What's your checklist for a clean install

XxXxX · Oct 10, 2025

for those, like me, who don't want copilot

Completely Disable and Remove Copilot in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to completely disable the Windows Copilot preview feature and remove Copilot from the taskbar, Windows Search, and Microsoft Edge for all users in Windows 11 and Windows 10. Copilot in Windows provides centralized generative AI assistance to your users right from...

www.elevenforum.com

thank you @Brink
best of luck Steve ..

Bree · Oct 10, 2025

dacrone said:
The only key differences, aside from backend modifications, are

Removal of WMIC - can still be added as Optional Feature

Removal of Powershell 2 - can download and reinstall but wouldn’t be wise to

Apparently my WMIC is still there after the Feature Update to 25H2 by Enablement Package.

Powershell 2 is gone though (or maybe it was never there, I've never looked for it before). It's there in Win10.....

dacrone · Oct 10, 2025

Bree said:
Apparently my WMIC is still there after the Feature Update to 25H2 by Enablement Package.

View attachment 148398

Powershell 2 is gone though (or maybe it was never there, I've never looked for it before). It's there in Win10.....

View attachment 148399

Yeah my wmic stayed too. I added it back in 24H2. But I think if you fresh install it’s not there… you have to add it

Bree · Oct 10, 2025

dacrone said:
Yeah my wmic stayed too. I added it back in 24H2. But I think if you fresh install it’s not there… you have to add it

You are correct. All but one of my machines got their 24H2 as a feature update from 23H2. WMIC was retained as it was already there in 23H2. It still remained after the 25H2 feature update.

My one machine that started with a clean install of 24H2 did not have WMIC before the 25H2 feature update, nor afterwards.

Bree · Oct 10, 2025

Scannerman said:
Something I haven't looked for in 24H2 is msconfig....

MSconfig isn't going anywhere. it's in every build, up to and including the latest Insider Canary build.

dacrone · Oct 10, 2025

Bree said:
MSconfig isn't going anywhere. it's in every build, up to and including the latest Insider Canary build.

classic msconfig from winaero enables the startup tab again. easier than doing it via registry (and yes, it shows more than the task manager startup tab). just food for thought

hdmi · Oct 10, 2025

Windows 11 25H2 introduces subtle but meaningful performance and polish improvements—especially in energy efficiency, diagnostics, and shell responsiveness. These refinements are mostly dormant in 24H2 and activated via the enablement package.

Performance enhancements in 25H2

Optimized energy management: Improved power profiles for mobile devices and desktops, especially in hybrid CPU setups. Background tasks are throttled more intelligently, reducing idle drain.
Faster shell interactions: Reduced latency in taskbar animations, context menus, and notification center transitions. This is especially noticeable on mid-range hardware.
File Explorer tuning: Faster rendering of folder contents, especially in directories with many thumbnails, and improved indexing logic for local search, reducing CPU spikes during file operations.

Diagnostic and Recovery polish

Quick machine recovery: Enhanced logic for restoring system state after failed updates or crashes. This benefits both managed fleets and solo users.
Performance diagnostics: Better telemetry granularity in Task Manager and Resource Monitor—especially for Copilot+ devices, but some benefits trickle down to standard setups.
Improved servicing stack: More resilient against update interruptions, with better rollback logic and fewer "stuck" states.

UI and UX refinements (beyond Start Menu)

Lock screen widgets: Optional glanceable info (weather, calendar) with minimal resource impact.
Phone Link integration: More seamless handoff between PC and mobile, with reduced latency in message sync and app mirroring.
Search box responsiveness: Slightly faster query parsing and result rendering in Windows Search, though still outclassed by Everything (from voidtools.com) in raw speed.

Features Under Gradual Rollout in 25H2

Unified Start Menu layout:
- Combines "Pinned" and "All apps" into one view
- Optional hiding of “Recommended” section
- Controlled via feature flag 47205210 (can be enabled manually with ViveTool)
Copilot+ dependent features: Click to Do, AI Actions in File Explorer, Agent in Settings, and improved Windows Search
Enterprise-oriented features: Wi-Fi 7 enterprise connectivity, and policy-based app removal

Minor improvements for Average Joe User

Bug fixes and stability: Smoother performance, fewer quirks, especially in background services and UI responsiveness. 25H2 addresses some quirks from 24H2, especially in background services and power profiles.
Security polish: More consistent elevation prompts and minor hardening, but nothing disruptive.
Copilot refinements: If they use Copilot, it’s a bit more integrated—but still optional and mostly cosmetic.

RazorKat83 · Oct 10, 2025

DJNelson said:
Ask and you shall receive..

New X-Lite Optimum is out!

New X-Lite Optimum 24H2 V4.3 is out today! Check it out at: https://windowsxlite.com/

www.elevenforum.com

yeah i know about windows x-lite. I'm currently using 24H2. . I have already created the 25H2 ISO, but I don't have the patience right now to do a clean install. . lol

Hazel123 · Oct 10, 2025

Green2619 said:
I just generate an autounattend.xml from here and it does 90% of the job for me. The rest is whatever apps I may need.

That looks great. Assume once you’ve done it all once you just reuse it on every install? I may be a masochist but I feel like I have to do all the settings myself somehow.

Hazel123 · Oct 10, 2025

RazorKat83 said:
yeah i know about windows x-lite. I'm currently using 24H2. . I have already created the 25H2 ISO, but I don't have the patience right now to do a clean install. . lol

Do you really need to do one? Mine was because of hardware failure. It doesn’t take that long if you follow a list for settings. The time is putting programs back on imo - and then backups . Restoring my files was quite quick. I’m using a 1tb nvme in an external enclosure for saving files to so they restore really quickly. I have about 750gb of files. I have all the files saved in idrive as well but that’s slower to restore.

RazorKat83 · Oct 10, 2025

Hazel123 said:
Do you really need to do one? Mine was because of hardware failure. It doesn’t take that long if you follow a list for settings. The time is putting programs back on imo - and then backups . Restoring my files was quite quick. I’m using a 1tb nvme in an external enclosure for saving files to so they restore really quickly. I have about 750gb of files. I have all the files saved in idrive as well but that’s slower to restore.

I haven't done one since January. AND I want 25H2, but don't want all the bloatware crap. I've still got plenty of space left. I just want a fresh start I guess. I try to do it twice a year at least.

RazorKat83 · Oct 10, 2025

Hazel123 said:
Do you really need to do one? Mine was because of hardware failure. It doesn’t take that long if you follow a list for settings. The time is putting programs back on imo - and then backups . Restoring my files was quite quick. I’m using a 1tb nvme in an external enclosure for saving files to so they restore really quickly. I have about 750gb of files. I have all the files saved in idrive as well but that’s slower to restore.

I do wish that I had an NVMe External! That'd be sweet

Hazel123 · Oct 10, 2025

RazorKat83 said:
I do wish that I had an NVMe External! That'd be sweet

It really is! It was a spare 1tb nvme from a computer that packed up so I just bought a sabrent external enclosure for it and use it for file backups. Sometimes buying used laptops pays off! The components are worth more than the laptop itself.

Although actually I think this 2tb was my previous one before I upgraded to 2tb. I have plenty of 500gb nvme’s lying around from “spares” laptops but they aren’t really big enough for backups - although I guess you could split a back up between them and get two sabrent enclosures (or similar).

Scannerman · Oct 10, 2025

RazorKat83 said:
yeah i know about windows x-lite. I'm currently using 24H2. . I have already created the 25H2 ISO, but I don't have the patience right now to do a clean install. . lol

I am able to relate to this statement more than I can possibly describe in a single sitting. I'm just biding my time, slowly putting my X99 build back together. I'm thinking perhaps I missed my calling and should have got a job in IT servicing servers with all the cable management I've done in my lifetime. Then again, I would probably grow to hate it and that idea makes a PC builder a very sad boy indeed.

RazorKat83 said:
I do wish that I had an NVMe External! That'd be sweet

I'm planning on putting X-Lite on the X99 build and keeping Linux as my main OS on the X299 build. I'm very much into multi-booting so this should not be a problem. I have never kept Win 10 on a work station. Despite all its interesting features Win 10 has plenty of nasties IMO, so for those who are security conscious Win 10 is a full blown fail (says the guy who is typing this on Win 10 on a gaming rig). No worries, this PC is isolated from the home network.

SATA external enclosures for NVMe are relatively inexpensive these days. The trick is in finding a stick of NVMe that doesn't peter out during file transfers. I covered this once somewhere in this forum. I rather doubt that you can benefit much from the faster gen 4 and 5 speeds as USB C has limits. Now if you can get it to work on Thunderbolt those speeds are nothing to sneeze at howbeit external enclosures for Thunderbolt are much more costly and this assumes that the user has a "TB ready" system with a TB card already installed and operative. Now here's the clincher: It may be fast and handy to have that external NVMe but understand that when those cells go that drive is done. Finished. Kaput. Unlike spinners, where you may have a chance of recovering the data if the drive still shows up in Disk Management, when any SSD (including NVMe) "bricks" your data on that drive will be irretrievable by any affordable means. Just had a 4TB SSD die on me without warning, hardly used. Fortunately I had the data mirrored over to a humble spinner before this happened. People wonder why I use so many drives. Well, here's one more reason.

There is no such thing as me not having access to a PC here, on the home front. I have about 14 of them now running on a daily basis on (and off) the network because I have a large family who is lazy like me and wants to run their laptops, desktops, and tablets all at the same time. "Everything at once". Geek HQ here. They're constantly transferring files back and forth and sharing (as sisters often do). This house is wired from top to bottom, all three floors.

Hazel

At the risk of treading on glass, 750GB is not a lot of data these days. I'm hoping you have an exact duplicate of that data tucked away some where. Making a copy is so much easier than reinstalling an OS.

hsehestedt · Oct 10, 2025

cereberus said:
A variant on this is to create a custom iso from an existing installation and injecting drivers for a new device

That was exactly how I used to do it, but I switched to using the $OEM$ folder because that way I can simply swap out that one folder for different systems.

hdmi · Oct 10, 2025

Copying 750GB of data from a fast HDD (e.g., the 8TB Seagate IronWolf at 263 MB/s sustained read speed) still takes almost 50 minutes or possibly longer—depending on factors. The sustained write speed is even slower than that so, if the goal is to write a similar amount of data noticeably faster at a relatively acceptable price point, that's when going for a NVMe SSD is pretty much unavoidable. The 2TB Samsung 990 EVO Plus combines high endurance with still being able to sustain almost 1.8 GB/s (gigabytes per second) even after its pSLC cache gets saturated. It has an average power consumption of 4.6W during reads and 4.2W during writes. So, it is suitable to be used in a decent USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, or ~2,000 MB/s (megabytes per second) capable enclosure that has decent passive cooling performance.

That being said, the theoretical maximum "raw" transfer speed of USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 is 20 Gbps (gigabits per specond) but even under optimal conditions its real-world, effective speed limit is only a tad above 2,000 MB/s. It has the potential to avoid the higher cost of USB4/TB4 (40 Gbps) and especially USB4 version 2 (80 Gbps) enclosures. One of the drawbacks is that, in pure terms of the maximum speed limit, USB4/TB4 is not downward compatible with USB 3.2 Gen 2×2. It means that hooking a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 device up to a USB4/TB4 port limits the connection to 10 Gbps. Not 20 Gbps. Having at least one USB4/TB4 port has become mainstream in modern laptops. Whereas USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 has always been fairly uncommon in laptops, and still continues to be that.

Hazel123 · Oct 10, 2025

Scannerman said:
I am able to relate to this statement more than I can possibly describe in a single sitting. I'm just biding my time, slowly putting my X99 build back together. I'm thinking perhaps I missed my calling and should have got a job in IT servicing servers with all the cable management I've done in my lifetime. Then again, I would probably grow to hate it and that idea makes a PC builder a very sad boy indeed.

I'm planning on putting X-Lite on the X99 build and keeping Linux as my main OS on the X299 build. I'm very much into multi-booting so this should not be a problem. I have never kept Win 10 on a work station. Despite all its interesting features Win 10 has plenty of nasties IMO, so for those who are security conscious Win 10 is a full blown fail (says the guy who is typing this on Win 10 on a gaming rig). No worries, this PC is isolated from the home network.

SATA external enclosures for NVMe are relatively inexpensive these days. The trick is in finding a stick of NVMe that doesn't peter out during file transfers. I covered this once somewhere in this forum. I rather doubt that you can benefit much from the faster gen 4 and 5 speeds as USB C has limits. Now if you can get it to work on Thunderbolt those speeds are nothing to sneeze at howbeit external enclosures for Thunderbolt are much more costly and this assumes that the user has a "TB ready" system with a TB card already installed and operative. Now here's the clincher: It may be fast and handy to have that external NVMe but understand that when those cells go that drive is done. Finished. Kaput. Unlike spinners, where you may have a chance of recovering the data if the drive still shows up in Disk Management, when any SSD (including NVMe) "bricks" your data on that drive will be irretrievable by any affordable means. Just had a 4TB SSD die on me without warning, hardly used. Fortunately I had the data mirrored over to a humble spinner before this happened. People wonder why I use so many drives. Well, here's one more reason.

There is no such thing as me not having access to a PC here, on the home front. I have about 14 of them now running on a daily basis on (and off) the network because I have a large family who is lazy like me and wants to run their laptops, desktops, and tablets all at the same time. "Everything at once". Geek HQ here. They're constantly transferring files back and forth and sharing (as sisters often do). This house is wired from top to bottom, all three floors.

Hazel

At the risk of treading on glass, 750GB is not a lot of data these days. I'm hoping you have an exact duplicate of that data tucked away some where. Making a copy is so much easier than reinstalling an OS.

"Hazel

At the risk of treading on glass, 750GB is not a lot of data these days. I'm hoping you have an exact duplicate of that data tucked away some where. Making a copy is so much easier than reinstalling an OS."

Absolutely

I have a full idrive (cloud) back up as well, and another backup of the files on a different external seagate usb. And yes when a ssd goes it goes - I've had that before and said I wouldn't use an ssd as an external drive again. But - this has saved me a lot of time reinstalling. Copied all the files onto it off the computer with hardware issues, and restored them onto the new computer. As permanent storage though, I agree, it is not that reliable. Which is kind of annoying as it is zillions times faster than backing up to the seagate drive!

Having said that, dropping a spinner external usb drive can also kill all your data! Not a risk with an ssd/nvme really.

The idrive backup gives me a lot of peace of mind (it backs up daily) having also had external drives die or pack up before. I know that isn't necessarily foolproof either but at least all the eggs aren't in one basket.

Idrive is not like One Drive by the way - it is simply backup - not syncing. files are backed up and stored, and keep the C drive and folder structure.

I noticed you keep a clone as a backup. I like that idea. Presumably it would mean buying another 2tb drive to clone to though. idrive does have a clone facility (either save it in the cloud or to an external drive) which I haven't tried but I suspect it would take a week to back it up! And not quite sure how you'd restore a cloud clone. And I expect it would be very slow to restore.

Scannerman · Oct 10, 2025

Hazel123 said:
I noticed you keep a clone as a backup. I like that idea. Presumably it would mean buying another 2tb drive to clone to though. idrive does have a clone facility (either save it in the cloud or to an external drive) which I haven't tried but I suspect it would take a week to back it up! And not quite sure how you'd restore a cloud clone. And I expect it would be very slow to restore.

Methinks you are on the right track when it comes to backing up your data. This is also why having options is so critical. Having your data stored on a separate server (it can even be your own server), having it backed up on an external drive, and having it backed up by a third alternative results in a triple braided cord that is not easily broken. I don't know that a cloud clone can exist and I'm not even sure what that is, but I do know that if you have a clone of your hard drive and you have a cloud activated on your PC it will find the connection on the clone. For me this is not a concern because I made my own cloud. I can upload my data to four different PCs any time I wish. Sometimes I do this and sometimes I don't. It really depends on available storage. Again, this is where it pays to have options.

Hazel123 · Oct 11, 2025

I also have system images on three different external usb drives. Saving the files separately is just in case something.

I think I have saved quite a bit of money in external drives since getting idrive (and that costs $99 a year) I got fed up of the external drives failing. Anyway three backups of images and three backups of files , one in the cloud.

Prioritising the “initial install” factory image made and the files.

To date I have never had an nvme fail on me inside a computer - touch wood.

Presumably a clone would only work on the computer it’s made on, like an image - is that right?

What I would like to do is have my own iso of a Windows install with all the settings done - I assume that’s why people do scripts. Which is not something I’m up on.

TraderGary · Oct 11, 2025

Hazel123 said:
I also have system images on three different external usb drives. Saving the files separately is just in case something.

I think I have saved quite a bit of money in external drives since getting idrive (and that costs $99 a year) I got fed up of the external drives failing. Anyway three backups of images and three backups of files , one in the cloud.

Prioritising the “initial install” factory image made and the files.

To date I have never had an nvme fail on me inside a computer - touch wood.

Presumably a clone would only work on the computer it’s made on, like an image - is that right?

What I would like to do is have my own iso of a Windows install with all the settings done - I assume that’s why people do scripts. Which is not something I’m up on.

That's the same 3-2-1 Backup Strategy I use:
3 - At least 3 copies of my data
2 - On at least two different media types
1 - One copy must always be offsite

I also use Drive Imaging and my offsite copy of my data also utilizes my 1TB of OneDrive from my Microsoft 365 subscription.

What's your checklist for a clean install

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Diagnostic and Recovery polish​

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Features Under Gradual Rollout in 25H2​

Minor improvements for Average Joe User​

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