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Reclaim Windows10

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Re: Reclaim Windows10

#111

Post by kaetemi »

Arainach wrote: post #60
tux3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, i…

This class of user has always been doing such silly things long before "monetization". There were plenty of guides for Windows XP and Vista claiming to "increase performance" by disabling things like the indexer (fun fact, that will TANK your performance in a variety of areas), the Cryptographic services, and more. They never had any trust to violate, only a strange (and completely incorrect) sense that they knew mor…

Still seeing more issues with the indexer on than when it's off. With the indexer on, searching for a file in a directory structure with only a couple hundred files easily takes minutes for some reason. No idea how that thing is supposed to be helping, really. My custom search tool that just iteratively scans folders is practically instant.

Re: Reclaim Windows10

#112

Post by zamadatix »

sedatk wrote: post #95
as1mov wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Microsoft already asks you to enable/disable these features on first setup.

Not quite for a lot of it - e.g. it asks if you want to use Cortana as your personal assistant but selecting no isn't the same as disabling it (integrated into start menu functionality) or when it asks if you want to opt into telemetry and you uncheck it you're not saying "no telemetry" by unchecking it you're saying "basic telemetry only".

Re: Reclaim Windows10

#113

Post by tored »

Arainach wrote: post #60
tux3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, i…

This class of user has always been doing such silly things long before "monetization". There were plenty of guides for Windows XP and Vista claiming to "increase performance" by disabling things like the indexer (fun fact, that will TANK your performance in a variety of areas), the Cryptographic services, and more. They never had any trust to violate, only a strange (and completely incorrect) sense that they knew mor…

Oh memories, Windows 98 Lite. Removed IE and replaced explorer.exe with the binary that was shipped with Windows 95.

Re: Reclaim Windows10

#114

Post by josephcsible »

thrower123 wrote: post #49

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…

> no Edge installed by default

Are you sure this is a good thing? As much as I don't like Edge, aren't the alternatives either IE or no browser? It's not like they'll ship Firefox preinstalled instead.

Re: Reclaim Windows10

#115

Post by bckr »

kaetemi wrote: post #111
Arainach wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This class of user has always been doing such silly things long before "monetization". There were plenty of guides for Windows XP and Vista claiming to "increase performance" by disabling things like the indexer (fun fact, that will TANK your performance in a variety of areas), the Cryptographic services, and more. They never had any trust to violate, only a strange (and completely incorrect) sense that they knew mor…

Still seeing more issues with the indexer on than when it's off. With the indexer on, searching for a file in a directory structure with only a couple hundred files easily takes minutes for some reason. No idea how that thing is supposed to be helping, really. My custom search tool that just iteratively scans folders is practically instant.

is that because it's searching inside the files for keywords, while your tool only looks at filenames?

Re: Reclaim Windows10

#116

Post by haswell »

pessimizer wrote: post #40
natex wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The criticism should instead be directed towards Microsoft, Totally agree that MS deserves criticism as you correctly point out. However, criticism towards the script and similar is equally valid (and important).

Specific criticism is very important and would lead to improvements in the script. However, all I'm seeing so far is general nay-saying.

So far, most of the criticism I've seen has been specific, and examples been provided that explain why the specific settings are problematic.

Re: Reclaim Windows10

#117

Post by gigel82 »

Generally, I don't think Windows 10's telemetry features are privacy-violating. Most of the telemetry (especially if you choose the "required only" option in setup) is just for crashes and basic usage data (they won't use it for advertising for example, like Google or Facebook); that said, I use pi-hole as my DNS which blocks a lot of the Microsoft URLs used by telemetry.

However, my biggest issue is simply bloat. With every major update on Windows 10 we get more and more crap running on the OS. A fresh install of Windows 10 21H1 uses 3Gb+ of RAM and that is insane. There are things like "YourPhone" which is an app that starts at boot and cannot be uninstalled which is supposed to help integrate your Android phone - I have an iPhone and couldn't use it even if I wanted to, but I still pay 4Mb of RAM for having it running. I can probably disable half the services that are set to start automatically and still have a working OS.

Tried using something like winreducer to actually strip out the binaries instead of just turning stuff off via registry, but it's tedious; nowadays I just do a regular install then go into task scheduler and remove 1/2 of the needless crap then manually disable 1/4th of the services and use some PowerShell scripts for removing un-removable apps.

I miss the good-old days of Windows 2000 where we booted the OS with < 90Mb RAM and a couple dozen processes.

Re: Reclaim Windows10

#118

Post by hestefisk »

tored wrote: post #113
Arainach wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This class of user has always been doing such silly things long before "monetization". There were plenty of guides for Windows XP and Vista claiming to "increase performance" by disabling things like the indexer (fun fact, that will TANK your performance in a variety of areas), the Cryptographic services, and more. They never had any trust to violate, only a strange (and completely incorrect) sense that they knew mor…

Oh memories, Windows 98 Lite. Removed IE and replaced explorer.exe with the binary that was shipped with Windows 95.

Aah yes. Oh the joy of disabling Active Desktop :)

Re: Reclaim Windows10

#119

Post by majkinetor »

anaisbetts wrote: post #5

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…

Your comment is absolute nonsense.

You can't say anything like that without context.

SmartScreen and defender are the first things to go on my machine as they slow down computer at least by the factor of 2, if not more.

People on HN generally don't need babysitting!. Know where you are.

Re: Reclaim Windows10

#120

Post by hestefisk »

vmception wrote: post #20
anaisbetts wrote: post #5

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…

I've seen disk images of windows on piracy sites that have all this stuff preconfigured you can get slim builds with chrome ready to go already, builds with all these cleanup scripts configured, and more sadly, they also know people in a rush are looking for this or prefer it, and they install backdoors or ways to steal your crypto on them and stuff I wouldn't even trust the scripts itself at this point, so I'm anoth…

As good as it sounds, I wouldn’t feel comfortable installing a modded Win10 install from a piracy site…. Maybe it’s just me.
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