Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1. To see if your machine is affected, check out Lenovo's full list of machines that have Accelerator preloaded (opens in new tab).
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