Lost everything. Had to reset to factory defaults. Then last night it went through several Windows Updates, and I noticed under apps some things I don't recall ever seeing before. See screenshot. Anyone know what the hell this is? And should I uninstall them?

If I had to haggle a guess, internationalization support.

Problem is, I cannae read nor type any of those.

You'll be tickled to know that the one thing that survived this mess is..... the purple dot.

Why did you install east asian language packs ?

I didn't "install" anything. They showed up after a Windows update, if that's what that stuff is.

Language/Localisation packs

I've had windows Decide I desperately needed them and added 100MB of the damn things. took me 20+ minutes toi uninstall the lot

Okay, so I can uninstall them?

Do you know if there is some help somewhere on deciding what can be uninstalled safely? These name brand laptops (this one is an MSI) all come with all kinds of unnecessary crap preinstalled and I don't know how to tell what I can safely uninstall and what I can't. Probably no such help available though, right?

I can't even fathom all of this crap showing up on my taskbar now

Okay, I'm guessing this is bad. It won't let me uninstall all of those things circled above (and there are about 12 altogether I found like that in other languages). I don't recall ever seeing that before. I just checked my old Win 10 laptop and it doesn't show all of those things installed.

So on top of all of my existing problems, I've probably got a bogus copy of Windows now don't I?

I cannot guarantee the safety of your install, but I know well that there exist tools for uninstalling the crap you don't need, and installing all the crap you want.


(Found here.)

I hate all the crap MS has added to windows as standard.

You need to right click on and empty bit of Task bar and repeat to clear the following

News and Interests -> Turn Off
Untick "Show Task View"

Then right click on those icons (such as mail) you don't want and "unpin"

Lastly right click on empty task bar and go Taskbar settings, on the pop up find Nottification Area and click "Select which icons appear on the taskbar"
and set "Meet Now" to OFF

Hope this helps

Thanks. Unfortunately, most of them returned after a reboot.

And now for some fun facts for those of us clueless ones who hope and pray when we find info on something we need and how it's so hard to tell what's "good" advice and what's bad.

Case in Point: One program I was wondering about uninstalling is MSI SDK.

Now here's what one website about it: https://bestsoltips.com/what-is-msi-sdk/

Okay, so it's a Microsoft product. But wait: https://liquidsky.com/do-you-need-the-msi-software-development-kit/

Okay, so it's an MSI product (Dragon Center is 100% verified to be an MSI Product).

This is so much fun for morons like me. So it either stands for Microsoft Installer or MSI Software Development Kit. I guess I'll throw my lot in with MSI Software Development Kit since, you know, MSI SDK is pretty much an exact match.

And I still can't find any good recommendation on whether or not to keep Dragon Center (or the newer version which is called MSI Center).

From the description you found, you only need the msi-sdk if you are going to develop programs and setup msi installers for them. I sort of doubt you are, so it should be safe to uninstall msi-sdk.

Well, I think I've got the essentials back. I'm able to get to me emails. I've got gog and steam back (with new passwords that I'll forget again, in fact have already forgotten as I was just thinking about writing them down but I realized I've already forgotten them lol). I uninstalled a boatload of bloatware, including Dragon Center, Nahmic, SteelSeries Engine, Messaging, oh well I've forgotten the rest already but it was a bunch. Windows Update appears to have finally gotten all caught up. Don't have a clue how to find and restore all of my old bookmarks, and some were critically important that included passwords for things like paying bills, accessing my bank, etc. What a nightmare.

But... since I've gotten the bare essentials done now, it's time to reinstall Gothic 2. Aargh, I can't believe I have to start all over again when I was ready to fight the last dragon and move into the final chapter. Nearly 100 hours in (IIRC it was 83 or some odd hours played showed on my last save.

I just hope I can remember how I installed it before and got it running. All of my bookmarks are gone to find things like the 4GB patch, Union, DX11 renderer, texture packs. I don't have a hope of remembering my Nexus password for when I want to mod other games. What a fucking nightmare.

Oh well, priorities right... time to see if I can at least play Gothic 2 again. *crosses fingers*. I will say this though, I got real lucky in finding the right Logitech Profiler software so I can map keys to my controller (I never, ever play a WASD game with keyboard and mouse, ever, won't do it). Last time it took several tries because my Logitech controller is so old it wasn't recognized by the newer versions of Logitech Gaming Profile software. But I got the correct old one quick this time.

Well, good news, Gothic 2 is installed and working along with my controller. Bad news - Damn I can't believe I'm all the way back at the beginning again. Damn, I might not have it in me to do all of that over again. Fuck this sucks.

Nope, not working right. It loaded, responded to my controller, but it is unplayable as frame rates are completely tanked. I guess I need to install another game and see if it's game related or if what happened yesterday has rendered this laptop no good. But it is so choppy it will make your stomach turn, literally. Unplayable.

that would be my first guess too. Top to bottom looks like Arabic, Indian (or Philippines) , Korean, Japanese (three different versions? the last of which is a simplified set).

Though other than Japanese support for some half translated games or for anime, i would never use any of these.

CJK is commonly a set of three, yes. I'm for the internationalization support, but I'd prefer to pick which languages/alphabets get installed. This applies to Linux as well, whose maintainers have often bundled whole ass langpacks for no reason.

I wouldn't call it no reason, as it's probably for international release, and are likely required to be accessible during the installation.

However, during install extra languages shouldn't be added unless needed. But it may be easier to default everything vs customized iso's.