It is insane to me that a 2432 line script is required to achieve this.
Reclaim Windows10
21–30 of 207 posts
Re: Reclaim Windows10
#22Nearly all of these "clean up" scripts are a horrendous idea to run on your machine, I see right at the top that this script disables SmartScreen, a service that absolutely should not be disabled unless you want your machine to get owned. It then proceeds to set your current network as Private (aka "open all the ports") regardless of which network you're connected to - hope you're at home! Other changes are completel…
Sadly, this is an expected consequence of the aggressive monetization, telemetry, and other tracking that ships with the OS.
When you make it hard to trust the system, people will look at any component that seems unnecessary. They might not know what it is, but they don't trust it anymore. So it might as well get disabled. You know, to be safe.
But at the end of the day I suppose it's only a small percent of users, isn't it? I'm sure the aggressive push for automatic updates — replacing the "Cancel" button by "Maybe Later", and the "Maybe Later" by "You have 2 minutes" — has worked miracles.
So I think we can expect more of this in the future, and the scripts will get even more paranoid in response. What an antagonistic situation.
Re: Reclaim Windows10
#23Nearly all of these "clean up" scripts are a horrendous idea to run on your machine, I see right at the top that this script disables SmartScreen, a service that absolutely should not be disabled unless you want your machine to get owned. It then proceeds to set your current network as Private (aka "open all the ports") regardless of which network you're connected to - hope you're at home! Other changes are completel…
Just as the note from the author says: Never run scripts without reading and understanding what they do.
This is an outdated fork of a configurable script that I use to do initial config of my windows 10 machines. But I've created my own config saying which functions to run and which not to run based on reading what each function actually does. I'm an IT pro, I knew how to do most of these tweaks in windows settings or group policy, but it's still easier to just run a script than to perform hundreds of clicks, especially when the settings get reorganized in every other windows update.
And as this is HN, I expect lots of people here being IT pros, so I would correct you here: Don't run this stuff if you don't understand what it does.
Re: Reclaim Windows10
#24Nearly all of these "clean up" scripts are a horrendous idea to run on your machine, I see right at the top that this script disables SmartScreen, a service that absolutely should not be disabled unless you want your machine to get owned. It then proceeds to set your current network as Private (aka "open all the ports") regardless of which network you're connected to - hope you're at home! Other changes are completel…
Thanks for the info; I've been concerned enough about Windows 10 telemetry (etc.) to avoid it, and when I saw this script I thought "ohhh maybe I can just do this?"--so you saved me. Do you have a rec or a resource? I haven't looked seriously at this so if it's just like "google it" mea culpa, but it seems like there's a lot of misinformation and what not out there. I saw "O&O ShutUp10" in a sibling thread?
I think I would think about specific Windows Telemetry that you want to disable and more importantly, why (i.e. "What's the Threat Model around Microsoft knowing this"). Because the vast majority of the telemetry collected by Windows is simply to make Windows work better - things like "Upgrade failed because $REASON" or "$DRIVER is causing performance problems".
You can see a lot of the kinds of telemetry that Windows is interested in if you go to Event Viewer => Application Logs => Microsoft => Windows, if you read it you see that it's like, Google Lighthouse style stuff, to make Windows faster and more reliable
Use these scripts to figure out the kinds of things you don't want to run, then make really targeted "Disable This" choices
Re: Reclaim Windows10
#25Nearly all of these "clean up" scripts are a horrendous idea to run on your machine, I see right at the top that this script disables SmartScreen, a service that absolutely should not be disabled unless you want your machine to get owned. It then proceeds to set your current network as Private (aka "open all the ports") regardless of which network you're connected to - hope you're at home! Other changes are completel…
Thanks for the info; I've been concerned enough about Windows 10 telemetry (etc.) to avoid it, and when I saw this script I thought "ohhh maybe I can just do this?"--so you saved me. Do you have a rec or a resource? I haven't looked seriously at this so if it's just like "google it" mea culpa, but it seems like there's a lot of misinformation and what not out there. I saw "O&O ShutUp10" in a sibling thread?
This might be an unpopular opinion but in my opinion anything more than ShutUp10 is a complete waste of time unless you go all the way and run Windows behind a firewall (OPNsense) and use a whitelist. It is (again IMO) impossible to control software from the same machine.
Re: Reclaim Windows10
#26It is insane to me that a 2432 line script is required to achieve this.
You get the options to both enable and disable the steps so that's half the lines. Then there's lots of things like "DisableLockScreen" which are not really related to the goals at the top.
It's definitely not 2.4k lines to disable telemetry.
Re: Reclaim Windows10
#27Nearly all of these "clean up" scripts are a horrendous idea to run on your machine, I see right at the top that this script disables SmartScreen, a service that absolutely should not be disabled unless you want your machine to get owned. It then proceeds to set your current network as Private (aka "open all the ports") regardless of which network you're connected to - hope you're at home! Other changes are completel…
I haven't used Windows for a long time but a look at the script makes me think people wouldn't be resorting to such measures if Microsoft wasn't including stupid crap in their operating system.
> Disabling Telemetry breaks Windows updates
> Automatic web searches in start menu
> Application suggestions are silently installed (wat?)
> Allow MS to collect activity history
> Location tracking
> Map updates (who the fuck uses maps on a PC?)
> Tailored experiences (apparently spamming ads on a desktop OS is an experience)
> Advertising ID
> Cortana
This is just from skimming the list for 5 minutes. Not even sure what else is in there.
Re: Reclaim Windows10
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the info; I've been concerned enough about Windows 10 telemetry (etc.) to avoid it, and when I saw this script I thought "ohhh maybe I can just do this?"--so you saved me. Do you have a rec or a resource? I haven't looked seriously at this so if it's just like "google it" mea culpa, but it seems like there's a lot of misinformation and what not out there. I saw "O&O ShutUp10" in a sibling thread?
I think I would think about specific Windows Telemetry that you want to disable and more importantly, why (i.e. "What's the Threat Model around Microsoft knowing this"). Because the vast majority of the telemetry collected by Windows is simply to make Windows work better - things like "Upgrade failed because $REASON" or "$DRIVER is causing performance problems". You can see a lot of the kinds of telemetry that Window…
I don’t have a problem with the telemetry on windows. I’m unsure why everyone gets so upset. MS isn’t collecting stuff to shove advertising down our throat. It’s getting usage to figure out what’s wrong with windows and make it better. As you say.
I have issue with Facebook and Google blatantly collecting whatever they can to build profiles of us all to shove advertising down our throat that isn’t even relevant to us.
Re: Reclaim Windows10
#29This kind of black box solution gives you nothing but a false sense of privacy and/or security.
I've come to a conclusion that either you want an OS that respects your privacy, or you want Windows. These two are fundamentally incompatible and at most, you're going to end up doing damage control.
Re: Reclaim Windows10
#30Nearly all of these "clean up" scripts are a horrendous idea to run on your machine, I see right at the top that this script disables SmartScreen, a service that absolutely should not be disabled unless you want your machine to get owned. It then proceeds to set your current network as Private (aka "open all the ports") regardless of which network you're connected to - hope you're at home! Other changes are completel…
Thanks for the info; I've been concerned enough about Windows 10 telemetry (etc.) to avoid it, and when I saw this script I thought "ohhh maybe I can just do this?"--so you saved me. Do you have a rec or a resource? I haven't looked seriously at this so if it's just like "google it" mea culpa, but it seems like there's a lot of misinformation and what not out there. I saw "O&O ShutUp10" in a sibling thread?
The thing is this script is not only about telemetry, but also about disabling some annoyances that are especially annoying in server or workstation environment.
I don't think there's an up to date resource describing all these tweaks. My recommendations:
- Use the original script, it's slightly more up to date, last update was in november 2020: https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script - Read it's library of tweaks, especially the notes about potential unwanted side effects in comments. If you don't understand what each feature does, google it. The tweaks are grouped. - Don't enable any tweak where you don't understand what it does, especially in the security and network tweaks categories.