Window Cleaning: Creating a clean Windows 11 install (part 1) - AppX Deprovisioning
Вставка
- Опубліковано 18 жов 2024
- A "clean" installation of Windows used to be pretty easy--just erase whatever junked-up install you had, then install a fresh copy straight from Microsoft. Nothing to it. But these days, Microsoft has joined in with the crapware dealers to load your copy of Windows up with an absolute pile of software that is both unneeded and undesirable.
Fortunately, Microsoft also provides ways to customize the Windows installation image (and has for years). This is how big businesses (including the big PC builders who deliver Windows with their hardware) can customize Windows and add everything they want to push on you. Now, we're going to use those same tools to reverse the process and remove everything you don't want pushed on you!
This is the first in a series. I don't know how long it will go for, but my goal here is to walk you through the entire process, step-by-step, of how we can cut down the Windows 11 installation image until we're left with something that actually looks clean and usable.
EXTRA CREDIT:
AppX is a packaging format originally used for Windows Store apps. They've since been replaced by the MSIX format (which aims to replace both the traditional Microsoft Installer [MSI] format and the AppX format in a single standard), but the commands used to work with the packages will probably stay much the same for compatibility!
Removing a provisioned AppX package doesn't uninstall it for anybody who's already had it installed; it just prevents future users from having it install automatically. Conversely, uninstalling it doesn't prevent it from installing for everybody else.
I'm pretty confident in stating that you can't permanently damage anything by experimenting with this process, but that's not entirely correct--if you forget the Path parameter in your PowerShell commands, you could very well start stripping items out of your live Windows installation! And as I mentioned, removing some of these packages could end up permanently crippling Windows in unexpected ways. If you break an installer, that's one thing--start over if you have to. If you break your running system, having to start over could be very painful indeed. So use caution and make sure you're always specifying the Path to your offline mounted image!
Yes ! Realky excited about the next variants love you buddy take care see you next week !
Interesting! Can’t wait until the next video. Thanks
"different version of onenote" hit me hard lol great stuff man
Very well explained, thank you.
NTlite is a program that facilitates in doing all this for you in a GUI. But I like tlo know how things work and you explained to me what NTLite is doing in the background. Thank You
Do you believe in the spectre/lite versions? Or too dangerous?
It concerns me that the website simply redirects me to a UA-cam channel. If I'm going to use something created by somebody else, I want to know EXACTLY what has been done--and ideally, I want to use that process myself to replicate their work, rather than take it on trust. Windows is opaque enough as it is. If I'm going to modify it, I want to be able to start from an official download from Microsoft and then do the modifications myself, so I know exactly what has been done and what (if anything) has been added.
That's just my personal preference, though. I'm sure lots of people have had nothing but good experiences with it, but I haven't had experience with it at all, good or bad! Most of my work focuses on cleaning up Windows 10/11 for a business environment, which is a different target. I need stability, support from Microsoft, and the ability to be able to enable telemetry for business purposes if needed; I can't afford to strip everything out like some of those builds do. (I just need to learn to control it.)
@@NextDoorNetAdmin what kind of telemetry is useful for business
Think of a business application, developed and written in-house rather than purchased. A new update to the application is pushed out, and people start to report that it crashes sometimes. But it doesn't crash all the time, and it doesn't crash on every machine, so troubleshooting it is taking some time... Or, think of pushing out a critical security update. It installs properly on most machines, but it's failing on a few machines here and there. What's different about the machines where it fails? Maybe your business pays for some very expensive applications, and you'd like to know which application(s) you should focus on trying to eliminate--which departments use which applications, and how often?
Telemetry is useful for these kinds of problems. If there's a crash, Windows error reporting can log it and send some of the details needed to help fix the issue. If an update fails, diagnostic data can help shed light on what's different about the hardware or software on the problem PCs, so you can adjust the details of which machines are assigned which updates--or which machines you might need to fix in another fashion.
Microsoft's telemetry functions are primarily intended to help spot issues like these, particularly as Windows grows more complex. But Microsoft also has settings to allow the business to store the telemetry data for their own in-house reporting needs, in which case Microsoft only collects and forwards the data. You can also turn off Windows error reporting completely without having to remove it--there's a setting for that. (Microsoft used to have a service that allowed businesses to examine and use the telemetry from the Windows PCs in their own fleet, but a lot of the data is now available through the use of Intune or other such agents, some of which still use the built-in data collection functionality in order to provide the needed information.)