Key Takeaways
- Stay away from unnecessary programs that promise the world but only bring trouble to your PC.
- Delete or block programs like CCleaner and McAfee for better performance.
- Avoid browser extensions and manufacturer bloatware that may slow down your system in exchange for little-to-no value.
The internet is littered with software — both free and paid — but not all of it is essential and worth installing on your PC. Besides a few programs that every PC must have, the rest are simply the ones that promise the world but deliver nothing but trouble. It’s important to stay away from such programs as they may wreak havoc on your PC by slowing it down, or by bombarding it with unnecessary ads.
You should avoid such programs at all costs, and put them on your digital block list to keep your PC safe. Many of these programs often hide in plain sight, disguised as a useful or an essential app, so I won’t blame you for having them installed on your PC already. Here are a few programs that you must stay away from, or delete immediately on sight!
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5 CCleaner
Or pretty much any PC cleaner
What was once a trusted Windows app for cleaning junk has, ironically, turned into junk in itself. CCleaner’s reputation took a massive hit after it got acquired by Avast, and started doing some questionable things like forcing updates without permission, data collection, and more. It may help you clean your PC with the tools it has at its disposal, but it’s likely to bring down your PC’s performance when it’s not doing anything. Besides that, PC cleaning programs like CCleaner are largely unnecessary in 2024, and there are plenty of other effective ways to clean and speed up your PC. But if you really feel the need to have an effective program to clean a lot of unwanted junk like registry files, then consider something like Revo Uninstaller.
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4 McAfee
And every other third-party antivirus
McAfee is one of the “free” programs that’s installed on some prebuilt PCs and laptops, but let me tell you that you don’t need that thing running on your PC. In fact, I’d say the same for Norton — and pretty much every other antivirus program out there — too, as they really only do more harm to your PC’s performance than good. Programs like McAfee and Norton have now become more than just antivirus software, and they offer plenty of other services, including VPN and a PC cleaner, of sorts. Third-party antivirus programs are the first thing I remove from my PC, and you should do it, too. If your prebuilt PC or laptop didn’t ship with a copy of one of these types of software, then you might want to keep it that way, and reconsider your decision to get a third-party antivirus.
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3 Adobe Flash Player
Relic of an era
Flash is officially dead, and Adobe stopped supporting Flash in 2021. This may come as a surprise to you if you’re not very tech-savvy, because, well, Flash was everywhere. Many websites on the internet used flash back in the day to power their content. It was also used by a lot of developers to create everything from web apps and games to animations.
Flash faced a lot of problems, though, and it was getting increasingly difficult for Adobe to maintain it with patches. Not to mention, other open standards such as HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly served as viable alternatives at the time, that ultimately brought about its demise. While it’s still possible to enjoy flash games and other content, it’s recommended that you remove local copies of flash from your PC as Adobe is no longer updating it. That being said, you may occasionally come across programs and some websites that’ll ask you to install Flash, and you must ignore those requests, and, if possible, stay away from those sites.
2 PC speed boosters and optimizers
These programs don’t work.
There is no software out there that can magically speed up your computer, so stay as far away as you possibly can from these “PC speed boosters.” There’s no such thing as the best PC speed boosters out there, but even the popular ones that show up on top of the Google Search results aren’t actually doing things like overclocking, adjusting the power settings, enabling XMP, etc., that actually help improve the performance of your PC. Most of these “speed boosters” do what PC cleaners like CCleaner claim to do, at best, and we already took care of those earlier on this list. Just rely on utilities like Revo Uninstaller to keep your PC clear of unwanted apps and registry, and perhaps do some hardware tuning to speed up your PC instead of relying on these programs to do a half-baked job.
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Disable — if not completely remove — them
Shopping and various other browser extensions are also among the biggest culprits out there that may slow your system. Look, I know browser extensions are great fun, and some of them are even useful, but they’re also huge resource hogs that slow down your browser. (I’m looking at you, Ad blockers.) The thing about many of these extensions is that they’re constantly running in the background when you’re using the web browser on your PC, eating up valuable resources. And on top of slowing down your system, a lot of them also constantly track your usage, monitor your shopping and browsing habits to serve you ads in return. It’s easy to get lost in the Chrome Web Store looking at all the different add-ons and extensions you can grab for your browser, but you might want to reconsider that because not all of them are useful or particularly good at what they do.
Bonus: Manufacturer bloatware
Consider this as a bonus entry, as not everyone has a prebuilt PC or a laptop that’s loaded with manufacturer bloatware that you must delete on sight. It is, however, important to address because none of them are essential for your Windows computer to function. In fact, most of them simply offer duplicate utilities of what’s already on Windows. Almost all PC manufacturers out there, including Asus, MSI, HP, Dell, Alienware, etc., all have their own control center of sorts. Some of them even have multiples of them, all running in the background on your PC, bringing down its performance. There are some exceptions to this, such as the BIOS/driver update utilities like the Lenovo System Update that are worth keeping around, but even that’s not a necessity, and you can just download them anytime if you feel the need to update your system BIOS.
There are plenty of useful programs out there for Windows
You don’t necessarily have to install a bunch of programs on your PC to get the most of it, but there are plenty of utilities out there that genuinely help and make a huge difference. Windows utilities like PowerToys, Start11, Ninite, and O&O AppBuster, are just a handful of programs that are absolutely worth considering for your PC. My colleague João has put together an excellent list of essential apps you should install on your PC, and I can’t recommend it enough for those who are looking for some good and useful PC programs to add to their system.