15 ms·

Windows 10 Debloat Script

174 points by wsdookadr 7y ago

wsdookadr 7y ago
This will disable a number of different apps/services/features that are either useless or slow down the OS considerably. The following script is even nicer as it comes with an UI: https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater Both are written in powershell.
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  This is marginally less terrible, but it's still terrible — for example, it considers Skype "bloat" so hopefully you didn't need that! — and the list goes on as you read through the (thankfully, fewer) scripts.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    its not hard to reinstall if you actually want it, it most certainly is bloaty.
    - vitorgrs 7y ago
      It's iMessage bloat on iOS or macOS?
giancarlostoro 7y ago
I tried running this and then I remembered why I stopped tweaking Windows, I wind up running into odd issues. Windows stopped being unstable for me years ago when I stopped fidgeting with features. I'm better off disabling as much as I can through the normal settings they provide. I don't know if it's just I'm doing something wrong but it's been my experience. I would love to see Windows not take up 4 gigs of RAM out of the box. I don't need Cortana running period. Let me uninstall Cortana please Microsoft. I'm sure there's other crap I don't want but I fear if I can't just hit 'Uninstall' it wont go well, or an update will bring it back.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Yuuuup. I ran into an issue where it became completely impossible to install a .net redistributable. Basically every possible method I found to install it would fail silently. So my computer became incapable of playing a ton of video games.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > I would love to see Windows not take up 4 gigs of RAM out of the box. It... doesn't? I feel like last time I tried it was less than 2? Did you only install Windows or a ton of other things too? This is what it looks like "out of the box" after disabling memory compression and the pagefile: https://imgur.com/a/D5b8bk5 https://imgur.com/a/D5b8bk5
  - sosodev 7y ago
    I'd imagine it caches more if you have more ram
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      I've tested with a lot of RAM.
    - soganess 7y ago
      I've got 256GB and a fresh install of windows use about 4 with a few things running on startup(mostly just the amd+nvidia drivers). There is indeed some scaling with availability but with diminishing returns after probably 8/16gb of available ram. What I find more interesting is that windows still compresses and swaps on startup even with that much ram available.
      - Brian_K_White 7y ago
        Disable swap (pagefile) when you have that much ram, or even when you only have 8 or more. You lose hibernate but that's fine by me. Modern cpu and ssd cold boots pretty fast, especially if you have debloated things similar to this script. Many of the things that are pitched as beneficial, like indexing everything and caching the indexes and keeping all kinds of services alive to "quick start" other things in case you happen to want them, hibernation or sleeping instead of cold boot, etc, these are all cases of adding more crap to counter the harm from previously adding other crap. Instead of adding foofeature you don't really need, and then adding foofeatureaccelerator to try to disguise the overhead of foofeature, you can just remove both foofeature AND foofeatureaccelerator, and everything is better. Less total software to break or misbehave or serve as a security opening. Smaller disk footprint. Fewer running processes. Less ram/disk/net resources consumed. Less telemetry. Simpler total system for you to manage, and maybe actually have a hope in hell of grasping more of what all is going on with one human head. More of your resources available for the apps and services YOU actually want, whatever they are. Whoever wants Pandora, they can totally have it without it coming pre-bundled. If I want Pandora, I would rather install it than find it already built in. In fact, I DO want Pandora, but in fact, I use a 3rd party open source unofficial player. So even though I use it, it's still wrong for it to be built in.
FluffyKitty 7y ago
I have to ask, for anyone that cares this much, why bother with Windows at this point? Wouldn't it be easier to just use Linux? I know the usual argument is that you need Windows to game, but why make your gaming instance your main work instance too? Why not dual boot and use Linux for work and Windows for gaming?
- nickjj 7y ago
  Dual booting is something I used to do. It's not a fun work flow. Having to reboot (even with an SSD) is a very destructive action because it means suddenly all of your work is shut down and unless you script a way to rebuild your environment (which never works flawlessly even with a lot of effort), you'll have to set everything up again when you come back. So even if it only took 2 seconds to dual boot, you'd still have to deal with that tear down / set up process. But, it's also not just gaming that keeps people on Windows. For example I do screencast recording and editing where I record software dev related videos but the tools I use only run on Windows, and they can't be run in a VM because the thing I want to record is my dev environment (I use WSL in Windows).
  - 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
    You can hibernate both instead of cold reboot.
    - nickjj 7y ago
      Yeah that's not a bad idea. It's still a big context switch to dual boot tho. Also dumping your entire machine's RAM to disk on an SSD seems questionable for the lifespan of your SSD. That's a huge amount of writes, especially if you're dual booting a few times a day. But maybe it wouldn't matter? I haven't measured how much of an impact that would have. And in my case, it wouldn't work because I need to be able to record a Linux environment but record / edit videos in a Windows environment, so both OSs need to be running at once.
      - 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
If you’re going go to all this trouble to “debloat” Windows, why not just install Fedora/Ubuntu/PopOS/Debian/Manjaro or something? I just don’t see the point with fiddling around with little hacks trying to disable telemetry and stuff when you can just install a Linux distro and be done with it. I mean sure depending on your use case that may not be possible, but if you don’t have a certain software or hardware limitation holding you to Windows, I really don’t see why you wouldn’t just use a Linux distro.
- octosphere 7y ago
  Some people use Windows for games. Yes, I know you can run a lot of Windows games on Linux using Wine or PlayOnLinux, but some just prefer vanilla Windows. Scripts like these are great for freeing up memory and decluttering Windows 10 specifically for running games (typically offline) as connecting Windows to the Internet is generally not a good idea.
  - lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
    I get that, that’s why I said if you don’t have certain software limitations. If it’s to play games or something then I understand.
- squarefoot 7y ago
  Vendor lock-in. If the PP spent some good money for a Windows only software very specific to his job, then there's no chance to migrate: that would simply be too costly. In due time, maybe, should exist a Linux port/equivalent, the user should carefully weight the costs/benefits of say a FOSS solution that would cost zero, but would have no warranty and be community supported. (Actually isn't that extreme: support can be bought for Linux software as well) It all boils down to what the user needs from Windows; migrating to a Linux machine plus Libreoffice for document work is one thing, moving complex vertical solutions to it is a whole different story. BTW, I'm totally in favor of ditching windows for good, but 30 years of technical and cultural lock-in are hard to fight.
- davesmith1983 7y ago
fieryskiff1 7y ago
Like most "Debloat" scripts and apps, it also disables some services that result in overall less secure installation.
octosphere 7y ago
Hmm, I wonder what happens when I combine this with other popular scripts like Make Windows 10 Great Again https://gist.github.com/IntergalacticApps/675339c2b805b4c9c6e9a442e0121b1d https://gist.github.com/IntergalacticApps/675339c2b805b4c9c6... and Reclaim-Windows10 https://github.com/alirobe/Reclaim-Windows10 https://github.com/alirobe/Reclaim-Windows10 is there much overlap between all three scripts or do they all work great in tandem?
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  There is a ton of overlap and they all cargo-cult copy-paste from each other's tools, complete with "fixes" for bugs that one or the other introduces (for example, "whitelist Windows Calculator" is quite hilarious to see in the errata).
codetrotter 7y ago
This still leaves a lot of undesirable stuff on your system. Here, I prefer something like this. https://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/files/dban/dban-2.3.0/dban-2.3.0_i586.iso/download https://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/files/dban/dban-2.3.0/... Darik's Boot and Nuke — A hard drive disk wipe and data clearing utility And then download and install KDE Neon User Edition from https://neon.kde.org/download https://neon.kde.org/download KDE Neon is a Linux distro based on Ubuntu. Yes I am being a bit facetious, sorry. But I am actually curious, how many people on HN run Windows on their computers vs the number of people that run macOS, Linux or one of the BSDs?
- 2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago
  I run Windows on my personal laptop - not because I love it, but because it certainly used to have a huge strong-hold on media and games apps, which I wanted a way of consuming. I no longer game, but as I understand it, support for Linux has greatly improved. Also I used to watch Sky (UK), which is only available for Windows users (first because they were literally using Silverlight up until about a year ago, and now because its only available as an Electron app...). For my next machine I think I'll just move to Ubuntu. Having said that, looking at some of the apps I do still use (such as VPNs, Google Drive, Spotify), many of them would either work less well, or simply not work at all. It's a shame, but what can you do?
  - codetrotter 7y ago
    Spotify works fine on Linux in my experience though I mostly use Spotify on my iPhone, not on my Linux desktop but I sometimes use it there and don’t have any complaints. Linux has excellent support for VPN. VPN providers on the other hand may be bad at providing proper guidance for Linux users. In that case I suggest either switching to a VPN provider that has the guides you need, or searching for good guides made by others about how to do it with your provider of choice. Google Drive you are right about. If acceptable to you you might consider switching to Dropbox instead. Dropbox worked great on Linux last time I used Dropbox. Keep in mind that it is a good idea to pick hardware that has good Linux support. The problem for a lot of people is that they buy some random laptop without taking this into consideration, and then try to run Linux on it and might be unlucky. Personally I run Linux on my desktop with hardware that I chose specifically based on finding out that it would work. And my laptop now is a MacBook Air running macOS. Linux desktop. macOS laptop. Great combo IMO.
grenoire 7y ago
I would also like to plug O&O Shutup10 here, allows you to disable (seemingly safely, in my experience) most annoying Windowz 'features:' https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
- nickjj 7y ago
  This is what I use. It works really well.
davesmith1983 7y ago
This is interesting. I was using the ShutUp10 tool (I am not affiliated). https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 That lists what it considers "Safe" things to turn off and I generally keep to that. I would however want to try this in a VM before running it.
- 0-_-0 7y ago
  W10Privacy is another great alternative
  - XzetaU8 7y ago
    Windows Privacy Dashboard (WPD) Unlike the aforesaid two tools it supports not only Windows 10, but 7,8,8.1 as well. [1] https://wpd.app/ https://wpd.app/
Krasnol 7y ago
It's astonishing how many de-bloat scripts, tools or functions of other tools this OS spawned. That should make the developers think...if it wasn't intended and they didn't give a damn because monopoly...
- ashleyn 7y ago
  Windows has gone from operating system to value-added-service driver. No wonder they yank shit like Microsoft Store from GPOs and move others into the Enterprise level only.
- cwyers 7y ago
  People have been installing pointless and bad tune-up apps for PCs for decades. People were installing RAM doublers for Windows 95 that just changed the size of the hard disk cache. All of those registry cleaners were awful. And I'm continually shocked at how many people will just run some random Powershell script off the Internet with elevated access rights. You don't trust Microsoft, but you trust some random Github repo? 'Kay.
petepete 7y ago
I'm considering my first Windows workstation in more than a decade and was planning on Windows for Workstations precisely because I don't want to remove all the packaged crap. £300 is quite the premium though.
floatingatoll 7y ago
Do your friends a favor and never run this or any like it on their systems "for their benefit". This is a prime example of "expert user footgun problem". The phrase "debloat" is a marketing-hype word that's being used to bait you all into someone's personal view of how computers should be. Expect to be forced to reinstall Windows 10 a few days or weeks after running any such script. Whenever I tech support any of my friends, the first question I ask is "did you do expert-user things to your system?" and they say "well, I mean, I edited some Registry settings" and I just stop and tell them to reinstall Windows because it's time to amputate. I'll have to add "Have you ever opened Windows PowerShell?" to my list, because that'll catch all of these right out of the gate. In case that's not reason enough to be afraid — check out this random sampling of changes this makes! * "This script disables Windows Defender" — Because anti-malware protection is "bloat" * "Disable 'Updates are available' message" — Because you shouldn't have to be notified when security updates are available for your system, for example to address zero-day RCEs * "Windows Biometric Service" — And suddenly you can't face-login to your Windows 10 computer any longer, but hey, it's "bloat" * "Disable easy access keyboard stuff" — Because no one would ever use keyboard accessibility, that's just "bloat" * "Restoring old volume slider" — I would get that this was "debloat" if it removed the volume slider, but simply restoring an older one? * "PandoraMediaInc.29680B314EFC2", "SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic" — Hope you don't like streaming music, that's just "bloat" anyways And, consider how easily this repo could be compromised to result in you self-infecting your computer with malware by running all of these scripts without a close review of the steps they take. First step in any persistent Windows infection is to disable Windows Defender and Windows Update notifications so the user doesn't take steps that might uninstall the persistent infection. Repo does that already, so it's not like it'd be difficult.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Agreed. You are better off trying out Linux and using that if it meets your needs than breaking your system if thats an option. Or even considering using a Mac if its an option you can afford. Anything above breaking your OS.
- shawnz 7y ago
  Right... Run this script to de-bloat your computer, but also here's a list of features which will stop working afterward and we don't know why!
deleted 7y ago
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etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
I have Windows 10 LTSC running in a VM and it seems pretty bloat-free to me. Anyone else using this, any experiences? It's a free trial for 90 days too. The only thing I noticed so far was forced-auto updates and reboots...
spunch 7y ago
i'm just gonna leave this here https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script
majkinetor 7y ago
Great debloater, I use it for years, along with bunch of other developers I know. It may produce a problem here and there but its well worth it and produces lighting fast system. Highly recommended and kudos to W4RHRWK for maintaining it so long.
thelazydogsback 7y ago
Windows 10 started out snappy (boot and usage) and responsive and has remained so for me w/o changing any defaults and taking all updates -- IMHO the best Win yet. I'm sure there is bloat there, but if I don't see it, disk/ssd is cheap. (Resharper is the only beast that seems to cause issues.)
siphon22 7y ago
Funny coincidence, I recently debloated my W10 with a script as well. I saw the one in the OP during my search, but ultimately didn't go with it as it didn't look legit to me compared to another one that I found mentioned in a article guide. Used this one: https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater This one does not affect anything to do with Windows Update and any important system stuff from my experience.
- ohazi 7y ago
  I like this one: https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst :-)
  - siphon22 7y ago
    What's the Linux hack/solution to changing the battery charging thresholds? I really enjoy that feature with this W10/Laptop right now. Battery has been at 75% for the last two days, so it's not charging and just being sustained while my laptop is running entirely from the plugged in charger unless I'm mistaken. I really enjoy that. Windows also seems to have gotten much better at power efficiency overall.
    - ohazi 7y ago
      There's a utility called TLP that can get you most of the way there. It's not perfect, but I've found it useful on the newer thinkpads with dual batteries (one embedded + one removable). https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-ma... https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/TLP https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/TLP
jclay 7y ago
I was surprised to find on a recent reinstall of Windows 10 that it no longer included the start menu full of sponsored apps and games. It was a pretty minimal install, all things considered. This was with the Education edition which is a derivative of the Pro edition I believe. I’d also highly recommend the BoxStarter setup scripts [0]. They remove all of the unnecessary default applications, perform windows updates, apply sane developer defaults and install development tooling depending on your needs. It’s a one click run, so it’s a pretty easy way to bootstrap a new install. No negative side effects and have been using them for several years. 0. https://github.com/microsoft/windows-dev-box-setup-scripts https://github.com/microsoft/windows-dev-box-setup-scripts
- newlytread 7y ago
  I installed pro just the other day, which came with the game shortcuts. I think I just have been installing enterprise previously
  - panpanna 7y ago
    It is very annoying to have to explain to your boss why you have that game installed on your machine. Specially when his only IT experience is playing Candy Crush with his kids.
what-the-grump 7y ago
Just needs to stamp registry with, ran this script on X date, so I can tell the user exactly when and what time they broke windows before reinstalling the OS. Do not run these scripts they are always making it worse.
jron 7y ago
LTSB. A huge chunk of bloat is disabled/missing by default.
jokowueu 7y ago
Nice
Tempest1981 7y ago
Are there any Win10 themes - to make it look more like Win7?
robk 7y ago
I found this one a little more upto date for the latest 1809 update. The blacklist option lets you easily choose what to Uninstall https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater
vkaku 7y ago
Okay, this stuff is great. The question is: Why can't Microsoft just release Windows 10 Core?
wsdookadr 7y ago
Another mention would be TronScript which is described here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/index It can be downloaded from one of these mirrors: https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/downloads https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/downloads
- BubRoss 7y ago
  That looks like it runs lots of anti virus software which is usually a huge offender in slowing a computer down.
CommanderData 7y ago
Been using this https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script script for over a year and it's been my goto to fix Windows 10 after a fresh install. It's purely Powershell based unlike some other binary based tools out there, clean, in a single file. I'd say it doesn't use any hacks either to stop telemetry. Keep in mind Windows will revert some settings occasionally after a Windows update.
buro9 7y ago
There is an easier way (for those with access to the version of Windows involved): Windows 10 N LTSB / LTSC N = No media things built-in, so you'll need to install VLC if that's a concern. LTSB / LTSC = Long-Term Servicing Branch / Long-Term Servicing Channel. This is really the killer thing but it comes with catches. You'll get an absolutely stable Windows and to achieve that a load of things are removed by Microsoft. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3250464/faq-windows-10-ltsb-explained.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3250464/faq-windows-10... > LTSB does not include Edge nor any Microsoft Store (Universal Windows Platform, or UWP) apps, whether Redmond-made or third-part, because the browser and those apps constantly change and need updating. Also AWOL: the Cortana voice-activated digital assistant and access to the Microsoft Store. And for the HN community... lack of Microsoft Store means that you are not running Ubuntu on Windows.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  > N = No media things built-in, so you'll need to install VLC if that's a concern. Is an understatement, if you play games expect to install the media pack or have many break. Some apps in the office suite also rely on them so if you use that you've created trouble for yourself. Also RDP client/server can't run hardware accelerated since that uses the video playback API. > And for the HN community... lack of Microsoft Store means that you are not running Ubuntu on Windows. Not true, the store is a front end and LTSB still supports appx: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual
deleted 7y ago
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sakesun 7y ago
Zillion thanks for whoever post this. My 7 years old laptop just got massively faster than ever.
Fnoord 7y ago
> Please replace it with something better, either use Classic Shell or Start is Back, but stop using that shit. Classic Shell is dead, long live its successor Open Shell [1] [1] https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

174 points by wsdookadr 7y ago

This will disable a number of different apps/services/features that are either useless or slow down the OS considerably. The following script is even nicer as it comes with an UI: https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater Both are written in powershell.

floatingatoll 7y ago
This is marginally less terrible, but it's still terrible — for example, it considers Skype "bloat" so hopefully you didn't need that! — and the list goes on as you read through the (thankfully, fewer) scripts.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  its not hard to reinstall if you actually want it, it most certainly is bloaty.
  - vitorgrs 7y ago
    It's iMessage bloat on iOS or macOS?

giancarlostoro 7y ago

I tried running this and then I remembered why I stopped tweaking Windows, I wind up running into odd issues. Windows stopped being unstable for me years ago when I stopped fidgeting with features. I'm better off disabling as much as I can through the normal settings they provide. I don't know if it's just I'm doing something wrong but it's been my experience. I would love to see Windows not take up 4 gigs of RAM out of the box. I don't need Cortana running period. Let me uninstall Cortana please Microsoft. I'm sure there's other crap I don't want but I fear if I can't just hit 'Uninstall' it wont go well, or an update will bring it back.

Waterluvian 7y ago
Yuuuup. I ran into an issue where it became completely impossible to install a .net redistributable. Basically every possible method I found to install it would fail silently. So my computer became incapable of playing a ton of video games.
mehrdadn 7y ago
> I would love to see Windows not take up 4 gigs of RAM out of the box. It... doesn't? I feel like last time I tried it was less than 2? Did you only install Windows or a ton of other things too? This is what it looks like "out of the box" after disabling memory compression and the pagefile: https://imgur.com/a/D5b8bk5 https://imgur.com/a/D5b8bk5
- sosodev 7y ago
  I'd imagine it caches more if you have more ram
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    I've tested with a lot of RAM.
  - soganess 7y ago
    I've got 256GB and a fresh install of windows use about 4 with a few things running on startup(mostly just the amd+nvidia drivers). There is indeed some scaling with availability but with diminishing returns after probably 8/16gb of available ram. What I find more interesting is that windows still compresses and swaps on startup even with that much ram available.
    - Brian_K_White 7y ago
      Disable swap (pagefile) when you have that much ram, or even when you only have 8 or more. You lose hibernate but that's fine by me. Modern cpu and ssd cold boots pretty fast, especially if you have debloated things similar to this script. Many of the things that are pitched as beneficial, like indexing everything and caching the indexes and keeping all kinds of services alive to "quick start" other things in case you happen to want them, hibernation or sleeping instead of cold boot, etc, these are all cases of adding more crap to counter the harm from previously adding other crap. Instead of adding foofeature you don't really need, and then adding foofeatureaccelerator to try to disguise the overhead of foofeature, you can just remove both foofeature AND foofeatureaccelerator, and everything is better. Less total software to break or misbehave or serve as a security opening. Smaller disk footprint. Fewer running processes. Less ram/disk/net resources consumed. Less telemetry. Simpler total system for you to manage, and maybe actually have a hope in hell of grasping more of what all is going on with one human head. More of your resources available for the apps and services YOU actually want, whatever they are. Whoever wants Pandora, they can totally have it without it coming pre-bundled. If I want Pandora, I would rather install it than find it already built in. In fact, I DO want Pandora, but in fact, I use a 3rd party open source unofficial player. So even though I use it, it's still wrong for it to be built in.

FluffyKitty 7y ago

I have to ask, for anyone that cares this much, why bother with Windows at this point? Wouldn't it be easier to just use Linux? I know the usual argument is that you need Windows to game, but why make your gaming instance your main work instance too? Why not dual boot and use Linux for work and Windows for gaming?

nickjj 7y ago
Dual booting is something I used to do. It's not a fun work flow. Having to reboot (even with an SSD) is a very destructive action because it means suddenly all of your work is shut down and unless you script a way to rebuild your environment (which never works flawlessly even with a lot of effort), you'll have to set everything up again when you come back. So even if it only took 2 seconds to dual boot, you'd still have to deal with that tear down / set up process. But, it's also not just gaming that keeps people on Windows. For example I do screencast recording and editing where I record software dev related videos but the tools I use only run on Windows, and they can't be run in a VM because the thing I want to record is my dev environment (I use WSL in Windows).
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
  You can hibernate both instead of cold reboot.
  - nickjj 7y ago
    Yeah that's not a bad idea. It's still a big context switch to dual boot tho. Also dumping your entire machine's RAM to disk on an SSD seems questionable for the lifespan of your SSD. That's a huge amount of writes, especially if you're dual booting a few times a day. But maybe it wouldn't matter? I haven't measured how much of an impact that would have. And in my case, it wouldn't work because I need to be able to record a Linux environment but record / edit videos in a Windows environment, so both OSs need to be running at once.
    - 9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago

lame-robot-hoax 7y ago

If you’re going go to all this trouble to “debloat” Windows, why not just install Fedora/Ubuntu/PopOS/Debian/Manjaro or something? I just don’t see the point with fiddling around with little hacks trying to disable telemetry and stuff when you can just install a Linux distro and be done with it. I mean sure depending on your use case that may not be possible, but if you don’t have a certain software or hardware limitation holding you to Windows, I really don’t see why you wouldn’t just use a Linux distro.

octosphere 7y ago
Some people use Windows for games. Yes, I know you can run a lot of Windows games on Linux using Wine or PlayOnLinux, but some just prefer vanilla Windows. Scripts like these are great for freeing up memory and decluttering Windows 10 specifically for running games (typically offline) as connecting Windows to the Internet is generally not a good idea.
- lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
  I get that, that’s why I said if you don’t have certain software limitations. If it’s to play games or something then I understand.
squarefoot 7y ago
Vendor lock-in. If the PP spent some good money for a Windows only software very specific to his job, then there's no chance to migrate: that would simply be too costly. In due time, maybe, should exist a Linux port/equivalent, the user should carefully weight the costs/benefits of say a FOSS solution that would cost zero, but would have no warranty and be community supported. (Actually isn't that extreme: support can be bought for Linux software as well) It all boils down to what the user needs from Windows; migrating to a Linux machine plus Libreoffice for document work is one thing, moving complex vertical solutions to it is a whole different story. BTW, I'm totally in favor of ditching windows for good, but 30 years of technical and cultural lock-in are hard to fight.
davesmith1983 7y ago

fieryskiff1 7y ago

Like most "Debloat" scripts and apps, it also disables some services that result in overall less secure installation.

octosphere 7y ago

Hmm, I wonder what happens when I combine this with other popular scripts like Make Windows 10 Great Again https://gist.github.com/IntergalacticApps/675339c2b805b4c9c6e9a442e0121b1d https://gist.github.com/IntergalacticApps/675339c2b805b4c9c6... and Reclaim-Windows10 https://github.com/alirobe/Reclaim-Windows10 https://github.com/alirobe/Reclaim-Windows10 is there much overlap between all three scripts or do they all work great in tandem?

floatingatoll 7y ago
There is a ton of overlap and they all cargo-cult copy-paste from each other's tools, complete with "fixes" for bugs that one or the other introduces (for example, "whitelist Windows Calculator" is quite hilarious to see in the errata).

codetrotter 7y ago

This still leaves a lot of undesirable stuff on your system. Here, I prefer something like this. https://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/files/dban/dban-2.3.0/dban-2.3.0_i586.iso/download https://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/files/dban/dban-2.3.0/... Darik's Boot and Nuke — A hard drive disk wipe and data clearing utility And then download and install KDE Neon User Edition from https://neon.kde.org/download https://neon.kde.org/download KDE Neon is a Linux distro based on Ubuntu. Yes I am being a bit facetious, sorry. But I am actually curious, how many people on HN run Windows on their computers vs the number of people that run macOS, Linux or one of the BSDs?

2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago
I run Windows on my personal laptop - not because I love it, but because it certainly used to have a huge strong-hold on media and games apps, which I wanted a way of consuming. I no longer game, but as I understand it, support for Linux has greatly improved. Also I used to watch Sky (UK), which is only available for Windows users (first because they were literally using Silverlight up until about a year ago, and now because its only available as an Electron app...). For my next machine I think I'll just move to Ubuntu. Having said that, looking at some of the apps I do still use (such as VPNs, Google Drive, Spotify), many of them would either work less well, or simply not work at all. It's a shame, but what can you do?
- codetrotter 7y ago
  Spotify works fine on Linux in my experience though I mostly use Spotify on my iPhone, not on my Linux desktop but I sometimes use it there and don’t have any complaints. Linux has excellent support for VPN. VPN providers on the other hand may be bad at providing proper guidance for Linux users. In that case I suggest either switching to a VPN provider that has the guides you need, or searching for good guides made by others about how to do it with your provider of choice. Google Drive you are right about. If acceptable to you you might consider switching to Dropbox instead. Dropbox worked great on Linux last time I used Dropbox. Keep in mind that it is a good idea to pick hardware that has good Linux support. The problem for a lot of people is that they buy some random laptop without taking this into consideration, and then try to run Linux on it and might be unlucky. Personally I run Linux on my desktop with hardware that I chose specifically based on finding out that it would work. And my laptop now is a MacBook Air running macOS. Linux desktop. macOS laptop. Great combo IMO.

grenoire 7y ago

I would also like to plug O&O Shutup10 here, allows you to disable (seemingly safely, in my experience) most annoying Windowz 'features:' https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

nickjj 7y ago
This is what I use. It works really well.

davesmith1983 7y ago

This is interesting. I was using the ShutUp10 tool (I am not affiliated). https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 That lists what it considers "Safe" things to turn off and I generally keep to that. I would however want to try this in a VM before running it.

0-_-0 7y ago
W10Privacy is another great alternative
- XzetaU8 7y ago
  Windows Privacy Dashboard (WPD) Unlike the aforesaid two tools it supports not only Windows 10, but 7,8,8.1 as well. [1] https://wpd.app/ https://wpd.app/

Krasnol 7y ago

It's astonishing how many de-bloat scripts, tools or functions of other tools this OS spawned. That should make the developers think...if it wasn't intended and they didn't give a damn because monopoly...

ashleyn 7y ago
Windows has gone from operating system to value-added-service driver. No wonder they yank shit like Microsoft Store from GPOs and move others into the Enterprise level only.
cwyers 7y ago
People have been installing pointless and bad tune-up apps for PCs for decades. People were installing RAM doublers for Windows 95 that just changed the size of the hard disk cache. All of those registry cleaners were awful. And I'm continually shocked at how many people will just run some random Powershell script off the Internet with elevated access rights. You don't trust Microsoft, but you trust some random Github repo? 'Kay.

petepete 7y ago

I'm considering my first Windows workstation in more than a decade and was planning on Windows for Workstations precisely because I don't want to remove all the packaged crap. £300 is quite the premium though.

floatingatoll 7y ago

Do your friends a favor and never run this or any like it on their systems "for their benefit". This is a prime example of "expert user footgun problem". The phrase "debloat" is a marketing-hype word that's being used to bait you all into someone's personal view of how computers should be. Expect to be forced to reinstall Windows 10 a few days or weeks after running any such script. Whenever I tech support any of my friends, the first question I ask is "did you do expert-user things to your system?" and they say "well, I mean, I edited some Registry settings" and I just stop and tell them to reinstall Windows because it's time to amputate. I'll have to add "Have you ever opened Windows PowerShell?" to my list, because that'll catch all of these right out of the gate. In case that's not reason enough to be afraid — check out this random sampling of changes this makes! * "This script disables Windows Defender" — Because anti-malware protection is "bloat" * "Disable 'Updates are available' message" — Because you shouldn't have to be notified when security updates are available for your system, for example to address zero-day RCEs * "Windows Biometric Service" — And suddenly you can't face-login to your Windows 10 computer any longer, but hey, it's "bloat" * "Disable easy access keyboard stuff" — Because no one would ever use keyboard accessibility, that's just "bloat" * "Restoring old volume slider" — I would get that this was "debloat" if it removed the volume slider, but simply restoring an older one? * "PandoraMediaInc.29680B314EFC2", "SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic" — Hope you don't like streaming music, that's just "bloat" anyways And, consider how easily this repo could be compromised to result in you self-infecting your computer with malware by running all of these scripts without a close review of the steps they take. First step in any persistent Windows infection is to disable Windows Defender and Windows Update notifications so the user doesn't take steps that might uninstall the persistent infection. Repo does that already, so it's not like it'd be difficult.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Agreed. You are better off trying out Linux and using that if it meets your needs than breaking your system if thats an option. Or even considering using a Mac if its an option you can afford. Anything above breaking your OS.
shawnz 7y ago
Right... Run this script to de-bloat your computer, but also here's a list of features which will stop working afterward and we don't know why!

deleted 7y ago

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etaioinshrdlu 7y ago

I have Windows 10 LTSC running in a VM and it seems pretty bloat-free to me. Anyone else using this, any experiences? It's a free trial for 90 days too. The only thing I noticed so far was forced-auto updates and reboots...

spunch 7y ago

i'm just gonna leave this here https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script

majkinetor 7y ago

Great debloater, I use it for years, along with bunch of other developers I know. It may produce a problem here and there but its well worth it and produces lighting fast system. Highly recommended and kudos to W4RHRWK for maintaining it so long.

thelazydogsback 7y ago

Windows 10 started out snappy (boot and usage) and responsive and has remained so for me w/o changing any defaults and taking all updates -- IMHO the best Win yet. I'm sure there is bloat there, but if I don't see it, disk/ssd is cheap. (Resharper is the only beast that seems to cause issues.)

siphon22 7y ago

Funny coincidence, I recently debloated my W10 with a script as well. I saw the one in the OP during my search, but ultimately didn't go with it as it didn't look legit to me compared to another one that I found mentioned in a article guide. Used this one: https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater This one does not affect anything to do with Windows Update and any important system stuff from my experience.

ohazi 7y ago
I like this one: https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst :-)
- siphon22 7y ago
  What's the Linux hack/solution to changing the battery charging thresholds? I really enjoy that feature with this W10/Laptop right now. Battery has been at 75% for the last two days, so it's not charging and just being sustained while my laptop is running entirely from the plugged in charger unless I'm mistaken. I really enjoy that. Windows also seems to have gotten much better at power efficiency overall.
  - ohazi 7y ago
    There's a utility called TLP that can get you most of the way there. It's not perfect, but I've found it useful on the newer thinkpads with dual batteries (one embedded + one removable). https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-ma... https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/TLP https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/TLP

jclay 7y ago

I was surprised to find on a recent reinstall of Windows 10 that it no longer included the start menu full of sponsored apps and games. It was a pretty minimal install, all things considered. This was with the Education edition which is a derivative of the Pro edition I believe. I’d also highly recommend the BoxStarter setup scripts [0]. They remove all of the unnecessary default applications, perform windows updates, apply sane developer defaults and install development tooling depending on your needs. It’s a one click run, so it’s a pretty easy way to bootstrap a new install. No negative side effects and have been using them for several years. 0. https://github.com/microsoft/windows-dev-box-setup-scripts https://github.com/microsoft/windows-dev-box-setup-scripts

newlytread 7y ago
I installed pro just the other day, which came with the game shortcuts. I think I just have been installing enterprise previously
- panpanna 7y ago
  It is very annoying to have to explain to your boss why you have that game installed on your machine. Specially when his only IT experience is playing Candy Crush with his kids.

what-the-grump 7y ago

Just needs to stamp registry with, ran this script on X date, so I can tell the user exactly when and what time they broke windows before reinstalling the OS. Do not run these scripts they are always making it worse.

jron 7y ago

LTSB. A huge chunk of bloat is disabled/missing by default.

jokowueu 7y ago

Nice

Tempest1981 7y ago

Are there any Win10 themes - to make it look more like Win7?

robk 7y ago

I found this one a little more upto date for the latest 1809 update. The blacklist option lets you easily choose what to Uninstall https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater

vkaku 7y ago

Okay, this stuff is great. The question is: Why can't Microsoft just release Windows 10 Core?

wsdookadr 7y ago

Another mention would be TronScript which is described here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/index It can be downloaded from one of these mirrors: https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/downloads https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/wiki/downloads

BubRoss 7y ago
That looks like it runs lots of anti virus software which is usually a huge offender in slowing a computer down.

CommanderData 7y ago

Been using this https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script script for over a year and it's been my goto to fix Windows 10 after a fresh install. It's purely Powershell based unlike some other binary based tools out there, clean, in a single file. I'd say it doesn't use any hacks either to stop telemetry. Keep in mind Windows will revert some settings occasionally after a Windows update.

buro9 7y ago

There is an easier way (for those with access to the version of Windows involved): Windows 10 N LTSB / LTSC N = No media things built-in, so you'll need to install VLC if that's a concern. LTSB / LTSC = Long-Term Servicing Branch / Long-Term Servicing Channel. This is really the killer thing but it comes with catches. You'll get an absolutely stable Windows and to achieve that a load of things are removed by Microsoft. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3250464/faq-windows-10-ltsb-explained.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3250464/faq-windows-10... > LTSB does not include Edge nor any Microsoft Store (Universal Windows Platform, or UWP) apps, whether Redmond-made or third-part, because the browser and those apps constantly change and need updating. Also AWOL: the Cortana voice-activated digital assistant and access to the Microsoft Store. And for the HN community... lack of Microsoft Store means that you are not running Ubuntu on Windows.

zamadatix 7y ago
> N = No media things built-in, so you'll need to install VLC if that's a concern. Is an understatement, if you play games expect to install the media pack or have many break. Some apps in the office suite also rely on them so if you use that you've created trouble for yourself. Also RDP client/server can't run hardware accelerated since that uses the video playback API. > And for the HN community... lack of Microsoft Store means that you are not running Ubuntu on Windows. Not true, the store is a front end and LTSB still supports appx: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-manual

deleted 7y ago

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sakesun 7y ago

Zillion thanks for whoever post this. My 7 years old laptop just got massively faster than ever.

Fnoord 7y ago

> Please replace it with something better, either use Classic Shell or Start is Back, but stop using that shit. Classic Shell is dead, long live its successor Open Shell [1] [1] https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu