Question Removing all potential bugs from a computer?

[Desertprep]

I have a Huawei notebook that a school gave to me. It is a Chinese brand, both made and sold in China. I have been reading comments recently about "bugs" and "time bombs" being preinstalled on computers, phones, routers, etc. Not sure how valid it is...but I am thinking of replacing the HD in my computer and installing a version of win 10 that I bought in the US. If there are "bugs", etc in the computer, will that remove them all?

 

[COLGeek]

A clean install of the OS should resolve any concerns. If it currently has a HDD, replacing with a SSD will improve its performance.

 

[USAFRet]

I have a Huawei notebook that a school gave to me. It is a Chinese brand, both made and sold in China. I have been reading comments recently about "bugs" and "time bombs" being preinstalled on computers, phones, routers, etc. Not sure how valid it is...but I am thinking of replacing the HD in my computer and installing a version of win 10 that I bought in the US. If there are "bugs", etc in the computer, will that remove them all?

A new blank drive and a fresh install will kill off whatever was on there originally.

 

[geofelt]

It is always possible that the bios has code to compromise what you do.
How paranoid are you??

 

[COLGeek]

It is always possible that the bios has code to compromise what you do.
How paranoid are you??

Technically true, but the likelihood of such is very low.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

IMHO, no matter the manufacturer of a computer, it is not a bad idea to install a fresh copy of Windows to remove any junk they bundle with the computer, such as crummy antivirus programs (Norton/Mcafee) as it slows down the system for little benefit. If the mfg did have any sort of back doors preinstalled (even remote access software specifically for support) this will eliminate them as well.

The controversy with Huawei is mostly political, but, if you are worried about them spying on you, just consider the following: Microsoft bakes telemetry into any Windows device that monitors how you use it. This telemetry collects all sorts of data periodically, potentially including entire memory dumps for crash reports containing any information that was in the programs you had open at that point. Many other software vendors or websites do the same, in fact almost everything does at this point. for example, Google profiles your interests, search history, collects personal information, may tracking your location, etc. For example, if I request to download all of the data Google has on me, I can see every location I physically was at in the past 3 months on a map, as my Android phone tracks this and sends this information to Google throughout the day. Basically, if you are online, you are having data collected about you and it is constantly being resold to anyone who's offering money.

 

[punkncat]

Something to mention here is that if the school gave it to you for use with the school it likely is full of quite a bit of "spyware-like" applications used to be sure a student doesn't cheat in class. It may be against terms of use to modify this PC unless they gave it to you as in "this is yours to keep" in which case one would think you may need an OS key and so on.