Preparing Windows 11: keep an eye on these things.
Preparing Windows 11: keep an eye on these things.
So yeah... I realize this is a very general question, but hear me out: Back in the days (I'm showing my age here) installing W without internet connection and/or MS account was the default. There was also very little tinkering involved. Gradually that became less, especially with W10 where internet connection and an MS account was almost enforced. From what I've read, that's even more the case with W11. Today my kid's new laptop arrived with W11 Home pre-installed. I have NO experience with W11, and really don't have any current knowledge on Windows or hardware. I kinda stopped with all that with my last build... but that was... almost a decade ago! So here I have this pristine laptop, sitting in a box next to me on the couch. We're eager to set it up for her. - What are the pointers with a clean W11? (no, I will NOT install Norton ) - Can I still avoid an MS account? Any reason why I should / shouldn't? - Though it's a standard laptop, probably with it's own recovery partition or something like that, can I still make our own recovery image? Any reason why I should / shouldn't? - Are there other things I should be aware of? Settings to adjust? Privacy stuff to take care of? All this info will undoubtedly be around on the web, but since I don't know what to look for I will probably never find it. All tips appreciated!
There are ways to avoid all the bloatware and telemetry. You can use Tiny11 to build your own customized stripped down ISO that you can make bootable on a flash drive, or you can go with a pre stripped down ISO from someone like ReviOS (Revision OS). What they do is they strip out all the telemetry and disable Windows updates (so to update you have to manually upgrade via a new upgrade ISO from Revision or by building a new ISO to upgrade from with Tiny11) and they tend to get rid of all the unnecessary bloatware but leave things like the Microsoft Store intact and some other stuff so you can still use it properly and you can sign into a MS account if you want, but otherwise you can keep the account strictly local and offline. This is what I do with my builds. I personally use ReviOS because it's already done, and I just install Xbox gaming services for my PC gaming stuff with Game Pass and I unhid the Windows Update but made sure not to click on anything that checks for updates and re-enables auto updates and instead I just look at it ever so often to see if there's any updates to things like Windows Defender and I manually click on just that update to install it. There just so happens to be a toms article on how to get Tiny11 setup and going. You can also read up on it via it's GitHub page Make a Windows 11 Image That Runs on 2GB of RAM With Tiny11 Builder Free tool outputs a Windows 11 image that requires just 2GB of RAM. Here's a link to ReviOS if you wanted to go that route instead. Revision | Revision ReviOS aspires to re-create what Windows as an operating system should have been - easy and simple With the main audience being gamers, power-users and enthusiasts, we understand that performance, speed and low latency is obligatory, which is why great effort has been invested into making ReviOS... revi.cc And as for a program to help you make a bootable flash drive... Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way Rufus: Create bootable USB drives the easy way rufus.ie
You got my thanks for taking your time! That's cool too. But wait, is this actually about people buying a brand new computer, or are we talking about someone upgrading an existing laptop that already has Windows 11 set up on it?
It works on every piece of hardware you own. I don't use the software that comes with my laptop pre-installed, because I always wipe the drive and set up fresh. This way, there are only apps and tools I actually need, plus no unwanted background programs or data tracking software.
Understood... do I have to buy another W11 code, or can I just try using the original code from when it was in the car?
For you, this might be tough to handle. With Tiny11, I would also suggest turning off Windows updates. Yeah, I can't say that's a good idea for most people because some of the other things Tiny11 takes away are things people actually need. Nothing is really bad with just regular Win 10 or 11 if you turn off location tracking and stop those ads from coming in when you first sign up.
You can create your own "recovery" image without needing any recovery partition on this laptop right now. You could even choose to clean install Windows 11. This would erase the drive and leave you with only Windows, no recovery partition at all. The software that came with the laptop is probably just fancy stuff but it's not essential. Getting a recovery image is definitely better than nothing.
Most recently, my two computers came with no annoying extra software on them. The Surface Go 3 and a Lenovo device both had clean Windows 10 or 11 setups.
You were probably lucky, because my Lenovo Ideapad 3 I bought at Micro Center came ready to go with all those extra features right in there. The thing was using up about six gigabytes of memory even when nothing else was running on the desktop, and it only comes with eight gigs instead of more.
You could check if your computer is on Win 11 S Mode. Sometimes devices start up like this. You can change it to regular Win 11 without paying extra. You just do it in the Microsoft Store.