What does HackerNews think of Debloat-Windows-10?
A Collection of Scripts Which Disable / Remove Windows 10 Features and Apps
It just seems to remove a lot of security modules, out of all the bloat out there why would I want to just remove the sec modules? Also it now adds an option to include those, so all in all, it then removes:
- Some APPX and UWP applications
- Logging of Network Configuration
- Microsoft Edge and WebView
- Restore Points and System Reset
- Telemetry
- Windows Error Reporting
- Windows Updates
- Hyper-V and VBS
- Background Apps
- Disk Defragmentation
- User Account Control (UAC)
I can use https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 and https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 and https://www.oo-software.com/en/ooappbuster to do most of the debloating and telemetry tasks.
I don't see the point of removing
- Disk Defragmentation (how much does this even affect general usage?)
- UAC (?)
- Hyper-V (since this is an optional feature anyway)
- Edge (it's not that bad once the telemetry is removed from it, sleeping tabs are very good)
- System Restore Points (haven't they ever bricked a system?)
All are pretty useful, and we end up using them one way or the other
I also took a look at their scripts: https://docs.atlasos.net/troubleshooting/scripts/ ; nothing that interesting and seems to be there just to troubleshoot/fix issues caused by Atlas.
If you use VSCode don't forget telemetry is enabled by default.
Here is how to disable it: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/telemetry
I refuse to touch any Windows 10 machine that did not go through this:
https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10
https://gist.github.com/gvlx/b4d4c5681900ca965276fc5c16fe852...
(Warning: Use at your own risk)
Here is a great experiment you can do. Use an app like for example Netbalancer that can show you bandwidth use per app. Launch your locally installed PowerPoint. Note I am not talking about Office 365 but a locally installed Office component. Start some internal presentation to your fellow workers, just presenting, no editing or creating a new presentation. Amaze yourself at it sends data to Microsoft at the rate of 4 to 5 MB/s. Yeah...just try it.
1. Use Chocolatey (winget is still new). You can setup everything via it, and I mean everything - node, postgre, docker, vscode, all browsers, selenium and drivers etc.
2. Learn Powershell, but learn it really good. Adopt PowerShell build system Invoke-Build
3. Install better terminal - ConEmu or Windows terminal
4. Enrich Windows using FOSS and cross platform tools: choco install copyq, flameshot, less, fzf, paint.net, git, tortoisegit, winscp, kitty, screentogif, sysinternals, wiztree, gsudo, lockhunter, signal, viber, slack
5. Disable Windows Defender and use some debloater (controversial, but I do it, and system is at least x2-x5 faster). I use https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 along with ShutUp10 tool.
6. Install the best search engine in the world: cinst everything
Enjoy, its awesome.
I do have ample personal experience - when government web server was randomly dropping from 2k req/s to 2 req/s we disabled defender and from there we had continuous 2k req/s. I have seen this literary hundreds of times. Not sure why people install AV on servers but its common in banks and similar. On home computers its even worst. I witnessed new laptop computer with 2 AVs - defender + something vendor installed like mcafe. It was so slow that while typing letters appeared 1/s.
AVs inject themselves on number of places and do all kind of "funky" stuff. All power users should disable that junk. You have other means to protect yourself. If you are grandma, sure, go for it, but grandma will not run "Reclaim Windows10" from github gist, no ?
Context is everything. It certainly doesn't justify above comment claiming "DO NOT DO THIS!!!" on HN. Its utter nonsense. We are here to talk about hacking things by definition. Power users customize their OS, not the other way around. Its pity that MS doesn't provide minimal OS (like Linux OS's usually do) but the first thing I do is not run single script like Reclaim, but dozen of such scripts and my healthy nervous system thanks me all the time because benefits are huge and minuses are minor and fixable.
If anything, we need more projects like that, more polished, more documented, more maintained. My personal fav so far is [1]
Buy any consumer machine with Windows 10 and it comes with so much pre-loaded doodoo, that it takes a couple hours to purge it down to the basics. In fact, so much so, that there are a myriad of scripts to help do this [0].
For instance, it's not straightforward to take a database or XLS document of users and transform that into an Active Directory implementation.
Here is a tool that would help with that: https://github.com/dsccommunity/ActiveDirectoryDsc
Normally you would need to run this on a Windows machine ... but now I am excited at the thought of using it from my mac.
I'm in the middle of doing a rollout of new network infrastructure, VPN, Firewall appliance, Hyper-V hosts, Active Directory, O365 sync, File storage, etc... for small/medium sized business. I am primarily a software/ops consultant, so I like to build infrastructure 'as data' and then use that data to assert the real thing. IE, terraform apply.
tl;dr – with cross platform we're closer to bringing modern ops tools into Windows land which is exciting. WSL is useful when you are on a Win box, but if you are trying to build infra from Linux/macOS you are struggling.
Here is a big list of powershell crap I have starred recently on Github:
- https://github.com/dsccommunity/ActiveDirectoryDsc (linked above)
- https://github.com/rmbolger/Posh-ACME
- https://github.com/DrEmpiricism/Optimize-Offline (not relevant to cross platform)
- https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 (not relevant to cross platform)
iwr https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1 | iex
cinst -y totalcommander copyq neovim vscode firefox everything sysinternals nirlauncher smplayer vlc git tortoisegit conemu 7zip paint.net dngrep dbeaver
Update-SessionEnvironment
git clone https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10
ls Debloat-Windows-10/scripts/*.ps1 | % { . $_ } # YMVV
git clone https://github.com/majkinetor/powershell_profile.d
gc powershell_profile.d/setup -raw | iex
code --install-extension ms-vscode.PowerShell ...
Install-Module PSWindowsUpdate
# repeat this as long as needs restart
Install-WindowsUpdate -AcceptAll
Restart-Computer
source: configured windows10 manually once, decided i'd like to never experience that particular circle of hell again
This should not exist and yet it does: https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10
[1] https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 [2] https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking
It's not a joke: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/01/microsoft_backports...
Uninstall apps you don't want or use a script to do it for you: https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10
Yes, you need a different script for 7 than 10
>some of the commands in the 1st PS script I found do not work anymore
use an updated script
>here are reports of some the "features" coming back after updates
That was once, it has been patched
>OneDrive is still in your face on most systems
Yes, my script (and most clones of it) remove it
>MS is making it quite hard to just cleanly remove the crap / adware / telemetry they build in
No, it's quite easy, I run one script once at install. That's the point.
>If you have a script that works well would you please mind sharing it with the rest of us.
Tron is probably the most comprehensive, personally I just use a modified version of Debloat: https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10
Just finished installing this OS. I generally enjoy MS products but this has changed my opinion. The OS isn't really any faster than 7 and the amount of road blocks I have encountered to change things to how I want them is remarkable.
I have found two great resources if anyone is in the same position as me. For Uninstalling the store bloat and disabling geo-location services and other anti-privacy I used:
1) https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10
disable-services.ps1 and disable-windows-defender.ps1
2) https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script/...
Disabled too many things to list and I'll set this up to run on restart and restrict the file write perms for security. I've used pretty much the defaults but most importantly
"DisableTelemetry", "DisableWiFiSense", "DisableSmartScreen", "DisableWebSearch", "DisableStartSuggestions", "DisableLocationTracking", "DisableFeedback", "DisableAdvertisingID", "DisableCortana", "DisableErrorReporting", "RestrictUpdateP2P", "DisableAutoLogger", "DisableDiagTrack",
3) Glasswire firewall or of your choice to monitor network connections.
I recommend you do your own script by choosing what you want from each type of script. I would release my script if I was sure it wouldn't break random people's computers, because IT WILL. I'm also running Windows 10 enterprise because I want as little telemetry and things shoved up my ass as possible.
Some Windows updates can change registry keys or disable certain policies. I monitor the commit log of other repos to know what I need to update, but they don't always cover everything. Feels like a lot of work but it's actually not.
Here's how I structured it:
- admin.ps1
--- admin-config.ps1 (policies, tweaks)
--- disable-services.ps1
--- remove-flash.ps1
--- ...
- user.ps1 calls
--- user-config.ps1
--- disable-gamedrv.ps1
--- disable-services.ps1
--- ...
Because if you're using a regular user account (like you should) you need to run 3 things:
- admin.ps1 as admin
- user.ps1 as admin
- user.ps1 as your regular user
I gave up on using runAs or any of the things recommended on stackoverflow, something always go wrong so it's easier to do it this way.
For a fresh install, I recommend that the first thing you do is update everything and let Windows install the 200 apps you don't want. Run the 3 things like I mentioned, reboot, run it again, reboot.
https://github.com/cluberti/VDI/blob/master/ConfigAsVDI.ps1 https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10/ https://github.com/dfkt/win10-unfuck https://gist.github.com/sven212/5febf372aaa6e4cc1fda71ad9637...
My installation is months old and it runs like new even after heavy usage, hardware changes, tons of apps and games installed/uninstalled (this kills Windows 7). Just be careful what you remove, don't ever install ccleaner or any shit. All you need is sysinternals tools.
I'm too lazy to proof-read/make this shorter, hope it helps somebody.
I do not intend to sell you the project. (Sell in the sense of talking you into using it. Either it's what you are looking for or you need something different. And I will not waste your valuable time if you need something different.)