Suggestions/Ideas on ways to strip down W11 EVEN more

obfuscation · Dec 20, 2023

zebal said:
I suggest Windows ADK.
There is steep learning curve to get skillful with it, but once you master it you can customize your ISO's in great detail.

Yes, that's also a good option

My warning was more towards the people who see a torrent link for an ISO and assume it's gonna be safe to use, even though they have NO clue what the person that made it could have snuck into it. These people would probably WAY prefer something more streamlined like NTLite.

allan · Dec 20, 2023

obfuscation said:
Nothing a system restore point couldn't fix though

I can't tell you how many times I've seen system restore fail. That's one of the main reasons I'm a huge advocate of disk imaging as a regular backup routine.

zebal · Dec 20, 2023

allan said:
I can't tell you how many times I've seen system restore fail.

System restore even if successful will screw your system if you leave it at that.
Every driver and program needs to be reinstalled after system restore to update registry that was rolled back as well.

obfuscation · Dec 20, 2023

allan said:
I can't tell you how many times I've seen system restore fail. That's one of the main reasons I'm a huge advocate of disk imaging as a regular backup routine.

That's true aswell, I just don't really store anything important on my boot drive so I'm not terribly scared of breaking my OS (if that wasn't obvious already). Wouldn't exactly recommend this style of "eh, F it" to others though.

obfuscation · Dec 20, 2023

zebal said:
System restore even if successful will screw your system if you leave it at that.
Every driver and program needs to be reinstalled after system restore to update registry that was rolled back as well.

That's only really the case if you roll it pretty far back, I'm doing like 1 change then rolling it back if, and only if I can't manually revert the change (like with the push notification example). It's a failsafe, not something I usually have to resort to.

allan · Dec 20, 2023

obfuscation said:
That's only really the case if you roll it pretty far back, I'm doing like 1 change then rolling it back if, and only if I can't manually revert the change (like with the push notification example). It's a failsafe, not something I usually have to resort to.

Agree. If you create a restore point just prior to making whatever change(s) you intend to make and then need to roll back prior to any updates, and assuming system restore works as expected, there's no need to reinstall any apps or drivers.

TairikuOkami · Dec 20, 2023

obfuscation said:
I'm doing like 1 change then rolling it back if, and only if I can't manually revert the change

Use utilman method, it will give you option to use CMD with SYSTEM rights before logon, so you can change services, etc.

Code:

takeown /s %computername% /u %username% /f "%WINDIR%\System32\utilman.exe"
icacls "%WINDIR%\System32\utilman.exe" /grant:r %username%:F
copy /y %WINDIR%\System32\cmd.exe %WINDIR%\System32\utilman.exe

obfuscation said:
It also just disappears after you disable it through regedit which is NOT how services should work haha

It is like a time paradox, if you kill the parent, you will also kill the child. Restore the parent and it will restore the kid.

obfuscation · Dec 20, 2023

TairikuOkami said:
It is like a time paradox, if you kill the parent, you will also kill the child. Restore the parent and it will restore the kid.

Hah, that's a great way to put it!
I don't really know why it only seemed to happen with that specific service though. Other services don't do the same thing when disabled through regedit.

TechnoMage2021 · Dec 20, 2023

I'll second the vote for "Tiny 11". I like experimenting with different OS's within the Windows world.
I've downloaded and installed Tiny 11 twice now. The second download was the "New and Improved" version.
It's the one I wholeheartedly suggest for anyone liking to play with Windows.
I've tried several versions of Windows that have 99% of the MS BS removed, for easier installs and more efficient operation.
But "Tiny 11" is neat, clean and totally minus the MS BS. However for the dedicated Tweaker, there is still things that can be done, to improve performance, by freeing up RAM and OS space on the HD (or SSD).

I've just installed the second version of "Tiny 11", on a 120 GB Crucial SSD. And with 16GB of ram on this system, it really hummmmms right along. You'd never even know it was not the Full Blown version. I keep it on a second HD, to run when I just want to futz with it. F12 still works!
Finis
TM

TairikuOkami · Dec 20, 2023

TechnoMage2021 said:
I'll second the vote for "Tiny 11".

I have noticed System and reserved: ReviOS - 12.3GB, TinyOS - 24.6GB, in the meantime I have 9.23GB post-install. :lmao:

My idle memory is 1.8GB (1GB used by RAMdisk) vs theirs 2.0GB and MSA, Edge, firewall, onedrive are there.

pparks1 · Dec 20, 2023

And I do believe now that Tiny 11 works with Windows updates again. That was a certain showstopper for me in the past. Updates are important. Working in IT, I've seen the fallout from problems that were were fixed in updates, but that hadn't been installed.

glasskuter · Dec 20, 2023

I'm glad for anyone who trusts system restore 100%, but I'm not one of them. SR for me has not always been the best user experience on mine and others systems.
It may be better these days, but once I lost faith in it, I never went back to using it. If it works, it has its purposes, but folks are under the impression it will recover or fix anything user account related and it won't.