Guide | How To How to slim Windows 10 and make it superfast

The associated guide may contain user-generated or external content.

BoraMurdar

Community Manager
Thread author
Verified
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Well-known
Aug 30, 2012
6,598
Today I will talk about the tools, scripts, and tweaks which will help you make your Windows 10 faster. Windows 10, in its nature, is already preconfigured to optimally run your everyday tasks with only resources it needs and it allocates, but in today's topic, I will try to explain what areas of the OS can be further improved for speed and still maintain its stability and security.

Tweaks for this theme were run and tested on Windows 10 Pro 64bit Version 1903 OS Build 18362.53 on Dell Vostro 1015, Intel Celeron Dual-Core 1.8GHz, 2GB Hynix DDR2 RAM and Silicon Power s55 240GB SSD, Intel iGPU with the resolution of 1366 x 768.

Before anything, be warned that you will be dealing with some core functionality of Windows, things may go wrong for you for multiple subjective and objective reasons, so I advise you to backup your important data on external location and eventually make system image backup in case you don't like the result or just prefer using the default or your own Windows tweaks and settings.

Let's dive in, shall we?

For this matter, you can use Windows built-in tools like Regedit, PowerShell, Group Policy Editor, which will be used anyway, but for the sake of the size of this thread, I will use some third party tools which will make our job easier. So, you will need :

  1. Mirinsoft Cleanmgr+ [ Can be downloaded using this link Mirinsoft - Good apps are as little apps as possible - Cleanmgr+ - Download Summary ]
  2. O&O AppBuster [ Can be downloaded using this link https://dl5.oo-software.com/files/ooappbuster/OOAPB.exe ] [OPTIONAL]
  3. O&O ShutUP10 [ Can be downloaded using this link https://dl5.oo-software.com/files/ooshutup10/OOSU10.exe ]
  4. Win10 Debloater Script [ Can be downloaded using this link https://codeload.github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater/zip/master ]
  5. Uninstall Microsoft Edge Script [ Can be downloaded from WinAero site following this link Downloads / Other / Uninstall Edge browser for Windows 10 ]
  6. Windows Privacy Dashboard [ Beta is quite stable and can be downloaded using this link https://wpd.app/get/beta.zip ]
  7. Functional Windows 10 Built-in tools
GLOBAL NOTE: These tweaks are optimized for system lightness, stability and only if you don't use Microsoft Egde (non-Chromium), Cortana, OneDrive, Skype App, Touch features, Features for enabling location and device position and movement, Speach recognition system, nondomain network connections, inter-device communication, Windows Sandbox, Error reporting, and some others.

STEP 1.
Fully update your Windows System using Windows Update built into the system settings and go to Store App and update all your preinstalled apps. Why is this important at first, you may ask? Upon execution of these scripts, you can encounter a situation where the app you are trying to uninstall is in the process of updating, so although you could uninstall it, the app may stay there as nothing happened. So, the order in which you will execute each tweak is very important. Don't forget to reboot the system after completing this step.

STEP 2.
Launch WPD (Windows Privacy Dashboard) with Administrator privileges (Run as Admin). WPD is mainly a privacy-oriented app but it can be used to disable, in this case, unneeded services Microsoft use to collect Telemetry and see which apps communicate among each other and in what order. After the app is launched it will present you its main GUI.

2019-04-15_144431.jpg


Next, you click on Privacy button and it will lead you to the portion of the program which will let you customize your privacy in Windows. Settings you see in the next screenshots are optimized for disabling unnecessary services, which will release resources upon the next system reboot, and maintaining privacy. Note that some tweaks are not enabled as I use Bluetooth radios on my laptop and Mail and Calendar App, albeit you can disable a few more but it might break the Windows Notification subsystem. Freedom is yours, and here is mine :

2019-04-15_145058.jpg
2019-04-15_145115.jpg
2019-04-15_145133.jpg
2019-04-15_145157.jpg
2019-04-15_145223.jpg
2019-04-15_145240.jpg



STEP 3.
Launch O&O ShutUp 10 tool with Administrator privileges. O&O ShutUp 10 is also a privacy-oriented tool, but we use it, in this case, to complement WPD, as some features O&O has which WPD hasn't and vice versa. ShutUp 10 is usually released with each Windows Feature Update so we expect a new version soon which will cover 1903 completely. Here are my settings :

2019-04-15_153536.jpg
2019-04-15_153555.jpg
2019-04-15_153615.jpg
2019-04-15_153636.jpg
2019-04-15_153647.jpg


When you close the program after applying all these tweaks it will ask you if you want to reboot the system. Please, do so.

STEP 4.
OK. Among other tweaks, we have prevented some apps from reinstalling themselves as Windows usually does it so we can move on. It's time to uninstall Microsoft Apps from the machine completely. Why did I say machine? Windows Apps are stored in Program Files Folder and some other folders in the "Users" folder which is usually hidden. App data are stored there for each Windows user and the whole machine in global. O&O AppBuster can help you uninstall apps from a specific user, from all users, and from the machine globally. But there are some limitations.
First of all, not all Windows Apps can be removed from your system totally, as some depend on others. Like Paint 3D depends on Photos App and cannot be uninstalled (from the machine) when Photos App is running. O&O AppBuster is a very young app and I am sure that it will improve in the future to notify the user which app is holding back and cannot be uninstalled with a detailed error log. But using this app you can successfully uninstall almost every app from the current user and from all users. Only some apps can be uninstalled from the machine using this way.

So, we will use a PowerShell and Win10 Debloater Script to uninstall every app from the system completely. Note, that I've experimented with trying to delete every unwanted Windows App by deleting its parent folder(s) from outside of Windows (using Hiren's Boot Pe or Slitaz Linux Distro), and it works without breaking the system, but registry entries remain and you can hardly detect them all manually. So we will use this script to do the job.

This script will remove the bloatware from Windows 10 when using Remove-AppXPackage/Remove-AppXProvisionedPackage, and then delete specific registry keys that are were not removed beforehand. For best results, this script should be run before a user profile is configured, otherwise, you will likely see that apps that should have been removed will remain, and if they are removed you will find broken tiles on the start menu.

Please do not continue if you don't want these apps removed:
3DBuilder, Appconnector, Bing Finance, Bing News, Bing Sports, Bing Weather, Fresh Paint, Get started, Microsoft Office Hub, Microsoft Solitaire Collection, Microsoft Sticky Notes, OneNote, OneConnect, People, Skype for Desktop, Alarms, Camera, Maps, Phone, SoundRecorder, XboxApp, Zune Music, Zune Video, Windows communications apps, Minecraft, PowerBI, Network Speed Test, Phone, Messaging, Office Sway, OneConnect, Windows Feedback Hub, Bing Food And Drink, Bing Travel, Bing Health And Fitness, Windows Reading List, Twitter, Pandora, Flipboard, Shazam, CandyCrush, CandyCrushSoda, King apps, iHeartRadio, Netflix, DrawboardPDF, PicsArt-PhotoStudio, FarmVille 2 Country Escape, TuneInRadio, Asphalt8, NYT Crossword, CyberLink MediaSuite Essentials, Facebook, Royal Revolt 2, Caesars Slots Free Casino, March of Empires, Phototastic Collage, Autodesk SketchBook, Duolingo, EclipseManager, ActiproSoftware, BioEnrollment, Windows Feedback, Xbox Game CallableUI, Xbox Identity Provider, and ContactSupport.

After you have download the zip file from GitHub repository, please extract it to your C partition first depth. So the addressed folder called "Windows10Debloater-master" has the "C:\Windows10Debloater-master" path (without the quotes, of course).

You then open the PowerShell as Admin and enable its execution policy by entering
Code:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Force

On the prompt, change to the directory where you extracted the files, in this case
Code:
cd C:\Windows10Debloater-master

Then run the GUI script (recommended) by entering the following command
Code:
.\Windows10DebloaterGUI.ps1

The following program will be executed and this GUI presented

windows10debloater.png


You will click on Remove All Bloatware button.

Next, you will wait for the script to finish removing the bloat.

DO NOT REBOOT YOUR SYSTEM AFTERWARDS! (yet)

STEP 5. (OPTIONAL)
IN SOME OCCASIONS WINDOWS 10 WILL FAIL TO INSTALL FURTHER CUMULATIVE UPDATES WITHOUT MICROSOFT EDGE INSTALLED. IF YOU HAVE PROBLEM WITH THAT, PLEASE SKIP THIS STEP AND REBOOT THE MACHINE AFTER STEP 4.

Removing Microsoft Edge completely from the system. After you have downloaded "Uninstall Microsoft Edge", please extract the archive to your desired location. Note that after extraction "install_wim_tweak" program and "Uninstall Edge" command script must be in the same folder and location.

Execute Uninstall Edge script by right click and Run as Administrator. Wait for the script to finish and reboot your system. Empty icons of MS Edge may be there sitting on your Desktop and Taskbar after reboot. You can freely delete and unpin those.

STEP 6.
Disabling unnecessary Windows services.
First of all, we'll need to open the Services Manager to configure Windows 10 services. You can open Services Manager using several ways as given following:

Press WIN+X keys together to show quick access menu and then select "Computer Management" option. It'll open a new window.
Now click on "Services and Applications -> Services" in left-side pane.
The Same thing can be done by clicking on "Computer -> Manage" in "This PC" ribbon toolbar.
You can also right-click on the "This PC" icon on Desktop and select "Manage" option.
Or press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box and type services.msc and press Enter. It'll directly open Services Manager.

The Status section shows whether a service is currently running in the background or not. Startup Type section tells you whether a service is set to automatically start with Windows or not.
We'll set some unnecessary services startup type to MANUAL so that they don't start automatically with Windows and thus don't consume system resources.

NOTE: Always set a service's startup type to MANUAL and never set it to DISABLED. We suggest this because if a service is set to MANUAL start and Windows needs the service, it'll be able to start the service and there will be no effect on OS functionality. But if a service is set to DISABLED and Windows requires that service, it'll not be able to start the service and you may face problems.

Following are some services which can be safely set to MANUAL/DISABLED:
  • Connected User Experiences and Telemetry (To turn off Telemetry and Data Collection)
  • Diagnostic Policy Service (Not recommended if you wish for Windows to automatically fix something like resetting the wireless card, troubleshooting, icon cashe resetting, etc.)
  • Diagnostic Tracking Service (To turn off Telemetry and Data Collection)
  • Distributed Link Tracking Client (If your computer is not connected to any network)
  • dmwappushsvc (To turn off Telemetry and Data Collection)
  • Downloaded Maps Manager (If you don't use Maps app)
  • IP Helper (If you don't use IPv6 connection)
  • Program Compatibility Assistant Service
  • Print Spooler (If you don't have a printer)
  • Remote Registry (You can set it to DISABLED for Security purposes)
  • Secondary Logon (If you are the only Windows User)
  • Security Center
  • TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper (If you are not in a workgroup network)
  • Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service (If you don't want to use touch keyboard and handwriting features)
  • Windows Defender Service (If you don't use Windows Defender program)
  • Windows Error Reporting Service
  • Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) (If you don't have a scanner)
  • Windows Search (If you don't use Windows Search feature frequently)
Apart from the above-mentioned services, You can also set a few other services startup type to MANUAL such as services installed by your graphics card driver (Intel, nVidia, AMD, etc), your sound card driver (Realtek, Creative, etc).

You may notice that some services are already disabled because of WPD and ShutUp 10 's work, but check it twice anyways. This is purely individual which services you don't need and you wish to disable so I will leave this to you.

STEP 7. (optional)
You can further improve the performance of your computer by disabling animation effects in Windows but this doesn't fall into the "Slimming Windows" bucket so we can move on. Optionally you can disable some unneeded Windows Features in Programs and Features like Windows Sandbox (if you don't use it), XPS services, Media Features like Windows Media Player...

STEP 8.
Cleaning the mess left behind.
Cleanmgr+ is a great tool for one use. For now. Developer needs to do some GUI improvements in my honest opinion like some basic features to be able to select all the tasks, settings buttons to be more naturally accessible, etc. But, for what it does, it does it superbly. Just run it as an Administrator and you can freely select all the boxes in the main tab and "more" tab and click.

2019-04-15_170734.jpg


Don't click "CleanUp" before you read this.
Among other things it cleans, Cleanmgr+ removes all your backup installations of Windows Updates, Windows components and program installations which Windows may need in case some program behaves abnormally and it needs to reinstall it or degrade to the previous version. WinSxS folder is one of them. Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 automatically reduce the size of the WinSxS folder by using methods similar to the ones described in this topic, in addition to internal processes, such as uninstalling and deleting packages with components that have been replaced by other components with newer versions. Previous versions of some components are kept on the system for a period of time, allowing you to rollback if necessary. After a period of time, these older components are automatically removed from the installation.

Warning
Deleting files from the WinSxS folder or deleting the entire WinSxS folder may severely damage your system so that your PC might not boot and make it impossible to update.


If you don't want to mess with update backups and WinSxS folder please uncheck Windows Update CleanUp and Windows Component Store in the selection menu.


Click to cleanup, wait for it to finish and reboot.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you for reading. Stay safe and do your work faster than before.
BoraMurdar
 

Burrito

Level 24
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
May 16, 2018
1,363
Before anything, be warned that you will be dealing with some core functionality of Windows, things may go wrong for you for multiple subjective and objective reasons, so I advise you to backup your important data on external location and eventually make system image backup in case you don't like the result or just prefer using the default or your own Windows tweaks and settings.
This is a really good warning for some, a reminder for others.

Lots of great detail in this post.

Many things to explore...

Thank you.
 

Purshu_Pro

Level 29
Verified
Honorary Member
Aug 3, 2013
1,879
Today I will talk about the tools, scripts, and tweaks which will help you make your Windows 10 faster. Windows 10, in its nature, is already preconfigured to optimally run your everyday tasks with only resources it needs and it allocates, but in today's topic, I will try to explain what areas of the OS can be further improved for speed and still maintain its stability and security.

Tweaks for this theme were run and tested on Windows 10 Pro 64bit Version 1903 OS Build 18362.53 on Dell Vostro 1015, Intel Celeron Dual-Core 1.8GHz, 2GB Hynix DDR2 RAM and Silicon Power s55 240GB SSD, Intel iGPU with the resolution of 1366 x 768.

Before anything, be warned that you will be dealing with some core functionality of Windows, things may go wrong for you for multiple subjective and objective reasons, so I advise you to backup your important data on external location and eventually make system image backup in case you don't like the result or just prefer using the default or your own Windows tweaks and settings.

Let's dive in, shall we?

For this matter, you can use Windows built-in tools like Regedit, PowerShell, Group Policy Editor, which will be used anyway, but for the sake of the size of this thread, I will use some third party tools which will make our job easier. So, you will need :

  1. Mirinsoft Cleanmgr+ [ Can be downloaded using this link Mirinsoft - Good apps are as little apps as possible - Cleanmgr+ - Download Summary ]
  2. O&O AppBuster [ Can be downloaded using this link https://dl5.oo-software.com/files/ooappbuster/OOAPB.exe ] [OPTIONAL]
  3. O&O ShutUP10 [ Can be downloaded using this link https://dl5.oo-software.com/files/ooshutup10/OOSU10.exe ]
  4. Windows 10 Debloater Script [ Can be downloaded using this link https://codeload.github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater/zip/master ]
  5. Uninstall Microsoft Edge Script [ Can be downloaded from WinAero site following this link Downloads / Other / Uninstall Edge browser for Windows 10 ]
  6. Windows Privacy Dashboard [ Beta is quite stable and can be downloaded using this link https://wpd.app/get/beta.zip ]
  7. Functional Windows 10 Built-in tools
GLOBAL NOTE: These tweaks are optimized for system lightness, stability and only if you don't use Microsoft Egde (non-Chromium), Cortana, OneDrive, Skype App, Touch features, Features for enabling location and device position and movement, Speach recognition system, nondomain network connections, inter-device communication, Windows Sandbox, Error reporting, and some others.

STEP 1.
Fully update your Windows System using Windows Update built into the system settings and go to Store App and update all your preinstalled apps. Why is this important at first, you may ask? Upon execution of these scripts, you can encounter a situation where the app you are trying to uninstall is in the process of updating, so although you could uninstall it, the app may stay there as nothing happened. So, the order in which you will execute each tweak is very important. Don't forget to reboot the system after completing this step.

STEP 2.
Launch WPD (Windows Privacy Dashboard) with Administrator privileges (Run as Admin). WPD is mainly a privacy-oriented app but it can be used to disable, in this case, unneeded services Microsoft use to collect Telemetry and see which apps communicate among each other and in what order. After the app is launched it will present you its main GUI.

View attachment 212404

Next, you click on Privacy button and it will lead you to the portion of the program which will let you customize your privacy in Windows. Settings you see in the next screenshots are optimized for disabling unnecessary services, which will release resources upon the next system reboot, and maintaining privacy. Note that some tweaks are not enabled as I use Bluetooth radios on my laptop and Mail and Calendar App, albeit you can disable a few more but it might break the Windows Notification subsystem. Freedom is yours, and here is mine :

View attachment 212405View attachment 212406View attachment 212407View attachment 212408View attachment 212409View attachment 212410


STEP 3.
Launch O&O ShutUp 10 tool with Administrator privileges. O&O ShutUp 10 is also a privacy-oriented tool, but we use it, in this case, to complement WPD, as some features O&O has which WPD hasn't and vice versa. ShutUp 10 is usually released with each Windows Feature Update so we expect a new version soon which will cover 1903 completely. Here are my settings :

View attachment 212417View attachment 212418View attachment 212419View attachment 212420View attachment 212421

When you close the program after applying all these tweaks it will ask you if you want to reboot the system. Please, do so.

STEP 4.
OK. Among other tweaks, we have prevented some apps from reinstalling themselves as Windows usually does it so we can move on. It's time to uninstall Microsoft Apps from the machine completely. Why did I say machine? Windows Apps are stored in Program Files Folder and some other folders in the "Users" folder which is usually hidden. App data are stored there for each Windows user and the whole machine in global. O&O AppBuster can help you uninstall apps from a specific user, from all users, and from the machine globally. But there are some limitations.
First of all, not all Windows Apps can be removed from your system totally, as some depend on others. Like Paint 3D depends on Photos App and cannot be uninstalled (from the machine) when Photos App is running. O&O AppBuster is a very young app and I am sure that it will improve in the future to notify the user which app is holding back and cannot be uninstalled with a detailed error log. But using this app you can successfully uninstall almost every app from the current user and from all users. Only some apps can be uninstalled from the machine using this way.

So, we will use a PowerShell and Windows 10 Debloater Script to uninstall every app from the system completely. Note, that I've experimented with trying to delete every unwanted Windows App by deleting its parent folder(s) from outside of Windows (using Hiren's Boot Pe or Slitaz Linux Distro), and it works without breaking the system, but registry entries remain and you can hardly detect them all manually. So we will use this script to do the job.

This script will remove the bloatware from Windows 10 when using Remove-AppXPackage/Remove-AppXProvisionedPackage, and then delete specific registry keys that are were not removed beforehand. For best results, this script should be run before a user profile is configured, otherwise, you will likely see that apps that should have been removed will remain, and if they are removed you will find broken tiles on the start menu.

Please do not continue if you don't want these apps removed:
3DBuilder, Appconnector, Bing Finance, Bing News, Bing Sports, Bing Weather, Fresh Paint, Get started, Microsoft Office Hub, Microsoft Solitaire Collection, Microsoft Sticky Notes, OneNote, OneConnect, People, Skype for Desktop, Alarms, Camera, Maps, Phone, SoundRecorder, XboxApp, Zune Music, Zune Video, Windows communications apps, Minecraft, PowerBI, Network Speed Test, Phone, Messaging, Office Sway, OneConnect, Windows Feedback Hub, Bing Food And Drink, Bing Travel, Bing Health And Fitness, Windows Reading List, Twitter, Pandora, Flipboard, Shazam, CandyCrush, CandyCrushSoda, King apps, iHeartRadio, Netflix, DrawboardPDF, PicsArt-PhotoStudio, FarmVille 2 Country Escape, TuneInRadio, Asphalt8, NYT Crossword, CyberLink MediaSuite Essentials, Facebook, Royal Revolt 2, Caesars Slots Free Casino, March of Empires, Phototastic Collage, Autodesk SketchBook, Duolingo, EclipseManager, ActiproSoftware, BioEnrollment, Windows Feedback, Xbox Game CallableUI, Xbox Identity Provider, and ContactSupport.

After you have download the zip file from GitHub repository, please extract it to your C partition first depth. So the addressed folder called "Windows10Debloater-master" has the "C:\Windows10Debloater-master" path (without the quotes, of course).

You then open the PowerShell as Admin and enable its execution policy by entering
Code:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Force

On the prompt, change to the directory where you extracted the files, in this case
Code:
cd C:\Windows10Debloater-master

Then run the GUI script (recommended) by entering the following command
Code:
.\Windows10DebloaterGUI.ps1

The following program will be executed and this GUI presented

View attachment 212425

You will click on Remove All Bloatware button.

Next, you will wait for the script to finish removing the bloat.

DO NOT REBOOT YOUR SYSTEM AFTERWARDS! (yet)

STEP 5.
Removing Microsoft Edge completely from the system. After you have downloaded "Uninstall Microsoft Edge", please extract the archive to your desired location. Note that after extraction "install_wim_tweak" program and "Uninstall Edge" command script must be in the same folder and location.
Execute Uninstall Edge script by right click and Run as Administrator. Wait for the script to finish and reboot your system. Empty icons of MS Edge may be there sitting on your Desktop and Taskbar after reboot. You can freely delete and unpin those.

STEP 6.
Disabling unnecessary Windows services.
First of all, we'll need to open the Services Manager to configure Windows 10 services. You can open Services Manager using several ways as given following:

Press WIN+X keys together to show quick access menu and then select "Computer Management" option. It'll open a new window.
Now click on "Services and Applications -> Services" in left-side pane.
The Same thing can be done by clicking on "Computer -> Manage" in "This PC" ribbon toolbar.
You can also right-click on the "This PC" icon on Desktop and select "Manage" option.
Or press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box and type services.msc and press Enter. It'll directly open Services Manager.

The Status section shows whether a service is currently running in the background or not. Startup Type section tells you whether a service is set to automatically start with Windows or not.
We'll set some unnecessary services startup type to MANUAL so that they don't start automatically with Windows and thus don't consume system resources.

NOTE: Always set a service's startup type to MANUAL and never set it to DISABLED. We suggest this because if a service is set to MANUAL start and Windows needs the service, it'll be able to start the service and there will be no effect on OS functionality. But if a service is set to DISABLED and Windows requires that service, it'll not be able to start the service and you may face problems.

Following are some services which can be safely set to MANUAL/DISABLED:
  • Connected User Experiences and Telemetry (To turn off Telemetry and Data Collection)
  • Diagnostic Policy Service (Not recommended if you wish for Windows to automatically fix something like resetting the wireless card, troubleshooting, icon cashe resetting, etc.)
  • Diagnostic Tracking Service (To turn off Telemetry and Data Collection)
  • Distributed Link Tracking Client (If your computer is not connected to any network)
  • dmwappushsvc (To turn off Telemetry and Data Collection)
  • Downloaded Maps Manager (If you don't use Maps app)
  • IP Helper (If you don't use IPv6 connection)
  • Program Compatibility Assistant Service
  • Print Spooler (If you don't have a printer)
  • Remote Registry (You can set it to DISABLED for Security purposes)
  • Secondary Logon (If you are the only Windows User)
  • Security Center
  • TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper (If you are not in a workgroup network)
  • Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service (If you don't want to use touch keyboard and handwriting features)
  • Windows Defender Service (If you don't use Windows Defender program)
  • Windows Error Reporting Service
  • Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) (If you don't have a scanner)
  • Windows Search (If you don't use Windows Search feature frequently)
Apart from the above-mentioned services, You can also set a few other services startup type to MANUAL such as services installed by your graphics card driver (Intel, nVidia, AMD, etc), your sound card driver (Realtek, Creative, etc).

You may notice that some services are already disabled because of WPD and ShutUp 10 's work, but check it twice anyways. This is purely individual which services you don't need and you wish to disable so I will leave this to you.

STEP 7. (optional)
You can further improve the performance of your computer by disabling animation effects in Windows but this doesn't fall into the "Slimming Windows" bucket so we can move on. Optionally you can disable some unneeded Windows Features in Programs and Features like Windows Sandbox (if you don't use it), XPS services, Media Features like Windows Media Player...

STEP 8.
Cleaning the mess left behind.
Cleanmgr+ is a great tool for one use. For now. Developer needs to do some GUI improvements in my honest opinion like some basic features to be able to select all the tasks, settings buttons to be more naturally accessible, etc. But, for what it does, it does it superbly. Just run it as an Administrator and you can freely select all the boxes in the main tab and "more" tab and click.

View attachment 212426

Don't click "CleanUp" before you read this.
Among other things it cleans, Cleanmgr+ removes all your backup installations of Windows Updates, Windows components and program installations which Windows may need in case some program behaves abnormally and it needs to reinstall it or degrade to the previous version. WinSxS folder is one of them. Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 automatically reduce the size of the WinSxS folder by using methods similar to the ones described in this topic, in addition to internal processes, such as uninstalling and deleting packages with components that have been replaced by other components with newer versions. Previous versions of some components are kept on the system for a period of time, allowing you to rollback if necessary. After a period of time, these older components are automatically removed from the installation.

Warning
Deleting files from the WinSxS folder or deleting the entire WinSxS folder may severely damage your system so that your PC might not boot and make it impossible to update.


If you don't want to mess with update backups and WinSxS folder please uncheck Windows Update CleanUp and Windows Component Store in the selection menu.


Click to cleanup, wait for it to finish and reboot.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you for reading. Stay safe and do your work faster than before.
BoraMurdar
Nice to be back here and read your post on first page
 

Back3

Level 14
Verified
Top Poster
Apr 14, 2019
654
Excellent tutorial. I'm sure I will get back to it. Good for privacy and speed.
My midrange computer boots in 20 seconds ( SSD) and I always try to reach a balance between performance and security. Without Commodo Firewall, I was able to go down to 17 seconds. But I feel secure with Commodo...
 

BoraMurdar

Community Manager
Thread author
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Well-known
Aug 30, 2012
6,598

jerzy601

Level 20
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Jun 20, 2011
997
a wonderful description of all these activities.
but for average computer users, this may be a problem.
so I will stay with it as it is.
but thanks for the large contribution of work because it really is very instructive and helpful.
it's possible that the tutorial will come back to it. (y)
 

Andy Ful

From Hard_Configurator Tools
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Dec 23, 2014
8,040
From my own experience, I can say that debloating the system should be made only when the system lightness is a priority. Like @BoraMurdar noticed, Windows 10 "...is already preconfigured to optimally run your everyday tasks with only resources it needs and it allocates...".
The problem with debloating is that Windows Updates are buggy and are not tested on debloated systems at all. So, after debloating, the user has much greater chances to get the broken Windows Update.
This was also my case a few years ago when one of the cumulative Windows updates failed to install on my system. I spend three months seeking the solution, which cost me much effort because several solutions I found were useless. In the end, the solution was easy - one of the unused services should be set to start automatically. This was a bug in the Windows Update, but it was me who changed Windows defaults anyway.
So, if one really needs to debloat Windows, then it is good to use one or two applications which allow to quickly revert debloating to recover Windows defaults. It is also good to remember what applications were used to debloat the Windows (not easy for debloaters-tweakers).

Warning.
In many cases debloating Windows will not make it much more "light", because it is already spoiled by installing/uninstalling many applications, especially security/privacy related. So, the best way to make the system responsive is installing the fresh Windows system.:giggle:(y)
 

Vasudev

Level 33
Verified
Nov 8, 2014
2,224
Nice guide. I've added Cleanmgr++ to my USB stick after I heard cleanmgr was discontinued, Mirinsoft's tool is super fast.
I already make custom Win 7/10 images with most tweaks integrated. I use Wintoolkit,NTLite and Dism++.
I'll share some regfiles and cmds I use on W10. I gave the links to @Deletedmessiah for RS4 and RS5.
Just delete .log and enjoy the cmds and regfiles I use after following Chef koch's regtweaks at github
 

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Andy Ful

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Dec 23, 2014
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I'll share some regfiles and cmds I use on W10. I gave the links to @Deletedmessiah for RS4 and RS5.
Just delete .log and enjoy the cmds and regfiles I use after following Chef koch's regtweaks at github
@Vasudev,
If you share reg tweaks and commandlines, then try to include also those which can revert the changes. If not, then they are often dangerous to many users.:unsure:(y)
 
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Vasudev

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Nov 8, 2014
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@Vasudev,
If you share reg tweaks and commandlines, then try to include also those which can revert the changes. If not, then they are often dangerous to many users.:unsure:(y)
They are just safe regtweaks, I use more advanced ones too but that causes too much issues and you can't find what went wrong.
Usually I have seen people applying the tweaked and reverted regkeys and say, what the hell the tweak isn't working you borked my happy system.
I added only few recommend tweaks:
Code:
Enable verbose message of startup/shutdown
Remove Onedrive
Remove quick access and Navigational panel for W7 like clean experience
Kill Telemetry
Add gpedit.msc for Home
Zero startup delay
Disable Reserved storage on 1903
4MB Icon cache size
Disable Cortana and keep Search.
 

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