Just purchased a new Inspiron 3847 with Win8.1 pre-installed and would like to gut it down to the bare bones. I have no use for all the bloat included, such as the "apps" for eBay and Amazon. Especially the one from Amazon, which has been cited as a major security/privacy hole (thanks Dell!).
So how does one go about doing this as quickly and painlessly as possible? Previously, a person could re-install from the cd/dvd that was included with the PC. Or they could create a recovery disk and clear it down to the bare essentials that way. Unfortunately, neither of those options seem to be immediately available.
I've attempted to read as much as possible about the Win8 install/re-install process and the difficulties/restrictions (BIOS-based activation keys, media reduction, locking things down to prevent piracy, etc etc etc) but it's hard to tell which of the things I'm reading apply to 8.1, when it seems many of the tutorials are written for 8.0. Also I've read that there may be other complications due to Dell being involved.
So I figured I'd ask other Dell owners and the people that are already dealing with this (either personally or via this forum). What would be the best method to accomplish a bloat-free system?
• Simply uninstall the mal/garbageware one-by-one?
• Submit a request for backup & recovery media?
• Find an 8.1 .iso from some random website and hope it's legit?
• Try this method, and hope that I can 1) extract the correct key from my BIOS; and 2) get the re-install to work with an OEM key.
• Some other option??
I've read so much (both helpful and totally bad/conflicting) that I'm starting to suffer from information overload. I need to get this done and move on. So any guidance here would be greatly appreciated.