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Comment by brink | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know any good "debloat" scripts to disable all these modern features of Windows 11 and bring me back to something that resembles the Windows I grew up with?

I'm having a hard time keeping track of all of the registry keys and config settings I need to update to keep this crap at bay.

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O&O ShutUp10++ is a requirement for me. It is my preference because every debloat script tends to legitimately break the OS. I have had to do clean installs multiple times this year after customers ran them. MS provides registry keys that can be configured, but they do consistently move them around. Without an application which can easily revert automated changes, it'd be nearly impossible to keep track of it all, let alone notice changes. Upside is not having a broken system, downside is needing to open it once every week or two. I agree with the other comments that LTSC would be better, but there's no reasonably legal way to obtain it, and nobody wants to have the BSA knock on their door asking for a quarter million USD per license violation. https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

> LTSC would be better, but there's no reasonably legal way to obtain it

I looked into it in 2018; turned out to be pretty easy and reasonable (~$300):

https://tinyapps.org/blog/201811300700_windows_10_ltsc.html

You can buy the licenses https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-11-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2...

Ms just finally released the installation media for ltsc win11

Not directed at you but I find it funny that people (rightfully!) complain about Microsoft spyware and then run some dubious scripts from who-knows-where. With the added side effects that these scripts always disable/remove waaaay too much and break the install which then lead to users cursing Microsoft for things that the user has broken without knowing.

I find it funny that on website called hacker news, it's still assumed that anyone who customizes their system must also be an idiot that knows nothing about being safe online.

I like to live dangerously and with my riced up little Linux setup. It makes me feel cool and edgy.

Those that describe themselves as "pro users" or "hackers" are mostly the users that don't actually know better. It's kinda cringy reading blatant false information from tech people and then people not in tech believe this "misinformation" and it spreads like wildfire and can never be contained.

There is misinformation out there, for sure, but I fail to see your point. People will happily recommend installing Linux over Windows but then suggest you shouldn't dare to touch the registry! That makes no sense.

Windows 10 basically unusable on my GPD Pocket 1 without about as many tweaks as I can make to it. However, once properly tweaked it's actually pretty usable for pretty heavy coding tasks. It has a good amount of RAM but a pretty slow drive.

I don't bother tweaking my Windows 11 machine so heavily except to turn off everything that makes sense to turn off. These are all settings that Microsoft provides themselves but are only available via group policy or registry keys. Thankfully there are tools that not only make it easy to change but also explain the consequences and provide recommendations.

If I were to describe myself as "Pro user" or "hacker" would you assume I don't actually know better? That seems pretty uncharitable.

You'd think a bunch of javascript programmers I mean hackers would know better.

I think it's a pretty damning condemnation of Microsoft's current product strategy, at least in relation to the user segment that visits hacker news.

People are willing to run highly privileged untrusted and unverified code in the personal computers, just for a chance to remove the stuff you're actively spending money and time developing.

Microsoft's software is now indistinguishable from malware. If I had to run Windows, I would have zero trust in it, which matches my level of trust in "Fast Eddie's Random Script". At least Fast Eddie says in the README file that his script is not attacking my computer. Microsoft readily admits to its status as an attacker, and calls the attacks "features."

Microsoft learned from the years of its own users accepting 3rd party malware on their machines pre Win-7, and pretty much all phone users (Android definitely, probably iOS as well but I'm less familiar) accepting unremovable bloatware, so they added it back with Win8+.

Honestly Windows 10 is/was pretty good once you removed the MS malware but they're definitely antagonistic as a whole.

This really hit home for me when trying to dual boot. Repeatedly I had to select the drive in the boot menu and rerun the script to get me back to my nice grub chosing screen. I gave up, it felt violating.

Ultimately it's Microsoft not giving those users what they want. They have to accommodate the OS to fit their needs and sometimes it breaks.

It should be technically easy for Microsoft to decouple Recall from Explorer. I already saw this in the 90s with their web browser, coupled to the OS for purely commercial reasons.

I wouldn't say always. The last time I ran such a script, it didnt break anything. Granted, I did as the repo readme expressly and boldy stated, more than once, that 'anyone using this should read through the list of commands' (it was also nicely commented for lay people) and disable any sections related to services they use. Regardless, the defaults seemed quite sane and I even had to enable/uncomment a few for other services/products I didn't need.

key difference being - copilot and recall were added to my operating system without my consent - microsoft did not ask before they added these things, via windows update.

those dubious scripts from who-knows-where are run by me, with intent and with my consent, having passed whatever my own personal review process might be for that particular script.

If I try something and it turns out bad, that's on me, and I'm okay with that. If something is done to me without my knowledge or consent and it turns out bad, then that's a different story.

>If I try something and it turns out bad, that's on me, and I'm okay with that

That's ok, I'm critizing those that run these scripts without checking (and understanding!) them and then blame Microsoft when things go south (think of the "stick in own bicycle" meme). This is not a defense of Microsoft, they are also to blame that users feel the need to run these scripts because dubious stuff like Recall gets added and/or automatically activated without asking.

What would get disabled that "breaks the install"

I don't have a list but over the years I've seen a lot of people that had problems after running these. This was also prevalent for earlier Windows versions and especially by "gamers" who thought they could squeeze more FPS out of their machines. Failing Windows updates come to mind, especially major Win10 & Win11 updates.

is it that funny?

I'd trust some rando on github more than modern Microsoft

> I'm having a hard time keeping track of all of the registry keys and config settings I need to update to keep this crap at bay.

Remember when the retort from Windows users against Linux was "Linux is only free if your time has no value?"

Just be aware that these "fixes" aren't 100% complete and will likely break in the future when Microsoft patches Windows. For example, when people tried to block telemetry in Windows 10 via the hosts file, Microsoft first moved the telemetry servers from named domains to a series of new IP addresses, then after a year or so they patched the telemetry sending code to bypass the hosts file. Similarly if you ran the scripts to disable Cortana/Windows Search, that worked for a while but nowadays you'll find SearchApp.exe doing Cortana work in the background whether you like it or not.

> disable all these modern features of Windows 11

Being a dependency of explorer.exe implies that it can't be disabled. To explain further: explorer.exe is responsible for your task bar, start menu, etc.

I thought for sure somebody was complaining about explorer.exe not loading if it cannot find recall.DLL or something.

The thread describes a much more minimal kind of dependency. More like the dark pattern variety which is hard to turn off.

would it be possible to make a stub for recall.dll, that does nothing? Or it HAS to be signed?

Doesn't matter - they are not talking about that. AFAIK, there's no recall.dll.

But assuming they do this, you can enable unsigned driver installation (there's a valid use case for that), but I'm not sure you can get explorer.exe to load unsigned libraries. Maybe! Explorer.exe is a user mode process, so it's way less bad than other system processes.

https://www.getblackbird.net/

Be sure to backup your system first. Blackbird thoroughly rips away whatever you choose.

Despite the dumb name this looks useful:

https://privacy.sexy/

It generates the script for you based on your requirements. Looks extremely detailed with long descriptions.

Just disable Defender's real time scanning when you run the resultant script, otherwise it will protest. A lot. (Not just when you first run it, but the whole time.)

I find desktop Ubuntu to be reasonably close to the Windows 7 experience, which was when Windows peaked in my opinion.

I find Gnome on stock Ubuntu pretty terrible for someone used to Windows, since workflows are different and you can't adjust anything.

KDE and Kubuntu are pretty close though. I'd never really considered fully switching to Linux a usable option before I found it, but I've been running it for a few years on my laptop and recently on my work pc, and once Win10 is EoL it'll probably be the only thing I still run on the rest of my machines. The nice side effect of bloated Electron apps is that at least now most things work on all platforms lmao.

If you use Ubuntu Cinnamon it will look like it too.

I keep God Mode and a text file of all the reg settings... in case the porkchopolips arrives, which I was greeted with Monday morning. By early after noon, all was quiet again.

I recommend ALL these sites, and would only add Black Viper:

https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/18394-blac...

and...

Windows 10 Integral Edition:

Zone 94 and the Internet archive are temporarily offline,

Hopefully MassGrave.dev is still working.

  download && install rufus
  flash usb drive with linuxmint
  backup files
  reboot and boot from the usb drive
  wipe system drive and install linuxmint

https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

This is the first thing I run on any new Win 11 device/install and afterwards the OS just disappears into the background and doesn’t bother me one bit.

Incredible feeling of zen being able to scroll past the heated online Win 11 debates that don’t seem to apply to my day to day usage at all.

One of the things I've been trying to do since the advent of Windows 11 is ... get rid of 'Recommendations' on the Start Menu. It gives me the creeps to see stuff pop up there.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/...

Whatever you do, the GPO / Registry key doesn't work on Non-Education / SE systems.

If you apply it on an Education version, the StartMenuShellExperienceHost (you may need to shuffle those words around) will read the settings. Nothing on my Workstation version.

Now, it MIGHT work if you push it through MDM, but MDMs cost money, and I haven't been able to find a self-hostable MDM that is up to date.

The "Recommendations" section is near-impossible to get rid of, but it's pretty easy to stop anything from displaying in that section.

Under Settings > Personalization > Start, I have "More pins" selected, and the various "Show whatever" options disabled, and my "Recommended" section is a single empty row at the bottom of the start menu that reads "To show your recent files and new apps, turn them on in the Settings."

I've used Chris' winutil https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil due to being open source and a powershell script, you can see everything it's doing there's no magic. The recommended update schedule change is something a lot of other programs miss out on imo

Additionally for O&O shut up fans, it has the option to launch that too within the script's GUI, as neither has to be installed to run

I know this technically applies to a lot of open source, but given the breadth of tools under the windows 'tweaking' category and the audience I'd expect to use these "magic wands to fix things you disagree with MS on" I'm really surprised there aren't more subtle trojans mixed in with them. I think it's extremely unlikely any significant amount of users examine the source or make sure a binary they're using is trustworthy, even assuming they know what to look for.

There's a lot of 'marketing' possible and a receptive audience whenever a big tech company pushes something like Copilot/Recall, and I'm sure a well timed or prompt 'quick and simple fix' tool release with some a time pressure could get a lot of installs.

There are tons of windows Trojans already. Going after the 'too smart' type just gets you detected faster.

I've used https://ameliorated.io/ to good effect.

massgrave's LTSC install has made it tolerable for me at least. The first time I booted into a standard consumer win11 install I nearly had an aneurysm

Yes, w11 iot ltsc is the way.

https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools

I run this on any new Win install. I also suggest Portmaster so you know where your data is going.

https://safing.io/

I downgraded a laptop to Win10. Is there any reason to go to 11 before EOL for 10?

No. It's just a less useful UX. Linux Mint after will get you everything Windows forgot customers want.

My solution was to run Linux and a Windows 2000 VM for the old apps.

Not really a windows user, but I had some success with: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

What you’re describing is the entire point of all these disparate settings.

Security through obscurity.

The security, though, is for Windows features not user’s protection.

O&O ShutUp is the first thing to install on every windows system, followed by netlimiter

Switch to Windows LTSC.

the repo linked here is what you want

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