Be careful with the "debloat" features in scripts like this.
In my experience, aggressively stripping out AppX packages and disabling services often breaks windows update or the Microsoft store in subtle ways that don't manifest until 3-6 months down the line. You'll eventually try to install a feature update, it will fail with a cryptic error code, and you'll realize it's because you removed a dependency that the new update expects to be present.
If you really want a clean windows environment, you are better off getting an IoT enterprise LTSC license. It is boring, stable, has zero bloat and doesn't require hacking the registry to stop candy crush from reinstalling itself.
That said, it feels like a constant arms race. Microsoft introduces a new user-hostile pattern (like making local accounts harder to create), the community builds a workaround and then Microsoft patches the workaround. I am tired of fighting my own OS.
The ultimate way of installing windows least bloated is chosing Region "English (World)" - as usually the bloatware is country specific. Avoid US, UK, etc. That's where the Candy Crush comes with.
> If you really want a clean windows environment, you are better off getting an IoT enterprise LTSC license.
Unfortunately seems like there's no way of getting a license legally without being a company. Windows Server seems easier to obtain but harder to morph into something useful (mostly because of missing drivers on Windows Update) though definitely possible.
I'm installing Linux over the break. The last time I seriously ran it was Slackware 2.0. If it doesn't run in Wine, it will run in a vm. I'm so done with this shit. And I'm one of the few that actually purchased a Win11 Pro license at full price. I really wanted to believe. They've lost their mind with copilot. Imagine if they put as much effort into making their products better as they have pushing copilot. The sad thing is there will be a copilot hit, and it won't be anything they built with all this effort. It will be an acquisition, like openai. They should just stick to making their products better and buy it when it comes.
Agreed. I had to run Windows recovery only once over the last 5+ years, after running some debloating script with many thousands stars on GitHub.
I think the Pro version is enough for reasonable experience, most of the terrible stories originate from the Home version, which should be avoided like the plague.
Apple was a great option before they moved to ARM. Now they can't run much of anything (and it sucks).
I still have my mid-2015 MBP running triple-boot between macOS, Windows and Arch Linux. That machine could run everything...
I now have to keep around a physical PC desktop in order to run games like ARC Raiders. I use OBS with a capture card to use my MacBook's screen as a monitor for the PC, and an application called Deskflow to forward the MacBook's keyboard to the PC (I connect the mouse directly). Also, SonoBus for voice chat, since the PC doesn't have a microphone built-in. It works well enough.
> Apple was a great option before they moved to ARM. Now they can't run much of anything (and it sucks).
I used to love my 2013 MBP. ARM Macs run pretty much everything I need, and some things better than Windows (such as Lightroom and PS which don't run at all on Linux).
But what kills it for me is the absolutely bonkers window management, and the fisher-price interface filling up half the screen with empty space around huge widgets.
I would instead suggest two things for power users: installing Windows using autounattend.xml[1], and secondly visiting the mass graves to turn your Windows install into Enterprise (or, if you can wrangle it, get an Education licence from your academic institution/alma mater), which completely gets rid of all consumer-oriented stuff.
To be honest, I don't mind the Windows games. In fact I believe the ones shipped with XP, Vista, and 7 were top-notch. What I mind is games with annoying advertisements in them. I mind when my Weather program is not native and is a glorified web app, also ridden with advertisements.
I’m generally skeptical of Windows optimization tools because they tend to change a lot of low-level settings and make troubleshooting harder later on. When someone already has a broken system, it’s often difficult to figure out what’s wrong once a tool like this has touched everything.
This one looks more like a PowerShell automation and debloating script for power users than a classic one-click optimizer, but it still requires knowing exactly what each tweak does. Used without that understanding, tools like this can easily create confusing problems.
It was more-or-less true with Windows 3.1 (and likely earlier). Some people could correct some problems by modifying the various configuration files, but most didn't. One of the ironies is that I, as a rabid OS/2 user, managed to get a job managing Windows 3.1 systems since I was one of the few candidates who understood how to do so.
When Windows 95 entered the picture, such wipe-and-reinstall antics were pretty much standard for all but trivial problems. Even then people would usually live with those problems, though a handful of people would be able to go in and fix them. Of course, Microsoft has introduced some functionality over the years to mitigate such drastic measures, but they tend to be variations of the same theme (e.g. restore points rolling back changes, rather than going in to fix what is broken).
To be fair, this tool doesn't claim to fix a broken system; as near as I can tell it doesn't actually remove the underlying Windows installation, so the core problem will remain.
Sounds like a fun fan fiction crowd sourcing project. Have some coding agent rewrite windows from scratch. We can all throw some money/tokens at it periodically to keep it going. It should have a live video stream where it narrates and visualizes the state of affairs. Like a soap opera for nerds. In the end a single exe comes out.
Oh man, we need also incorporate a lean and agile iterative approach, where everyone need to participate in sprint planning. Imagine having to fit in all the necessary sprint items and how to choose between them!
And in the end of each sprint a single exe comes out. Or multiple. Like a soap opera for product managers.
Little computer people was awesome[0]. Upscale it to a full size microsoft office[3]. Give agents neck bearded avatars with green hair named after real employees except from legal, there everyone is a pirate. Make it so that one can zoom in on everything and follow the cringe worthy dialog in overloaded sprint-planners that some~how work out. Take style pointers from KRAZAM Microservices[12] and gar1t's "Nodejs is bad ass rockstar tech"[44]
Tweaks are divided into essential and advanced. The essential ones shouldn't have any negative impact on the system. They also document the changes each tweak makes (so you can undo them): https://winutil.christitus.com/dev/.
I think the issue is a bit out of the author's control, where tools like this are word of mouth advertised as 'one simple trick' by geeks to a broad audience to fix what they see as wrong with windows. People love convenience and adding "oh by the way, make sure you read/understand the docs first" rarely happens. I think it's part of the move for computing to being appliances that ongoing maintenance isn't seen as needed
Even though he is sending mixed messages, it is clearly stated that misuse may break the system. The other nice thing about going the PowerShell automation route is the ability to see what was done and reverse particular changes (assuming you can track down which change broke things). That's in start contrast to the binary-only utilities I've seen in the past, where you're pretty much stuck trusting the vendor's claims.
>still requires knowing exactly what each tweak does. Used without that understanding, tools like this can easily create confusing problems.
Which I have always taken as extreme encouragement to use performance-improving setting configuations, and therefore gain the understanding to do so effectively.
If I can do it, anybody can, I'm no engineer.
With this approach in mind it makes the Titus offerings show a remarkable amount of superiority.
As another commenter has noted, 2022 is just when his Utility was beginning to get noticed.
It is being kept up-to-date with Windows 11 as it evolves.
I guess I'm in the minority. I haven't reinstalled on my desktop machine since 2014 according to the install dates of some of my apps. According to the Windows Registry I've gone from 7 Pro -> 8.1 Pro -> 10 Pro. Both upgrades happened in 2015 and since then I've just stayed up to date with the latest 10 Pro build.
I will be switching to Linux before the ESU program expires though. I use my desktop mostly for gaming and have been planning to evaluate a few distros and desktop environments. I have my own Proxmox/TrueNAS/Debian homelab and use macOS daily for work so I'm fine with the CLI and tinkering but I'd rather everything Just Works™ for my gaming machine. I did a lot of dual booting back in the Fedora[ Core] 6-12 days but ultimately it got too tedious.
I would say that the reason Windows issues are commonly treated as "reinstall it" is because most Windows installs are on corporate PCs. Most of the time, it's not worth spending the time trying to troubleshoot someone's gnarly OS issue when you can fix it in an hour by reimaging. There are exceptions, of course, but most of the time the business just wants that employee back to work ASAP, rather than doing the troubleshooting work.
It's not clear from the linked page, which seems to have been last updated in 2022, aside from user comments asking for support. Thank you for the clarification!
Is there any info on the impact of such tools, like do they have any specific performance improvements (startup time, memory use)? How much Gb of bloat is actually removed?
> Can we please have someone make and maintain a safe, good, minimal and reliable Windows distribution like Alpine Linux?
First: "safe" and Windows never ever matched. Not in Windows 98, not in Millenium, not in Vista. Not ever.
I, reluctantly, after having confiscated my mother-in-law's Windows laptop and replacing it with a Chromebook about two years ago (which still works fine for her btw), ordered her a new desktop PC six months ago, running Windows 11.
Six months.
Six months is all it took for this piece of shit to become infected to the point of being unusable. Malware over malware took over: whatever 0-click or 1-click exploit in Edge that took over the machine and tells her to call indian scam center to help her "get her PC rid of viruses", blinking left and right, covering half the screen.
In other words: good old Windows. It's 20-fucking-25, nearly 26, and Microsoft still cannot ship an OS that's not rooted when a grandma is browsing for less than six months.
Pathetic.
Windows is a mediocre piece of insecure (and now spying) turd.
I fully agree with you: reliable Linux distros are the Windows replacement.
And as we've reached a point where everyone except some part of the corporate world can do everything they need from an Android smartphone and these same people are just fine with a Linux distro on their laptop or desktop, people can be switched. And some are. And the numbers of "desktop Linux" users are slowly but surely growing.
I don't care about the snarky "2026 is the year of Linux on the desktop". Linux conquered everything: all the servers, all the routers, 500 of the world top 500 supercomputers, etc. Linux shall conquer the laptop and the desktop too.
And those who don't switch have two choices: MacOS (pricey hardware) or be slaves to that turdery on bits that Windows is.
P.S: actually I don't even care: be it Linux or MacOS or BeOS or Atari's TOS: anything but Microsoft.
Windows security is just fine. The problem is that many users are willing to uncritically install anything they get asked to, even to the point of directly installing malware when "Microsoft support" contacts them asking them to do so. Absolutely nothing about Linux or any other general purpose OS protects against this threat vector, and if Linux had the market share Windows does you would be saying the exact same stuff about your grandma getting rootkits on her Ubuntu box. Mobile devices protect against this scenario by not trusting the user and heavily restricting what apps can do, but that's not a good model for a general purpose computer.
I gave her an iPad Owh, 10 years ago? And I’ve never had to troubleshoot her system ever again. No spyware. No viruses. Nothing.
The worst that happened recently is that the Starlink antenna had te be realigned after a particularly heavy wind blew it off the roof almost.
Oh and her printer needed new toners after printing for x years without problems.
If you really want a clean windows environment, you are better off getting an IoT enterprise LTSC license. It is boring, stable, has zero bloat and doesn't require hacking the registry to stop candy crush from reinstalling itself.
That said, it feels like a constant arms race. Microsoft introduces a new user-hostile pattern (like making local accounts harder to create), the community builds a workaround and then Microsoft patches the workaround. I am tired of fighting my own OS.
Unfortunately seems like there's no way of getting a license legally without being a company. Windows Server seems easier to obtain but harder to morph into something useful (mostly because of missing drivers on Windows Update) though definitely possible.
I think the Pro version is enough for reasonable experience, most of the terrible stories originate from the Home version, which should be avoided like the plague.
I still have my mid-2015 MBP running triple-boot between macOS, Windows and Arch Linux. That machine could run everything...
I now have to keep around a physical PC desktop in order to run games like ARC Raiders. I use OBS with a capture card to use my MacBook's screen as a monitor for the PC, and an application called Deskflow to forward the MacBook's keyboard to the PC (I connect the mouse directly). Also, SonoBus for voice chat, since the PC doesn't have a microphone built-in. It works well enough.
Works for me without any extra hardware. Just a network connection between the machines. Haven't tried voice chat though.
Edit: Steam streaming works pretty well too, but feels a tiny bit more laggy than the above. Also running non Steam games is a bit of a pain.
I used to love my 2013 MBP. ARM Macs run pretty much everything I need, and some things better than Windows (such as Lightroom and PS which don't run at all on Linux).
But what kills it for me is the absolutely bonkers window management, and the fisher-price interface filling up half the screen with empty space around huge widgets.
To be honest, I don't mind the Windows games. In fact I believe the ones shipped with XP, Vista, and 7 were top-notch. What I mind is games with annoying advertisements in them. I mind when my Weather program is not native and is a glorified web app, also ridden with advertisements.
[1]: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
is changed into a stock ticker and tabloid news cornucopia... dagnabbit, I know where to get those, I just want the weather info.
"They have no taste" was right.
This one looks more like a PowerShell automation and debloating script for power users than a classic one-click optimizer, but it still requires knowing exactly what each tweak does. Used without that understanding, tools like this can easily create confusing problems.
Glad to see it's still in use.
When Windows 95 entered the picture, such wipe-and-reinstall antics were pretty much standard for all but trivial problems. Even then people would usually live with those problems, though a handful of people would be able to go in and fix them. Of course, Microsoft has introduced some functionality over the years to mitigate such drastic measures, but they tend to be variations of the same theme (e.g. restore points rolling back changes, rather than going in to fix what is broken).
To be fair, this tool doesn't claim to fix a broken system; as near as I can tell it doesn't actually remove the underlying Windows installation, so the core problem will remain.
And in the end of each sprint a single exe comes out. Or multiple. Like a soap opera for product managers.
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkTgX1mGmDg
[3] - https://officesnapshots.com/2014/11/18/microsoft-redmond-bui...
[12] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ
[44] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzkRVzciAZg
in conclusion:
>still requires knowing exactly what each tweak does. Used without that understanding, tools like this can easily create confusing problems.
Which I have always taken as extreme encouragement to use performance-improving setting configuations, and therefore gain the understanding to do so effectively.
If I can do it, anybody can, I'm no engineer.
With this approach in mind it makes the Titus offerings show a remarkable amount of superiority.
As another commenter has noted, 2022 is just when his Utility was beginning to get noticed.
It is being kept up-to-date with Windows 11 as it evolves.
I tried that. The advice was to reinstall. Then I remembered that this is the convention with Windows -- when it stops working, reinstall...
I will be switching to Linux before the ESU program expires though. I use my desktop mostly for gaming and have been planning to evaluate a few distros and desktop environments. I have my own Proxmox/TrueNAS/Debian homelab and use macOS daily for work so I'm fine with the CLI and tinkering but I'd rather everything Just Works™ for my gaming machine. I did a lot of dual booting back in the Fedora[ Core] 6-12 days but ultimately it got too tedious.
(Asking as I don't have a Windows box of any kind around to test, as I'm not a masochist and therefore all of my machines run Linux or macOS)
https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/releases/tag/25.12...
It seems to work OK: it didn’t break anything, and disabled some Windows annoyances but not all.
It’s closed source so I don’t fully trust it, but I’m not keeping anything sensitive.
First: "safe" and Windows never ever matched. Not in Windows 98, not in Millenium, not in Vista. Not ever.
I, reluctantly, after having confiscated my mother-in-law's Windows laptop and replacing it with a Chromebook about two years ago (which still works fine for her btw), ordered her a new desktop PC six months ago, running Windows 11.
Six months.
Six months is all it took for this piece of shit to become infected to the point of being unusable. Malware over malware took over: whatever 0-click or 1-click exploit in Edge that took over the machine and tells her to call indian scam center to help her "get her PC rid of viruses", blinking left and right, covering half the screen.
In other words: good old Windows. It's 20-fucking-25, nearly 26, and Microsoft still cannot ship an OS that's not rooted when a grandma is browsing for less than six months.
Pathetic.
Windows is a mediocre piece of insecure (and now spying) turd.
I fully agree with you: reliable Linux distros are the Windows replacement.
And as we've reached a point where everyone except some part of the corporate world can do everything they need from an Android smartphone and these same people are just fine with a Linux distro on their laptop or desktop, people can be switched. And some are. And the numbers of "desktop Linux" users are slowly but surely growing.
I don't care about the snarky "2026 is the year of Linux on the desktop". Linux conquered everything: all the servers, all the routers, 500 of the world top 500 supercomputers, etc. Linux shall conquer the laptop and the desktop too.
And those who don't switch have two choices: MacOS (pricey hardware) or be slaves to that turdery on bits that Windows is.
P.S: actually I don't even care: be it Linux or MacOS or BeOS or Atari's TOS: anything but Microsoft.
I even offer to hire your gradma, she seems really good at locating very valuable 0-days online.
I gave her an iPad Owh, 10 years ago? And I’ve never had to troubleshoot her system ever again. No spyware. No viruses. Nothing.
The worst that happened recently is that the Starlink antenna had te be realigned after a particularly heavy wind blew it off the roof almost. Oh and her printer needed new toners after printing for x years without problems.