When Windows Vista finally ships in a few weeks, don’t expect your PC to run fast and trouble-free, warns Microsoft officials — depending on the PC you buy, it may be weighed down with “craplets.”

So a Microsoft official told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He’s said what we’ve all known for years — PC manufacturers, notably Dell, load down new PCs with tons of crummy third-party trialware, that can bog down your operating system, and even conflict with one another.

The unnamed Microsoft official said legally there was nothing Microsoft could do about it, but was concerned the craplets would give Vista a bad name.

There are things you can do, though, to rid your system of such junk. Run the msconfig utility, as well as Windows Defender, and you’ll be able to see what crud launches on startup. Then use mcsonfig or Windows Defender to kill it.

You can also get the free WinPatrol, which hunts down and kills the craplets as well.

And, of course, you can simply reformat your new PC, and install Vista yourself, although this might be an extreme measure.

No matter what, though, if you get a PC with Vista, before you do anything else, hunt down and kill the extraneous crud. Your computer will thank you for it.