@TrueBloodNet I was never able to find a way to remove that garbage from my Windows installation, so I did the next best thing. I installed Ubuntu linux. Honestly, this might be the only solution for a while.
@TrueBloodNet I get it. On the plus side, Linux is a lot less intensive and often breathes a whole new life into older hardware. But, yeah, it is a pain to install a whole new OS. If you have another hard drive laying around, you can do the old dual boot trick. Each time my computer starts, I can choose to boot into Windows or Linux. You can also do a live image if you have a USB drive around and just test it out to see how it behaves on your hardware.
@sirgeefive I already have 2 SD 'boot' disks. The one I had stopped booting but still works for storage. It's mega weird and MicroCenter and I had to mess around with it for a month or so to get it to work.
@sirgeefive SSD
@sirgeefive I would but this computer is quite old although it was top of the line when I got it. I don't want to futz with it that much now that I got it working again. :/