101–110 of 207 posts
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To be honest, Windows 10 Pro is 'good enough'. It's the 'Home' variant that is stuffed full of the third party games and apps.
pro comes with the same mountain of bullshit as home, including Candy Crush, solitaire with subscription (and/or ads) and xbox gaming
Windows comes with a lot of things I personally don't use, but I don't feel that I have to obsessively remove them all.
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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…
> Map updates (who the fuck uses maps on a PC?) Who doesn't?
Nearly 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?
Doesn't running Windows 10 LTSC [0] solve like 90% of what these scripts try to accomplish but do so in an officially supported way. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/ltsc/
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At least 70% of what's in the script can also be done via the UI, and I'd say another 10% is stuff you really shouldn't do anyway (disabling SmartScreen etc.)... The telemetry bit is about 20 or lines, if that.
SmartScreen is not Windows Defender, the latter is the antivirus with its own regularly updated database, firewall, etc. SmartScreen basically sends your files to Microsoft, for "enhanced security" or something. FWIW I put Defender on notification only mode because Microsoft ever so helpfully removed the actual quarantine directory and now files dumped into quarantine are basically unrecoverable. I just use the firew…
No they haven't removed the quarantine restoration option. You can mark any file it quarantines as safe, and it gets restored and never flagged again.
I think this is on topic but would something like https://ameliorated.info/index.html be a better idea to get rid of any bloatware and help address any privacy issues? I haven't personally used it but a friend of recommended it to me. Anyone else have any experience with AME Windows?
I installed this to test it out (in a VM) and got a login prompt asking for a password. I went to their site and found no documentation about this at all, so I just never touched it again. It could be changed and no such prompt appears. I might have to try it again.
Nearly 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…
> SmartScreen, a service that absolutely should not be disabled unless you want your machine to get owned
It's not hard for people, especially ones who read HN, to be perfectly safe with SmartScreen disabled.
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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…
> Map updates (who the fuck uses maps on a PC?) Who doesn't?
Using bing maps via the bloatware app... not used by ordinary people.
If you have access to it, through partner or MSDN or corporate licensing or otherwise, it is really worth installing the Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB/LTSC versions. It has most of the annoying things that plague consumer versions of Windows 10 stripped out, and it gets a very different cadence of updates, restricted to security and quality fixes. No Cortana, no Edge installed by default, no built-in Store universal app…