Love the series! My question is with a lot of orgs using Intune/autopilot to ship laptops directly to staff, is there an equivalent method to clean up windows that way?
I really don't think so, because in that case the Windows installation is being pre-installed and sent out directly to your staff members. You're kind of stuck with shipping them Windows as Microsoft sees fit, and then using Intune to customize it out later.
For any new machine I touch (work or personal), I start by erasing whatever's already on it. If you don't have to worry about multiple users on the machine, or if you don't need to create a master image to be cloned to multiple machines, then you probably don't need to muck around in Audit mode. Definitely prepare your installation media first by deprovisioning junk apps and inserting some registry settings, but then you can take the settings from unattend.xml and merge them into Autounattend.xml. If you do it right, it should automatically wipe the disk, boot through OOBE, and create a new user account for you. You can also use the "OEMkey.ps1" script I provided to reactivate your copy of Windows, using the OEM license already burned into the BIOS.
It'll work fine for a laptop with multiple users! If you're doing that, just follow the whole process, Audit mode and all. :) Uncomment the section in deploy1.cmd to allow the OEMkey.ps1 script to run, and you should be good to go.
Love the series! My question is with a lot of orgs using Intune/autopilot to ship laptops directly to staff, is there an equivalent method to clean up windows that way?
I really don't think so, because in that case the Windows installation is being pre-installed and sent out directly to your staff members. You're kind of stuck with shipping them Windows as Microsoft sees fit, and then using Intune to customize it out later.
I bought an HP elitebook laptop in Europe with 11 pro on it. Any advice on how to debloat and despyware it? Thanks in advance
For any new machine I touch (work or personal), I start by erasing whatever's already on it.
If you don't have to worry about multiple users on the machine, or if you don't need to create a master image to be cloned to multiple machines, then you probably don't need to muck around in Audit mode. Definitely prepare your installation media first by deprovisioning junk apps and inserting some registry settings, but then you can take the settings from unattend.xml and merge them into Autounattend.xml. If you do it right, it should automatically wipe the disk, boot through OOBE, and create a new user account for you.
You can also use the "OEMkey.ps1" script I provided to reactivate your copy of Windows, using the OEM license already burned into the BIOS.
@@NextDoorNetAdmin so this solution is not advise for a laptop that will have 2-3 users. Thanks for the answer.
It'll work fine for a laptop with multiple users! If you're doing that, just follow the whole process, Audit mode and all. :) Uncomment the section in deploy1.cmd to allow the OEMkey.ps1 script to run, and you should be good to go.