4 ms·

My brother-in-law just built a gaming PC for his son, and asked me about de-bloat and ad-removal scripts for Windows 11. My knowledge is sadly a bit out of date

My brother-in-law just built a gaming PC for his son, and asked me about de-bloat and ad-removal scripts for Windows 11. My knowledge is sadly a bit out of date. I’d love some suggestions.

zamadatix 4y ago
Uninstall the default fluff apps via settings and find the settings for ads in start and Lock Screen to disable them. Stay away from such scripts unless someone who understands how to feed it love and care when it turns out one of those settings or components was needed is going to be the main user. If that’s the kid then let them figure it out, they’ll need to break things a few times to do so though. If you’re going through all of settings looking for things be careful of the privacy section. E.g. disabling microphone access globally and thinking that means “prompt for use” is one of the more common “why doesn’t voice chat” work issues. If you insist on the tool route though look at O&O shut up 10++ (works with 11 as the name implies). It’ll have a safer default set of changes you can use.
Someone1234 4y ago
My suggestion is don't. Microsoft has made Windows obnoxious, but many of those scripts degrade security (by design) and may break features consumers depend on. Most of Windows' annoyances can be disabled in their provided Settings UI. If someone isn't knowledgeable enough to do this by hand, they shouldn't be blindly running scripts they cannot revert and that there is no support for. There are articles like this one that guide you though the heavy hitters for bad settings: https://beebom.com/change-windows-11-settings/ https://beebom.com/change-windows-11-settings/ The great thing about this is that you can read what these settings do for yourself, there is official support for them, and you can revert them just as easily. In future Windows Updates you also won't have "unusual" things occurring since, again, this is officially supported. No doubt I'll get dumped on for this, but realistically people online suggesting running scripts that turn off features like Desktop SmartScreen, Edge SmartScreen, Windows Update(!), File History, Windows Search, blocking random domains in the hosts file, or these nebulous "performance tweaks"[0] which I could write paragraphs about the problems alone. [0] https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools/blob/main/src/scripts/optimize-performance.ps1 https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools/blob/main/src/...

My brother-in-law just built a gaming PC for his son, and asked me about de-bloat and ad-removal scripts for Windows 11. My knowledge is sadly a bit out of date. I’d love some suggestions.

zamadatix 4y ago

Uninstall the default fluff apps via settings and find the settings for ads in start and Lock Screen to disable them. Stay away from such scripts unless someone who understands how to feed it love and care when it turns out one of those settings or components was needed is going to be the main user. If that’s the kid then let them figure it out, they’ll need to break things a few times to do so though. If you’re going through all of settings looking for things be careful of the privacy section. E.g. disabling microphone access globally and thinking that means “prompt for use” is one of the more common “why doesn’t voice chat” work issues. If you insist on the tool route though look at O&O shut up 10++ (works with 11 as the name implies). It’ll have a safer default set of changes you can use.

Someone1234 4y ago

My suggestion is don't. Microsoft has made Windows obnoxious, but many of those scripts degrade security (by design) and may break features consumers depend on. Most of Windows' annoyances can be disabled in their provided Settings UI. If someone isn't knowledgeable enough to do this by hand, they shouldn't be blindly running scripts they cannot revert and that there is no support for. There are articles like this one that guide you though the heavy hitters for bad settings: https://beebom.com/change-windows-11-settings/ https://beebom.com/change-windows-11-settings/ The great thing about this is that you can read what these settings do for yourself, there is official support for them, and you can revert them just as easily. In future Windows Updates you also won't have "unusual" things occurring since, again, this is officially supported. No doubt I'll get dumped on for this, but realistically people online suggesting running scripts that turn off features like Desktop SmartScreen, Edge SmartScreen, Windows Update(!), File History, Windows Search, blocking random domains in the hosts file, or these nebulous "performance tweaks"[0] which I could write paragraphs about the problems alone. [0] https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools/blob/main/src/scripts/optimize-performance.ps1 https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools/blob/main/src/...