Windows 11 Cleanup/Configuration Script(s)?
I'm doing a long overdo computer update (new CPU, mobo, and RAM), and am going to be reinstalling windows for the first time in a while. My current system is still on Win10 due to incompatiblity with Win11, however I wouldn't have updated to Win11 until now anyway. I have Win11 on a Surface Pro and with recent updates adding features that match my existing muscle memory better (such as allowing expanded window buttons and putting Start on the left), I'm not as resistant to installing Win11 on my new hardware. I have access to the Education version of Win11 which after some research looks like it's basically Windows Enterprise and that itself seems like a big feature since it shouldn't come with a lot of the bloat apps already.
With that in mind I have few questions:
- Does anyone have a PowerShell script they've put together to run on a fresh Windows 11 install that configures a lot of the settings to make it behave more like Win10 (and it's predecessors), toggles privacy settings on, etc. I am not looking for something that tries to strip anything out, I just want something that will save me time chasing down all the settings I've slowly found and adjusted on my Surface. I have the default folders like Pictures and Documents pointed to a drive on a seperate drive from my Windows drive specifically to make migrating to a new installation easier. I'd love something that prompts me to update where those shortcuts should point as well.
- Does anyone have any protips for getting the bulk of programs I need installed? I looked at Winget and Chocolatey a couple years ago, but they didn't quite look as fuss free as I was looking for. I generally avoid installing things from the Microsoft app store (which I understand would make this easier if I was willing to lean more into the Microsoft ecosystem). I'd love something (script based or otherwise) that's going to grab and install the program (rather than app) for a list of things like Firefox, Spotify, Steam, Miniconda, etc. I plan to make a list of programs I have installed that I know I will want to reinstall before doing the fresh install, but I'm making a plan to make installing everything as easy as possible. If there's a reliable script based way to install like 80% of my main programs I'd be thrilled to only have to track down and install more specialized stuff.
- Any general advice for transfering my browser data? I use Firefox, am signed in to an account, and think I have everything set to sync. However I'd love to bring over all my browser tabs and windows I'm still working in. I did look up how to transfer the browser data and found a Mozilla article for it, just wasn't sure if anyone had a method they discovered and like better.
Thanks in advance for tips and advice.
Super quick thoughts before I go to bed:
Most of those scripts/programs tend to fall to scope creep and end up breaking windows features or changing settings more based on the authors opinions than real "necessities". Assuming they're not a form of bloatware themselves as many are.
Working in IT and going down the same rabbit holes in the past, I've found the more I lean into "screw it I'll just use this how they want me to use it now" instead of clinging to old habits and customizations the happier I've been. When privacy specifically is a concern, I use OS's and software designed for privacy.
Takes about 20 minutes to make it through every top level Windows setting and know it's configured just how you like it, any settings buried further away often risk breaking things if you don't fully understand it or being reverted the next time you auto update without realizing it.
I've also used the website "Ninite" for quite a few years for downloading the newest version of common software on new PC's that I don't care to do custom installs on. Saves a good chunk of time.
Lastly, and I say this only in the context of my IT support experiences, please start using bookmarks and folders as intended instead of keeping tabs open forever lol. It will be better organized, greatly reduce your risk of data loss, and your computer will thank you. ;)
Not IT but I do agree with your post.
I used to go changing the registry in Windows and checking every update for new "features" to turn off, but my mental health is better for not doing it when I don't need to care so much. If I did, I'd get tailos or something.
With that in mind, the small amount I do still do is mashing "no" to personalised ad collection during install, because much like websites that try to profile me, I don't really want my OS to. And it's never bothered me since I turned it off at install.
I agree about how those programs to de-bloat and decapitate the Windows data collection hydra are often kind of bad, but rather than just sitting back and dealing with it, I think it's probably better to just toss out Windows altogether. For me personally, the small changes they made to the UI with 11 ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back and right now the only Windows installation I have is a virtualized unlicensed copy I can use to show kids how to do things that are Windows specific or to walk through something where the tooling is significantly different.
I think this position is getting more and more popular; a recent LGR review of a modern PC had Clint revealing that his editing PC has been replaced with a Mac Studio because of his frustrations with modern Windows. While any given Linux distro won't give a better experience than MacOS for a lot of people, Wine and Proton work on it better than it does on MacOS so it might actually offer a better transition in that respect.
That being said, it doesn't sound like that suggestion would really work for OP.
Believe me, I have thought long and hard about just jumping to Ubuntu or something. My hangup is a lot of my work relies on basically the whole Office Suite and the web apps are insufficient. I'll happily do so the day I'm able to, but for now it's still too much of a headache. đ
You might want to try spinning up a VM and trying it. One of Wineâs primary goals is (or at least was in the past) making Office work 100%. I donât know how well it will work with the latest versions but itâs worth a try.
I donât know if Iâd really recommend Ubuntu anymore. It actually seems less stable than Debian these days, from my completely anecdotal experience as someone who doesnât daily drive it anymore.
I think the biggest thing holding a lot of people back from Linux is the fact that thereâs no DE that makes a best effort to closely resemble Windows of various eras. Correctly configured KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, and LXQt can get kinda-close-ish, but are still more unique/quirky than especially non-technical users are comfortable with. In fact my theory is that they might actually be worse for that type of switcher than macOS is, because where macOS just isnât Windows and doesnât try to be, a lot of Linux DEs fall into an âuncanny valleyâ of sorts.
I also think that a Windows-clone DE would make Linux a much easier sell. âRemember having to reluctantly give up Windows 7? Install this Linux and youâll get to keep it as long as you like!"
I seem to remember KDE had a theme in the 2.x or versions that was an almost perfect replica of Windows 9x.
But I think that nobody wants to exactly clone Windows for fear of litigation.
For older releases (Win9x/2k, probably XP) danger of litigation is probably pretty low at this point. Probably true for 7 too, given how much popular design language has changed.
Regardless, if one wanted to be safe thereâs tricks that could be used. For newer releases where the look/feel is more intricate, it wouldnât be that difficult to design new themes that that carry the spirit/feel/general impression of Luna, Aero, etc without being 1:1 copies, and if you design the DEâs apps, settings panels, etc to use metrics (sizing, spacing, fonts, etc) similar to those of Windows, then users can then apply third party 1:1 clone themes to get a âtrueâ experience if they so wish to do so.
A bunch of original UI artwork would need to be created anyway to support HiDPI displays so might as well take the opportunity to bake in just enough originality to reduce chances of litigation.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I appreciate the feedback as I was hoping someone with an IT background might have something helpful up their sleeve. I definitely share your concern and made this post looking for resources that weren't the ones aimed at doing too much so speak. After a night of sleep I realized I'm almost looking for something that's basically a glorified setting toggle checklist to walk me through configuring features I might or might not want.
I had forgotten about Ninite so thank you for reminding me of that resource!
In regard to:
You're certainly not the first and likely won't be the last. đ I've worked hard to learn new browser hygiene to reduce tab and window hoarding such as routinely purging tabs and windows I am finished with. I've realized that my brain wants to interact with a browser very similar to how I work on a table. I'm not sure if it's an ADHD behavior or just personality, I generally have to spread work out to keep track of everything and can't put things away until the project is finished without adding significant time to getting started again. So browser windows tend to house different "workspaces" and if I shuffle them into bookmarks I'll lose track of what's still something I'm actively working on. I do have lots of bookmarks for stuff I want to be able to find again, but haven't found a good system for managing and organizing different workspace windows that doesn't add a lot of psychological overhead for getting started again. Definitely open for advice if you've learned any tricks there.
I can kind of understand this as modern Windows is heavily anti user and creates massive amounts of friction for users who try to make it less bad for themselves and going with the flow pushes that out of sight.
Trying to fight with such a fundamental sw platform as os can be pretty draining but unfortunately there are not enough people in aggregate willing to move to alternatives to stop the anti user direction. Personally I use it when I have to.
I work in IT, but I customize whatever OS I'm using heavily, and have been known to horde tabs.
It's unlikely I am going to change at this point.. however I concede that it is a huge waste of time. Thankfully my PC is powerful enough to handle all the tabs I throw at it.
On installing software-
Winget on the command line isnât awful these days either. Make sure you start the prompt (I recommend Terminal) as admin if youâre doing upgrade âall
Take a look at the Win11debloat powershell script. Its primary focus is to remove unnecessary bloatware that comes with Windows - so not what you're asking for, but there are also a bunch of options to restore Windows 10 like behaviour and UI settings, such as adjusting the Taskbar or restoring the old context menu. Just run it in manual mode, so that you're prompted for each change the script can make and select no for everything you don't want to be done.
That looks pretty close to what I've been looking for regarding easily adjusting settings. Thank you very much!
Fair warning, late last year there were a bunch of reports of people using similar software (winutil's Microwin in particular) to disable Windows Recall, resulting in them breaking their File Explorer. I can't find any info on if the same issue existed or exists when using Win11debloat to do the same though. There aren't any issues for it on their Gitlab, so I presume it's safe. But even so, you might want to create a system state backup before you do anything with debloat just to be safe.
I've used it on a fresh windows install with most options enabled about a week ago, and it didn't break anything I've noticed. But admittedly I haven't been using Windows a lot recently.
You're welcome. :))
I would recommend checking out O&O ShutUp, didn't see anyone else mention it and it's been pretty good so far for me. I also use StartAllBack currently, but I will admit it can be a bit finicky (for example, for me it removed fuzzy search which can be annoying at times).
https://privacy.sexy/
This website has a bunch of scripts that are organized really well. You can select which ones you you want and it will build a script with all of them in it.
It also has the option to create an undo script.
Has Windows, Mac and Linux scripts
Has notes on what you might break with some of the scripts - you can decide if what the script breaks is worth the privacy benefit.
I found this a few months ago, possibly here on Tildes.
I haven't used any of the scripts yet, but I plan on testing some in the future. I also agree with others that there is always the risk of breaking things if you go too far.
Me and multiple friends have used this several times for the past at least 6 months. Works really well and you can see what yourâre about to run as well as make a «un-do» script to pair.
I would make an un-do script until youâve tested everything you need works, especially if you go outside the standard. Itâs quick to break some third party application that needs something stupid to function (like the battle.net launcher..)
I highly recommend scoop over choco, especially in locked down enterprise environments. All the installs are contained to your user and it's a bit simpler and thus more robust.
Here is how I configure Windows:
https://github.com/chapmanjacobd/computer/tree/main/.github/Windows
But I focus more on the CLI so the above link might not be 100% applicable but if you get used to nushell switching between Windows and Linux is a breeze. It basically turns into the same platform
Chris Titus's script might be what you're looking for. It handles de-bloating as well as common software installations.
https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
Here's the overview / readme:
https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil?tab=readme-ov-file#readme
side note: startallback is great.
what do you actually want to remove? Enterprise doesnât have most / any of the crap found in the other versions. there might be stuff in the start menu, but startallback replaces that and the taskbar with superior versions.
I can't recommend any specific all-in-one does-everything script. I've tried a lot of them. I can't recommend any mainly for the reasons people have mentioned above. They're usually too heavy-handed. What I can recommend is Winaero Tweaker to manually change these settings.
Anyone remember PowerToys from like windows 95? This is basically that. A GUI for a bunch of group policies and registry edits that make windows better.
PowerToys still exists. I use it on Win 10 and it's great. My favorite feature of it is FancyZones for separating my ultra-wides into three distinct zones (left half, right half, and a 1920x1080 size section in center) that I can then snap windows to.
For #2 I use scoop. Scoop doesn't mess with the base system and installs the portable versions of the programs by default. I always configure it to install programs on a custom folder and drive that is outside the Windows folder structure nonsense. I recommend using Scoop, but set up a custom installation folder before you even install Scoop. I don't have the links that taught me how to do that, but I'm sure you can find them. It is just a matter of setting up some environment variables beforehand, and Windows even has a GUI for that. Scoop works well and doesn't try to change how Windows works, it merely allows you to install a bunch of programs at once in a way that is the least likely to cause problems. Chocolatey makes it very hard to do that, and is also way more complex. Add some extra buckets (repos) to scoop for even more programs and you are good to go. You should probably avoid the bucket for Windows internal components, as I don't like the idea of scoop interacting directly with the operating system, but the other buckets are reliable. Some programs don't like being portable though, such as Firefox for example. I install it the regular way. You may also update all your scoop programs with a single command. Make sure to install the scoop-search package (
$ scoop install scoop-search) to search programs faster.Most things you are describing can be done with Chris Titus' Winutil. It is an excellent open source Powershell script that launches a GUI. It has a Winget frontend, a privacy page that uses things like O&O Shutup Win11 and a page with handy shortcuts among other things. The Winget frontend does exactly what you describe: you can select programs from a list and click install. I am fairly sure you can also import and export lists.
I am surprised that others haven't mentioned it yet, because it includes many of the recommendations in one handy package and it seems to be what you are looking for.