I'm developing a Tweaker / Re-Tweaker script that will facilitate easily undoing the many things Microsoft does after an in-place upgrade.
Things that *I* don't care for, and want re-tweaked are as follows:
- They install all the Apps. I uninstall all the Apps. This includes the Windows Store App. If you want to use Apps this script is probably not for you.
- They install OneDrive system integration. I remove it.
- They set up settings OneSync. I tear it down.
- There are many services, support programs, and scheduled jobs to support the above. Removal and disabling increases efficiency and available resources, as well as privacy.
- There are some tweaks I like to make to make the system more responsive/usable. These include setting up Explorer so that it doesn't automatically set the "Folder Optimization" but sets all folders to "General Items", unhiding AppData and ProgramData folders, disabling generation of hidden thumbs.db files, etc.
I have already coded most of the above into a script and it works. There are still others I'm looking to code, and I'm working on (or at least thinking about) these:
- Reduction of window chrome in order to make the non-client stuff less intrusive. This is less an issue than it used to be, but can still be helpful to make things look a little more svelte.
- I could consider adding a tweak to install all the Aero Glass components in the right places.
- I've used a combo of O&O ShutUp 10 and W10Privacy, along with some of my own privacy tweaks to quiet Windows down. I'd like to get all the things these various apps do in one convenient place.
- Opt out of Spynet (Windows Defender and Malicious Software Removal Tool reporting to Microsoft).
- Set Windows Updates to avert automatic updating. Perhaps also facilitate installation of the Windows Update Hiding Tool. Maybe this would be better in a separate tool to facilitate easy reconfiguration/installation of updates?
- Might it be useful to facilitate installation of tools like Classic Shell and others available online? This might just be a matter of popping-up web pages to the right sites, or it might be possible to do a direct download of the installer and run it.
- Facilitate exporting a reference copy of the entire registry, to be able to refer back to how things were in a pinch.
- Deconfigure HomeGroup networking.
- Various other small usability tweaks, such as speeding up UI responsiveness, changing the default for hiding folder merge conflicts, launching folder windows in separate process, having Explorer show actual times instead of things like "2 minutes ago", etc.
- Setting up a short, simple TEMP path (C:\TEMP), which tends to make things work better as well as giving an easy place to do things.
I'm sure there are many others. I'm interested in both having folks willing to test as well as to contribute ideas or even implementation.
For now - and I'm not saying it'll stay like this - I'm prototyping the Re-Tweaker as a .BAT file that's augmented with several key tools (some from the GnuWin32 toolkit, plus SetACL and SQLite). I can re-distribute the Gnu tools, but re-distributing SetACL and SQLite would violate their license agreements. Ultimately I will make the script do the work to obtain them from various online sources itself if they're not already on the system.
Here's the script (I'll try to keep this file updated with the latest work):
1. Unzip all the files from this archive into a single working folder, in which you'll run the script. Remember, this is a work in progress:
Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/files/Windows10ReTweaker.zip
You'll also need to visit these two sites to download free tools SetACL.exe and SQLite3.exe, since I can't legally redistribute them (yet):
2. Visit the following web pages and put the named executables also in the working folder:
SetACL.exe - from
helgeklein.com/download/ (specifically the EXE version of SetACL 3.0.6).
SQLite3.exe - from
www.sqlite.org/download.html (specifically
this)
Run Windows10ReTweaker.bat in an ELEVATED CMD window. I normally keep UAC completely disabled, so I don't worry about that myself.
Are you interested in:
a) trying out what I've got so far,
b) suggesting additional things to tweak, and/or
c) contributing code?
I think having this site be the source for a great re-tweaker will draw people here.
