Be careful with the "debloat" features in scripts like this.
In my experience, aggressively stripping out AppX packages and disabling services often breaks windows update or the Microsoft store in subtle ways that don't manifest until 3-6 months down the line. You'll eventually try to install a feature update, it will fail with a cryptic error code, and you'll realize it's because you removed a dependency that the new update expects to be present.
If you really want a clean windows environment, you are better off getting an IoT enterprise LTSC license. It is boring, stable, has zero bloat and doesn't require hacking the registry to stop candy crush from reinstalling itself.
That said, it feels like a constant arms race. Microsoft introduces a new user-hostile pattern (like making local accounts harder to create), the community builds a workaround and then Microsoft patches the workaround. I am tired of fighting my own OS.
> If you really want a clean windows environment, you are better off getting an IoT enterprise LTSC license.
Unfortunately seems like there's no way of getting a license legally without being a company. Windows Server seems easier to obtain but harder to morph into something useful (mostly because of missing drivers on Windows Update) though definitely possible.
The ultimate way of installing windows least bloated is chosing Region "English (World)" - as usually the bloatware is country specific. Avoid US, UK, etc. That's where the Candy Crush comes with.
Apple was a great option before they moved to ARM. Now they can't run much of anything (and it sucks).
I still have my mid-2015 MBP running triple-boot between macOS, Windows and Arch Linux. That machine could run everything...
I now have to keep around a physical PC desktop in order to run games like ARC Raiders. I use OBS with a capture card to use my MacBook's screen as a monitor for the PC, and an application called Deskflow to forward the MacBook's keyboard to the PC (I connect the mouse directly). Also, SonoBus for voice chat, since the PC doesn't have a microphone built-in. It works well enough.
> Apple was a great option before they moved to ARM. Now they can't run much of anything (and it sucks).
I used to love my 2013 MBP. ARM Macs run pretty much everything I need, and some things better than Windows (such as Lightroom and PS which don't run at all on Linux).
But what kills it for me is the absolutely bonkers window management, and the fisher-price interface filling up half the screen with empty space around huge widgets.
I really hope they dial back Liquid Glass after the guy who ruined it all left. I love the glass effect itself, but the rest of the design could use a lot of work.
Using the capture card allows me to avoid compression artifacts and a majority of network congestion (and get 120Hz!), and connecting the mouse directly eliminates additional latency and jitter. The keyboard still suffers from it, but in a shooter (like, say, ARC Raiders) mouse input is definitely most important - I can deal with a slight keyboard delay.
I may still look into those for the keyboard input, but the only improvement I foresee really making is getting Ethernet for the MacBook (I moved my one line to the PC since the MacBook's Wi-Fi is so much better). Haven't decided between a passive or active switch yet.
I'm installing Linux over the break. The last time I seriously ran it was Slackware 2.0. If it doesn't run in Wine, it will run in a vm. I'm so done with this shit. And I'm one of the few that actually purchased a Win11 Pro license at full price. I really wanted to believe. They've lost their mind with copilot. Imagine if they put as much effort into making their products better as they have pushing copilot. The sad thing is there will be a copilot hit, and it won't be anything they built with all this effort. It will be an acquisition, like openai. They should just stick to making their products better and buy it when it comes.
I switched to Fedora KDE. It's still has many linuxisms along "bluetooth doesn't work" but if you have some basic IT knowledge, "we're already here". I wouldn't recommend it to a non-IT person though.
People cite bugs or incompatible software on Linux as a reason to avoid it and use Windows, but they fail to recgonize that Windows actively fights you. I'd take something that's slightly and mistakenly broken on an utterly open platform where I can fix it if I care enough over a closed platform that's actively trying to screw me over.
Agreed. I had to run Windows recovery only once over the last 5+ years, after running some debloating script with many thousands stars on GitHub.
I think the Pro version is enough for reasonable experience, most of the terrible stories originate from the Home version, which should be avoided like the plague.
I've spent several days trying to get Pro version to usable state.
By usable I mean that it doesn't kill my work session because some random app I've never installed, used or asked for fails its auto-update in the middle of the day and kills the WSL process.
It still has magically resetting settings so if you are not careful telemetry/ads/spying will be back on the menu. It still has hostile settings to keep your computer connected when it sleeps which are very hard to turn off.
There are multiple settings in Windows that are hidden which only appear in the menu when you add a registry entry.
There are so many anti-patterns in Windows it feels like defending against a determined hacker who tries to make your life worse and is hunting for a slight misstep to turn the shit back on.
Group Policy Edit is the way to restrict many things. Disabling automatic updates helps. I have had forced reboots very rarely, I believe that were severe vulnerability fixes.
But my use case is never 24/7, I hibernate it overnight and every time I leave for longer than going to a grocery shop, and I have several Proxmox boxes with proper OSes for hosting stuff. Windows + WSL is my dev/media/web/files/OneDrive machine, a compact silent SFF box that is powerful enough for 90+% of my daily tasks. Lately I try Linux Desktop on Fedora/Ubuntu with every major version, however RDP server and secure boot that I can trust to work and not break myself - these things remain unsatisfactory.
I disabled auto updates by pinning the target version in group policy and then finding some hacks on the web to make it always ask before download. I've run many other random scripts and then found Windhawk to remove more annoyances (taskbar and sections of start menu).
I then shut down more things and disabled Bluetooth on lock. It is now usable and doesn't crash but feels very fragile. I will soon face dilemma of allowing "feature" updates or be out of security ones.
I’m generally skeptical of Windows optimization tools because they tend to change a lot of low-level settings and make troubleshooting harder later on. When someone already has a broken system, it’s often difficult to figure out what’s wrong once a tool like this has touched everything.
This one looks more like a PowerShell automation and debloating script for power users than a classic one-click optimizer, but it still requires knowing exactly what each tweak does. Used without that understanding, tools like this can easily create confusing problems.
That's actually amazing. First I shudder to think of all the cruft in that install. Leftover registry settings from 2015 on. But second kudos for being able to do that. I've tried and failed about 5 times in my life at moving a windows install to another computer since Windows 95 days. I didn't think it was at all possible.
It was more-or-less true with Windows 3.1 (and likely earlier). Some people could correct some problems by modifying the various configuration files, but most didn't. One of the ironies is that I, as a rabid OS/2 user, managed to get a job managing Windows 3.1 systems since I was one of the few candidates who understood how to do so.
When Windows 95 entered the picture, such wipe-and-reinstall antics were pretty much standard for all but trivial problems. Even then people would usually live with those problems, though a handful of people would be able to go in and fix them. Of course, Microsoft has introduced some functionality over the years to mitigate such drastic measures, but they tend to be variations of the same theme (e.g. restore points rolling back changes, rather than going in to fix what is broken).
Tweaks are divided into essential and advanced. The essential ones shouldn't have any negative impact on the system. They also document the changes each tweak makes (so you can undo them): https://winutil.christitus.com/dev/.
I think the issue is a bit out of the author's control, where tools like this are word of mouth advertised as 'one simple trick' by geeks to a broad audience to fix what they see as wrong with windows. People love convenience and adding "oh by the way, make sure you read/understand the docs first" rarely happens. I think it's part of the move for computing to being appliances that ongoing maintenance isn't seen as needed
To be fair, this tool doesn't claim to fix a broken system; as near as I can tell it doesn't actually remove the underlying Windows installation, so the core problem will remain.
Sounds like a fun fan fiction crowd sourcing project. Have some coding agent rewrite windows from scratch. We can all throw some money/tokens at it periodically to keep it going. It should have a live video stream where it narrates and visualizes the state of affairs. Like a soap opera for nerds. In the end a single exe comes out.
Oh man, we need also incorporate a lean and agile iterative approach, where everyone need to participate in sprint planning. Imagine having to fit in all the necessary sprint items and how to choose between them!
And in the end of each sprint a single exe comes out. Or multiple. Like a soap opera for product managers.
Little computer people was awesome[0]. Upscale it to a full size microsoft office[3]. Give agents neck bearded avatars with green hair named after real employees except from legal, there everyone is a pirate. Make it so that one can zoom in on everything and follow the cringe worthy dialog in overloaded sprint-planners that some~how work out. Take style pointers from KRAZAM Microservices[12] and gar1t's "Nodejs is bad ass rockstar tech"[44]
Even though he is sending mixed messages, it is clearly stated that misuse may break the system. The other nice thing about going the PowerShell automation route is the ability to see what was done and reverse particular changes (assuming you can track down which change broke things). That's in start contrast to the binary-only utilities I've seen in the past, where you're pretty much stuck trusting the vendor's claims.
>still requires knowing exactly what each tweak does. Used without that understanding, tools like this can easily create confusing problems.
Which I have always taken as extreme encouragement to use performance-improving setting configuations, and therefore gain the understanding to do so effectively.
If I can do it, anybody can, I'm no engineer.
With this approach in mind it makes the Titus offerings show a remarkable amount of superiority.
As another commenter has noted, 2022 is just when his Utility was beginning to get noticed.
It is being kept up-to-date with Windows 11 as it evolves.
I guess I'm in the minority. I haven't reinstalled on my desktop machine since 2014 according to the install dates of some of my apps. According to the Windows Registry I've gone from 7 Pro -> 8.1 Pro -> 10 Pro. Both upgrades happened in 2015 and since then I've just stayed up to date with the latest 10 Pro build.
I will be switching to Linux before the ESU program expires though. I use my desktop mostly for gaming and have been planning to evaluate a few distros and desktop environments. I have my own Proxmox/TrueNAS/Debian homelab and use macOS daily for work so I'm fine with the CLI and tinkering but I'd rather everything Just Works™ for my gaming machine. I did a lot of dual booting back in the Fedora[ Core] 6-12 days but ultimately it got too tedious.
I would say that the reason Windows issues are commonly treated as "reinstall it" is because most Windows installs are on corporate PCs. Most of the time, it's not worth spending the time trying to troubleshoot someone's gnarly OS issue when you can fix it in an hour by reimaging. There are exceptions, of course, but most of the time the business just wants that employee back to work ASAP, rather than doing the troubleshooting work.
Yes, before corporate even had a widespread imaging approach, it could be seen this was the way to go.
For decades I clean install Windows to a new PC one time, and that's about it for true "installs".
Then don't get in a hurry, it's my personal computer and I plan to be using it smoothly for a number of years to come.
So spend "a few" hours tweaking and adjusting settings, and this always takes ridiculously longer with each Windows version, but that's table stakes if you want to participate in a mainstream way without all the mainstream drawbacks.
Ideally of course without ever going on the internet, and then comprehensively back up the system before doing anything else.
Any valuable data is also never allowed to be routinely stored on the C: volume, that's what other partitions are for besides merely multibooting.
What's on C: should always be a minimal number of gigabytes, you have to take some kind of action or the defaults will work against you, massively. People can be misled that no attention is required and C: will be fine.
C: is best restricted to a highly-replaceable OS, containing in addition any programs you decide to install afterward, but none of the user data which is very worth the effort to carefully direct elsewhere at every opportunity.
So after I finish installing and configuring the desired programs, then another comprehensive backup is made.
Before it has even handled any valuable user data yet.
This is Windows, you can't take any chances :\
Then later, in situations when others would best re-install but with the typical hesitation, I boot to a different partition, zero the volume formerly known as C: while it is then dormant, followed by recovery of the (tweaked) bare OS backup, or using the image from when the apps and settings were also completely like I wanted.
Obviously programs that are not robust enough to withstand offline recovery from backup are too garbagey to include in a well-crafted backup image. You can't usually find this out without testing your backups in advance. It would be good before the backups are desperately needed if an emergency were to arise.
With basically minimal disaster preparation (but careful hours by necessity), you may never actually need to do a true "re-install" ever again, just recover from backup instead, and without hardly any hesitation at all. Sometimes more than once a day, in minutes. Rather than hours, which with Windows 11 the hours can now really add up and are sometimes best spread over more than one session :\
In that case it would be nice if calendar days were not required to manually get it like you could do with Windows 95 in minutes. I'm not even talking about gaming.
After all that effort I know how tiring it can be. Even more reason to back up your work before doing anything else, and test the backups routinely. Which is another whole session or two. I know it's the complete opposite of mainstream behavior, but it can really allow you to participate a lot more effectively in the long run.
I know, I know, who tests their backups anyway and why would they start now?
For consumers, routine rapid recovery has been effectively de-emphasized for decades since plenty of users respond to Windows failure by purchasing a new PC, which is crafted to be a more simplified and familiar procedure as long as they can afford it.
And it's really not the worst tragedy if they think they screwed up their own computer so bad they needed a new one, if it makes them be more careful next time ;)
I would instead suggest two things for power users: installing Windows using autounattend.xml[1], and secondly visiting the mass graves to turn your Windows install into Enterprise (or, if you can wrangle it, get an Education licence from your academic institution/alma mater), which completely gets rid of all consumer-oriented stuff.
To be honest, I don't mind the Windows games. In fact I believe the ones shipped with XP, Vista, and 7 were top-notch. What I mind is games with annoying advertisements in them. I mind when my Weather program is not native and is a glorified web app, also ridden with advertisements.
I'm typing this on my company azure ad integrated windows 11. The system info says it's windows 11 enterprise 25h2.
My start menu still has multiple random xbox crap in there, game bar (what even is that?!), "game mode", "solitaire and casual games". It shows random ads in the weather app. It invites me to do more with a microsoft account, even though the computer is fully azure ad joined and my windows session is an azure ad account with some expensive office365 licence attached.
Before reinstalling the other day for unrelated reasons, I had actually tried to add that account. Turns out it doesn't work with a "work or school" account, it requires the personal one, but it doesn't say it clearly, only that "something went wrong".
I honestly don't see any difference when compared to my personal windows install I use for the occasional game and Lightroom / Photoshop.
It's not clear from the linked page, which seems to have been last updated in 2022, aside from user comments asking for support. Thank you for the clarification!
I setup both a Windows and Linux VM and give them both the EXACT config from the hypervisor, including GPU passthrough and CPU Host.
The Linux VM runs faster in some games designed for Windows, running on Proton.
I read somewhere that Microsoft admitted Windows is bloated. Which surprised me since I didn't think anyone in the top 150 of Microsoft even knew Windows still existed, but it's a step in the right direction.
This was the first time in 10 years using Windows again, I wanted to play nice and pulled the MS Windows license key from my laptops firmware and used that to get a legitimate copy going. It worked!
Then Windows hit me in the face: because I went the legitimate way they downgraded me to Windows Home and I can't use Remote Desktop.
This got a good laugh out of me. God this software is so hostile to you.
Is there any info on the impact of such tools, like do they have any specific performance improvements (startup time, memory use)? How much Gb of bloat is actually removed?
You can visualize performance using Windows' built-in Performance Monitor.
It's not a comparison app, but you can check different resources in detail both before and after disabling un-needed features.
Disk activity is one of the things reported in real time, as well as memory usage, but the Gb of bloat on the OS drive is not a consideration.
Inhibiting things which are useless to you from occupying memory, may be less than 1 Gb but may still be worth it, but that is different than disk drive bloat which can really get massively out-of-hand.
Drive Gb is expected to grow with each additional program you install, but further drive bloat has often dwarfed that as preinstalled apps have proliferated, written by those who do not have experience using limited resources to a serious degree of efficiency.
And then after non-security updates became mandatory, each year this lack of professional experience has an accelerating impact across-the board, and by now you are expected to accomodate a dozen or more gigabytes than last year.
And both Windows 10 and Windows 11 were more functional in some ways than a year ago too.
Cut back on memory waste by keeping things from loading until an event when you yourself really need it.
Cut back on drive bloat by uninstalling things you know you are never going to need.
> Can we please have someone make and maintain a safe, good, minimal and reliable Windows distribution like Alpine Linux?
First: "safe" and Windows never ever matched. Not in Windows 98, not in Millenium, not in Vista. Not ever.
I, reluctantly, after having confiscated my mother-in-law's Windows laptop and replacing it with a Chromebook about two years ago (which still works fine for her btw), ordered her a new desktop PC six months ago, running Windows 11.
Six months.
Six months is all it took for this piece of shit to become infected to the point of being unusable. Malware over malware took over: whatever 0-click or 1-click exploit in Edge that took over the machine and tells her to call indian scam center to help her "get her PC rid of viruses", blinking left and right, covering half the screen.
In other words: good old Windows. It's 20-fucking-25, nearly 26, and Microsoft still cannot ship an OS that's not rooted when a grandma is browsing for less than six months.
Pathetic.
Windows is a mediocre piece of insecure (and now spying) turd.
I fully agree with you: reliable Linux distros are the Windows replacement.
And as we've reached a point where everyone except some part of the corporate world can do everything they need from an Android smartphone and these same people are just fine with a Linux distro on their laptop or desktop, people can be switched. And some are. And the numbers of "desktop Linux" users are slowly but surely growing.
I don't care about the snarky "2026 is the year of Linux on the desktop". Linux conquered everything: all the servers, all the routers, 500 of the world top 500 supercomputers, etc. Linux shall conquer the laptop and the desktop too.
And those who don't switch have two choices: MacOS (pricey hardware) or be slaves to that turdery on bits that Windows is.
P.S: actually I don't even care: be it Linux or MacOS or BeOS or Atari's TOS: anything but Microsoft.
Windows security is just fine. The problem is that many users are willing to uncritically install anything they get asked to, even to the point of directly installing malware when "Microsoft support" contacts them asking them to do so. Absolutely nothing about Linux or any other general purpose OS protects against this threat vector, and if Linux had the market share Windows does you would be saying the exact same stuff about your grandma getting rootkits on her Ubuntu box. Mobile devices protect against this scenario by not trusting the user and heavily restricting what apps can do, but that's not a good model for a general purpose computer.
You can lock down Windows too, you can restrict it to Windows Store only, you can allow only whitelisted apps to be installed, you can lock down user permissions, ...
I gave her an iPad Owh, 10 years ago? And I’ve never had to troubleshoot her system ever again. No spyware. No viruses. Nothing.
The worst that happened recently is that the Starlink antenna had te be realigned after a particularly heavy wind blew it off the roof almost.
Oh and her printer needed new toners after printing for x years without problems.
If you want inkjets, buy those with ink tanks. More expensive up front, but operating cost is so cheap. And no more "you have to replace a whole cartridge just because Magenta is low"; if Magenta is low, buy a bottle of Magenta, and fill.
For laser printers, buy those whose toner cartridges are separate from the drum, and those whose toner cartridges can be reset mechanically. And refillable.
Mine is... 15+ years old? I replaced the toner once. And it doesn't have Ethernet or WiFi, so I bought Printopia for my iMac (to which it's attached) to enable AirPrint.
Be careful with the "debloat" features in scripts like this. In my experience, aggressively stripping out AppX packages and disabling services often breaks windows update or the Microsoft store in subtle ways that don't manifest until 3-6 months down the line. You'll eventually try to install a feature update, it will fail with a cryptic error code, and you'll realize it's because you removed a dependency that the new update expects to be present.
If you really want a clean windows environment, you are better off getting an IoT enterprise LTSC license. It is boring, stable, has zero bloat and doesn't require hacking the registry to stop candy crush from reinstalling itself.
That said, it feels like a constant arms race. Microsoft introduces a new user-hostile pattern (like making local accounts harder to create), the community builds a workaround and then Microsoft patches the workaround. I am tired of fighting my own OS.
> If you really want a clean windows environment, you are better off getting an IoT enterprise LTSC license.
Unfortunately seems like there's no way of getting a license legally without being a company. Windows Server seems easier to obtain but harder to morph into something useful (mostly because of missing drivers on Windows Update) though definitely possible.
As I understand it, even for companies it's non-trivial. There seems to be some kind of relation to specific hardware.
So look at the dependency tree and add back what is missing. We are hackers here afterall.
The ultimate way of installing windows least bloated is chosing Region "English (World)" - as usually the bloatware is country specific. Avoid US, UK, etc. That's where the Candy Crush comes with.
Apple was a great option before they moved to ARM. Now they can't run much of anything (and it sucks).
I still have my mid-2015 MBP running triple-boot between macOS, Windows and Arch Linux. That machine could run everything...
I now have to keep around a physical PC desktop in order to run games like ARC Raiders. I use OBS with a capture card to use my MacBook's screen as a monitor for the PC, and an application called Deskflow to forward the MacBook's keyboard to the PC (I connect the mouse directly). Also, SonoBus for voice chat, since the PC doesn't have a microphone built-in. It works well enough.
> Apple was a great option before they moved to ARM. Now they can't run much of anything (and it sucks).
I used to love my 2013 MBP. ARM Macs run pretty much everything I need, and some things better than Windows (such as Lightroom and PS which don't run at all on Linux).
But what kills it for me is the absolutely bonkers window management, and the fisher-price interface filling up half the screen with empty space around huge widgets.
I really hope they dial back Liquid Glass after the guy who ruined it all left. I love the glass effect itself, but the rest of the design could use a lot of work.
Tried Moonlight/Sunshine?
Works for me without any extra hardware. Just a network connection between the machines. Haven't tried voice chat though.
Edit: Steam streaming works pretty well too, but feels a tiny bit more laggy than the above. Also running non Steam games is a bit of a pain.
Using the capture card allows me to avoid compression artifacts and a majority of network congestion (and get 120Hz!), and connecting the mouse directly eliminates additional latency and jitter. The keyboard still suffers from it, but in a shooter (like, say, ARC Raiders) mouse input is definitely most important - I can deal with a slight keyboard delay.
I may still look into those for the keyboard input, but the only improvement I foresee really making is getting Ethernet for the MacBook (I moved my one line to the PC since the MacBook's Wi-Fi is so much better). Haven't decided between a passive or active switch yet.
I'm installing Linux over the break. The last time I seriously ran it was Slackware 2.0. If it doesn't run in Wine, it will run in a vm. I'm so done with this shit. And I'm one of the few that actually purchased a Win11 Pro license at full price. I really wanted to believe. They've lost their mind with copilot. Imagine if they put as much effort into making their products better as they have pushing copilot. The sad thing is there will be a copilot hit, and it won't be anything they built with all this effort. It will be an acquisition, like openai. They should just stick to making their products better and buy it when it comes.
I switched to Fedora KDE. It's still has many linuxisms along "bluetooth doesn't work" but if you have some basic IT knowledge, "we're already here". I wouldn't recommend it to a non-IT person though.
What about Ubuntu though? I haven't used used Ubuntu since I switched to MacOS a few years back. But I would suggest that to even non-IT people
It's not only about the happy path working, it's also about the user being able to figure out the sad path.
BT largely comes down to the chipset, fortunately this is a user swappable device is most computers and laptops.
> I am tired of fighting my own OS.
People cite bugs or incompatible software on Linux as a reason to avoid it and use Windows, but they fail to recgonize that Windows actively fights you. I'd take something that's slightly and mistakenly broken on an utterly open platform where I can fix it if I care enough over a closed platform that's actively trying to screw me over.
Gee. You make it sound like breaking Microsoft Store and Windows Updates are /bad/ things. :-/
Agreed. I had to run Windows recovery only once over the last 5+ years, after running some debloating script with many thousands stars on GitHub.
I think the Pro version is enough for reasonable experience, most of the terrible stories originate from the Home version, which should be avoided like the plague.
I've spent several days trying to get Pro version to usable state. By usable I mean that it doesn't kill my work session because some random app I've never installed, used or asked for fails its auto-update in the middle of the day and kills the WSL process. It still has magically resetting settings so if you are not careful telemetry/ads/spying will be back on the menu. It still has hostile settings to keep your computer connected when it sleeps which are very hard to turn off.
There are multiple settings in Windows that are hidden which only appear in the menu when you add a registry entry. There are so many anti-patterns in Windows it feels like defending against a determined hacker who tries to make your life worse and is hunting for a slight misstep to turn the shit back on.
Group Policy Edit is the way to restrict many things. Disabling automatic updates helps. I have had forced reboots very rarely, I believe that were severe vulnerability fixes.
But my use case is never 24/7, I hibernate it overnight and every time I leave for longer than going to a grocery shop, and I have several Proxmox boxes with proper OSes for hosting stuff. Windows + WSL is my dev/media/web/files/OneDrive machine, a compact silent SFF box that is powerful enough for 90+% of my daily tasks. Lately I try Linux Desktop on Fedora/Ubuntu with every major version, however RDP server and secure boot that I can trust to work and not break myself - these things remain unsatisfactory.
I disabled auto updates by pinning the target version in group policy and then finding some hacks on the web to make it always ask before download. I've run many other random scripts and then found Windhawk to remove more annoyances (taskbar and sections of start menu).
I then shut down more things and disabled Bluetooth on lock. It is now usable and doesn't crash but feels very fragile. I will soon face dilemma of allowing "feature" updates or be out of security ones.
I’m generally skeptical of Windows optimization tools because they tend to change a lot of low-level settings and make troubleshooting harder later on. When someone already has a broken system, it’s often difficult to figure out what’s wrong once a tool like this has touched everything.
This one looks more like a PowerShell automation and debloating script for power users than a classic one-click optimizer, but it still requires knowing exactly what each tweak does. Used without that understanding, tools like this can easily create confusing problems.
With Windows you don't troubleshoot issues. You nuke the system, and run the optimizations again.
Don't forget to test the drive and memory before you really get started.
Oh am I doing it wrong by having an 8yr old w10 install that ive moved over 3 computers?
That's actually amazing. First I shudder to think of all the cruft in that install. Leftover registry settings from 2015 on. But second kudos for being able to do that. I've tried and failed about 5 times in my life at moving a windows install to another computer since Windows 95 days. I didn't think it was at all possible.
This is what I learnt back in like 2004.
Glad to see it's still in use.
It was more-or-less true with Windows 3.1 (and likely earlier). Some people could correct some problems by modifying the various configuration files, but most didn't. One of the ironies is that I, as a rabid OS/2 user, managed to get a job managing Windows 3.1 systems since I was one of the few candidates who understood how to do so.
When Windows 95 entered the picture, such wipe-and-reinstall antics were pretty much standard for all but trivial problems. Even then people would usually live with those problems, though a handful of people would be able to go in and fix them. Of course, Microsoft has introduced some functionality over the years to mitigate such drastic measures, but they tend to be variations of the same theme (e.g. restore points rolling back changes, rather than going in to fix what is broken).
Tweaks are divided into essential and advanced. The essential ones shouldn't have any negative impact on the system. They also document the changes each tweak makes (so you can undo them): https://winutil.christitus.com/dev/.
I think the issue is a bit out of the author's control, where tools like this are word of mouth advertised as 'one simple trick' by geeks to a broad audience to fix what they see as wrong with windows. People love convenience and adding "oh by the way, make sure you read/understand the docs first" rarely happens. I think it's part of the move for computing to being appliances that ongoing maintenance isn't seen as needed
> When someone already has a broken system...
To be fair, this tool doesn't claim to fix a broken system; as near as I can tell it doesn't actually remove the underlying Windows installation, so the core problem will remain.
Sounds like a fun fan fiction crowd sourcing project. Have some coding agent rewrite windows from scratch. We can all throw some money/tokens at it periodically to keep it going. It should have a live video stream where it narrates and visualizes the state of affairs. Like a soap opera for nerds. In the end a single exe comes out.
Oh man, we need also incorporate a lean and agile iterative approach, where everyone need to participate in sprint planning. Imagine having to fit in all the necessary sprint items and how to choose between them!
And in the end of each sprint a single exe comes out. Or multiple. Like a soap opera for product managers.
Little computer people was awesome[0]. Upscale it to a full size microsoft office[3]. Give agents neck bearded avatars with green hair named after real employees except from legal, there everyone is a pirate. Make it so that one can zoom in on everything and follow the cringe worthy dialog in overloaded sprint-planners that some~how work out. Take style pointers from KRAZAM Microservices[12] and gar1t's "Nodejs is bad ass rockstar tech"[44]
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkTgX1mGmDg
[3] - https://officesnapshots.com/2014/11/18/microsoft-redmond-bui...
[12] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ
[44] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzkRVzciAZg
Start with ReactOS and go from there.
Even though he is sending mixed messages, it is clearly stated that misuse may break the system. The other nice thing about going the PowerShell automation route is the ability to see what was done and reverse particular changes (assuming you can track down which change broke things). That's in start contrast to the binary-only utilities I've seen in the past, where you're pretty much stuck trusting the vendor's claims.
You really hit the nail on the head.
in conclusion:
>still requires knowing exactly what each tweak does. Used without that understanding, tools like this can easily create confusing problems.
Which I have always taken as extreme encouragement to use performance-improving setting configuations, and therefore gain the understanding to do so effectively.
If I can do it, anybody can, I'm no engineer.
With this approach in mind it makes the Titus offerings show a remarkable amount of superiority.
As another commenter has noted, 2022 is just when his Utility was beginning to get noticed.
It is being kept up-to-date with Windows 11 as it evolves.
> troubleshooting
I tried that. The advice was to reinstall. Then I remembered that this is the convention with Windows -- when it stops working, reinstall...
I guess I'm in the minority. I haven't reinstalled on my desktop machine since 2014 according to the install dates of some of my apps. According to the Windows Registry I've gone from 7 Pro -> 8.1 Pro -> 10 Pro. Both upgrades happened in 2015 and since then I've just stayed up to date with the latest 10 Pro build.
I will be switching to Linux before the ESU program expires though. I use my desktop mostly for gaming and have been planning to evaluate a few distros and desktop environments. I have my own Proxmox/TrueNAS/Debian homelab and use macOS daily for work so I'm fine with the CLI and tinkering but I'd rather everything Just Works™ for my gaming machine. I did a lot of dual booting back in the Fedora[ Core] 6-12 days but ultimately it got too tedious.
I would say that the reason Windows issues are commonly treated as "reinstall it" is because most Windows installs are on corporate PCs. Most of the time, it's not worth spending the time trying to troubleshoot someone's gnarly OS issue when you can fix it in an hour by reimaging. There are exceptions, of course, but most of the time the business just wants that employee back to work ASAP, rather than doing the troubleshooting work.
Yes, before corporate even had a widespread imaging approach, it could be seen this was the way to go.
For decades I clean install Windows to a new PC one time, and that's about it for true "installs".
Then don't get in a hurry, it's my personal computer and I plan to be using it smoothly for a number of years to come.
So spend "a few" hours tweaking and adjusting settings, and this always takes ridiculously longer with each Windows version, but that's table stakes if you want to participate in a mainstream way without all the mainstream drawbacks.
Ideally of course without ever going on the internet, and then comprehensively back up the system before doing anything else.
Any valuable data is also never allowed to be routinely stored on the C: volume, that's what other partitions are for besides merely multibooting.
What's on C: should always be a minimal number of gigabytes, you have to take some kind of action or the defaults will work against you, massively. People can be misled that no attention is required and C: will be fine.
C: is best restricted to a highly-replaceable OS, containing in addition any programs you decide to install afterward, but none of the user data which is very worth the effort to carefully direct elsewhere at every opportunity.
So after I finish installing and configuring the desired programs, then another comprehensive backup is made.
Before it has even handled any valuable user data yet.
This is Windows, you can't take any chances :\
Then later, in situations when others would best re-install but with the typical hesitation, I boot to a different partition, zero the volume formerly known as C: while it is then dormant, followed by recovery of the (tweaked) bare OS backup, or using the image from when the apps and settings were also completely like I wanted.
Obviously programs that are not robust enough to withstand offline recovery from backup are too garbagey to include in a well-crafted backup image. You can't usually find this out without testing your backups in advance. It would be good before the backups are desperately needed if an emergency were to arise.
With basically minimal disaster preparation (but careful hours by necessity), you may never actually need to do a true "re-install" ever again, just recover from backup instead, and without hardly any hesitation at all. Sometimes more than once a day, in minutes. Rather than hours, which with Windows 11 the hours can now really add up and are sometimes best spread over more than one session :\
In that case it would be nice if calendar days were not required to manually get it like you could do with Windows 95 in minutes. I'm not even talking about gaming.
After all that effort I know how tiring it can be. Even more reason to back up your work before doing anything else, and test the backups routinely. Which is another whole session or two. I know it's the complete opposite of mainstream behavior, but it can really allow you to participate a lot more effectively in the long run.
I know, I know, who tests their backups anyway and why would they start now?
For consumers, routine rapid recovery has been effectively de-emphasized for decades since plenty of users respond to Windows failure by purchasing a new PC, which is crafted to be a more simplified and familiar procedure as long as they can afford it.
And it's really not the worst tragedy if they think they screwed up their own computer so bad they needed a new one, if it makes them be more careful next time ;)
To bem fair I do the same with Linux.
I would instead suggest two things for power users: installing Windows using autounattend.xml[1], and secondly visiting the mass graves to turn your Windows install into Enterprise (or, if you can wrangle it, get an Education licence from your academic institution/alma mater), which completely gets rid of all consumer-oriented stuff.
To be honest, I don't mind the Windows games. In fact I believe the ones shipped with XP, Vista, and 7 were top-notch. What I mind is games with annoying advertisements in them. I mind when my Weather program is not native and is a glorified web app, also ridden with advertisements.
[1]: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
What do you mean by consumer-oriented stuff?
I'm typing this on my company azure ad integrated windows 11. The system info says it's windows 11 enterprise 25h2.
My start menu still has multiple random xbox crap in there, game bar (what even is that?!), "game mode", "solitaire and casual games". It shows random ads in the weather app. It invites me to do more with a microsoft account, even though the computer is fully azure ad joined and my windows session is an azure ad account with some expensive office365 licence attached.
Before reinstalling the other day for unrelated reasons, I had actually tried to add that account. Turns out it doesn't work with a "work or school" account, it requires the personal one, but it doesn't say it clearly, only that "something went wrong".
I honestly don't see any difference when compared to my personal windows install I use for the occasional game and Lightroom / Photoshop.
Fresh installs of Enterprise do not have any of the extra garbage on the start menu. It's just a few Office apps, Edge, and Explorer.
Your Windows install probably started as Pro and then was changed to an Enterprise license key later.
My enterprise start menu has a entry for MSN.com which rotates between pictures and headlines you would find on TMZ.
Why MS feels the Kardashians should be in my start menu, I don't know.
You're not supposed to know or care :(
Microsoft certainly doesn't.
I suspect you'll additionally need to make some GPO changes so that things like Game Bar, Xbox, and Copilot are disabled.
> I mind when my Weather program
is changed into a stock ticker and tabloid news cornucopia... dagnabbit, I know where to get those, I just want the weather info.
"They have no taste" was right.
This should have a (2022) in the title, which begs the question: is this still a relevant tool for de-shittifying Windows 11, or is it limited to 10?
(Asking as I don't have a Windows box of any kind around to test, as I'm not a masochist and therefore all of my machines run Linux or macOS)
https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil - That's what you're looking for. Kept updated for latest Windows 11
Don't know if 2022 is needed since this seems to be an evergreen page for an actively developed tool (last update was 3 weeks ago).
https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/releases/tag/25.12...
It's not clear from the linked page, which seems to have been last updated in 2022, aside from user comments asking for support. Thank you for the clarification!
I just built a homeserver with a decent GPU, too.
I setup both a Windows and Linux VM and give them both the EXACT config from the hypervisor, including GPU passthrough and CPU Host.
The Linux VM runs faster in some games designed for Windows, running on Proton.
I read somewhere that Microsoft admitted Windows is bloated. Which surprised me since I didn't think anyone in the top 150 of Microsoft even knew Windows still existed, but it's a step in the right direction.
This was the first time in 10 years using Windows again, I wanted to play nice and pulled the MS Windows license key from my laptops firmware and used that to get a legitimate copy going. It worked!
Then Windows hit me in the face: because I went the legitimate way they downgraded me to Windows Home and I can't use Remote Desktop.
This got a good laugh out of me. God this software is so hostile to you.
Isn't the ultimate Windows utility called Linux? Or MacOS?
I’ve been using O&O Shutup10++.
It seems to work OK: it didn’t break anything, and disabled some Windows annoyances but not all.
It’s closed source so I don’t fully trust it, but I’m not keeping anything sensitive.
Is there any info on the impact of such tools, like do they have any specific performance improvements (startup time, memory use)? How much Gb of bloat is actually removed?
You can visualize performance using Windows' built-in Performance Monitor.
It's not a comparison app, but you can check different resources in detail both before and after disabling un-needed features.
Disk activity is one of the things reported in real time, as well as memory usage, but the Gb of bloat on the OS drive is not a consideration.
Inhibiting things which are useless to you from occupying memory, may be less than 1 Gb but may still be worth it, but that is different than disk drive bloat which can really get massively out-of-hand.
Drive Gb is expected to grow with each additional program you install, but further drive bloat has often dwarfed that as preinstalled apps have proliferated, written by those who do not have experience using limited resources to a serious degree of efficiency.
And then after non-security updates became mandatory, each year this lack of professional experience has an accelerating impact across-the board, and by now you are expected to accomodate a dozen or more gigabytes than last year.
And both Windows 10 and Windows 11 were more functional in some ways than a year ago too.
Cut back on memory waste by keeping things from loading until an event when you yourself really need it.
Cut back on drive bloat by uninstalling things you know you are never going to need.
While I appreciate the efforts... I find the UX to be pretty bad and not easy to reason with.
UniGetUI is better
This genre is for those who would rather cope with abuse than confront it.
It's not, but please enlighten us, what is exactly confronting the abuse here?
Writing your own OS?
In 2025, we have so many OSes to choose from that don’t have to be de-bulked of tumors. Linux, BSD, Redox, OSX… nowhere to go but up from win11.
Can we please have someone make and maintain a safe, good, minimal and reliable Windows distribution like Alpine Linux?
Funny you should mention Linux.
Isn't that pretty much Windows IoT LTSC?
There are even more minimal Windows versions, but easy, convenient, legal distribution is kind of tricky
That is what you're looking at.
Any more than this you get sued for distributing MS owned code.
> Can we please have someone make and maintain a safe, good, minimal and reliable Windows distribution like Alpine Linux?
First: "safe" and Windows never ever matched. Not in Windows 98, not in Millenium, not in Vista. Not ever.
I, reluctantly, after having confiscated my mother-in-law's Windows laptop and replacing it with a Chromebook about two years ago (which still works fine for her btw), ordered her a new desktop PC six months ago, running Windows 11.
Six months.
Six months is all it took for this piece of shit to become infected to the point of being unusable. Malware over malware took over: whatever 0-click or 1-click exploit in Edge that took over the machine and tells her to call indian scam center to help her "get her PC rid of viruses", blinking left and right, covering half the screen.
In other words: good old Windows. It's 20-fucking-25, nearly 26, and Microsoft still cannot ship an OS that's not rooted when a grandma is browsing for less than six months.
Pathetic.
Windows is a mediocre piece of insecure (and now spying) turd.
I fully agree with you: reliable Linux distros are the Windows replacement.
And as we've reached a point where everyone except some part of the corporate world can do everything they need from an Android smartphone and these same people are just fine with a Linux distro on their laptop or desktop, people can be switched. And some are. And the numbers of "desktop Linux" users are slowly but surely growing.
I don't care about the snarky "2026 is the year of Linux on the desktop". Linux conquered everything: all the servers, all the routers, 500 of the world top 500 supercomputers, etc. Linux shall conquer the laptop and the desktop too.
And those who don't switch have two choices: MacOS (pricey hardware) or be slaves to that turdery on bits that Windows is.
P.S: actually I don't even care: be it Linux or MacOS or BeOS or Atari's TOS: anything but Microsoft.
Windows security is just fine. The problem is that many users are willing to uncritically install anything they get asked to, even to the point of directly installing malware when "Microsoft support" contacts them asking them to do so. Absolutely nothing about Linux or any other general purpose OS protects against this threat vector, and if Linux had the market share Windows does you would be saying the exact same stuff about your grandma getting rootkits on her Ubuntu box. Mobile devices protect against this scenario by not trusting the user and heavily restricting what apps can do, but that's not a good model for a general purpose computer.
> if Linux had the market share Windows does you would be saying the exact same stuff about your grandma getting rootkits on her Ubuntu box
To some extent. I am not convinced it would be as bad.
For one thing, Linux is less of a monoculture.
For another, you can lock it down more for that type of user. You can set it up to make it hard to install anything from outside trusted repos.
You can lock down Windows too, you can restrict it to Windows Store only, you can allow only whitelisted apps to be installed, you can lock down user permissions, ...
Can you please sell me your infected grandma machine for $100k? I want to get that 0-click from it and sell it for $1M to a vulnerability broker.
I even offer to hire your gradma, she seems really good at locating very valuable 0-days online.
My mother is almost 80, bless her heart.
I gave her an iPad Owh, 10 years ago? And I’ve never had to troubleshoot her system ever again. No spyware. No viruses. Nothing.
The worst that happened recently is that the Starlink antenna had te be realigned after a particularly heavy wind blew it off the roof almost. Oh and her printer needed new toners after printing for x years without problems.
Printer model?
Why, you want to buy a new printer?
If you want inkjets, buy those with ink tanks. More expensive up front, but operating cost is so cheap. And no more "you have to replace a whole cartridge just because Magenta is low"; if Magenta is low, buy a bottle of Magenta, and fill.
For laser printers, buy those whose toner cartridges are separate from the drum, and those whose toner cartridges can be reset mechanically. And refillable.
My go-to brand for printers is Brother, btw.
A classic that's still true:
https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-...
Mine is... 15+ years old? I replaced the toner once. And it doesn't have Ethernet or WiFi, so I bought Printopia for my iMac (to which it's attached) to enable AirPrint.
Safe and computing never ever matched.
Safe and living also doesn't match.
We created computing to be fast, not safe. We could have made it safe, but we didn't, it was not a priority.
We can't say the same about living, because we have not created living.
Your comment makes zero sense.