Windows 10 Privacy Tweak Guide - Creators Update

I'm still amazed at just how many hoops people are consciously willing to jump through to use that damned OS, I really am. By the time all that shit is disabled guess what, it's practically an older version of the OS aside from the DX12 support (which is artificial for the most part).

You folks are just plain old crazy. :D
 
Some people just want Windows 7 and what they think is a pure desktop. I get it. But then I use a lot of this so called "bloat" and think it is kind of crazy. I mean, a like the Maps app. Gee, like a map of the world application with directions and street views. I guess if it's not Google Earth it's horrible. Or being able to launch applications via voice. So I get it. But the idea that all of this is bloatware and has no practical use is silly. If you feel forced by it again, I get it, but plenty of useful stuff here. Or if your a Netflix subscriber, let me kill the ability to run the native app which can play offline. Because, bandwidth?
 
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If you think that I don't use Windows 10 and never ever recommend it for anyone for any reason is because I think some other version of Windows is better or even that being a small part of it, you're not paying attention. :p
 
I was just saying that there could be a good deal of useful capability in the stuff this guide is just saying chuck because "spyware"! I mean, if I were that worried about spyware I would even use something like Netflix or Amazon Prime to view content because it's not like that's all tracked. And if I want to legally watch stuff like the new MST3K, yeah, Netflix. Just a lot of shouting and not necessarily a whole lot of thought about the cloud or services and that, well, people use them and rely on them a lot, for average people more than Windows these days.
 
If spyware is ones concern then NEVER go online because nothing is secure once that connection is made. VPNs? The VPN see and knows everything and everywhere you go and do. One puts there trust in the VPN to not violate the trust placed in them. We each make our own "security" decisions. If another "Black Viper" turns up it would give me hours of free entertainment. :D Just my 2¢.
 
Tiberian said:
I'm still amazed at just how many hoops people are consciously willing to jump through to use that damned OS, I really am. By the time all that shit is disabled guess what, it's practically an older version of the OS aside from the DX12 support (which is artificial for the most part).

You folks are just plain old crazy. :D
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1 word: Support. No support for Ryzen, Skylake, or Kaby Lake. If you run 7/8, you get a popup warning you about it and your system will no longer get Windows updates. If you plan on using the same cpu/motherboard until the end of time then you're fine, but for anyone who plans on upgrading their system anytime in the future, it's either deal with it or learn to like Linux.
 
AltTabbins said:
1 word: Support. No support for Ryzen, Skylake, or Kaby Lake. If you run 7/8, you get a popup warning you about it and your system will no longer get Windows updates. If you plan on using the same cpu/motherboard until the end of time then you're fine, but for anyone who plans on upgrading their system anytime in the future, it's either deal with it or learn to like Linux.
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False dilemma. There's a bypass now for Microsoft's CPU lockout trojan. And even without the bypass, Kaby/Ryzen run 7 and 8.1 perfectly fine.

Microsoft enacting artificial restrictions to try to force movement on Windows 10's stagnant adoption is only going to create more negative PR and backlash, and people will only be more determined to remain on 7 and 8.1 until they either make some concessions in 10 or build a proper successor to 7. What they're doing now is not working.
 
Tiberian said:
I'm still amazed at just how many hoops people are consciously willing to jump through to use that damned OS, I really am. By the time all that shit is disabled guess what, it's practically an older version of the OS aside from the DX12 support (which is artificial for the most part).
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I play games, so I'm forced to use Windows. They added the telemetry to windows 7 and 8 too.

This guide is very comprehensive, but a bit much for me-- removing Windows Defender for example is a bad idea. Better to turn off its telemetry but continue to use the anti-virus.

Anyway, you really don't need to make all those changes by hand. Just install Shutup10 and accept all the recommended options to protect your privacy, then install Winaero Tweaker to fix all the various Win10 annoyances. It takes 5 minutes to do this, but you will need to do it again after every major update because Microsoft in its arrogance does not accept the user's clear preferences.
 
DPI said:
False dilemma. There's a bypass now for Microsoft's CPU lockout trojan. And even without the bypass, Kaby/Ryzen run 7 and 8.1 perfectly fine.
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What about updates? If im going to run on a system without updates, I might as well go back to XP 64.
 
AltTabbins said:
What about updates? If im going to run on a system without updates, I might as well go back to XP 64.
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In about 2.5 years it'll be a moot point for Windows 7, assuming they don't extend extended support but I'm guessing Microsoft will like it did with Windows XP. I don't agree that Microsoft should have blocked these updates but Windows 7 was never going to get official support for CPUs that just came out. But 8.1 still has 9 months in its mainstream support time line so I do think that 8.1 should have been officially supported.

However the situation isn't always as cut and dry and Microsoft trying to screw everything. Kaby in particular has some new power mode features that started with Skylake. Even the first RTM version of Windows 10 does support those features, and BTW, the first RTM version of Windows 10 goes out of consumer support next month. And the next release of Windows 10 will probably extend use of those power features.

So things start to get complicated as silicon and software get more tightly coupled. I could see very well people saying that Microsoft is sabotaging Windows 7/8.1 if a battery test showed Windows 10 getting significant better battery life when in reality it's because of updates to 10 and older software not getting those updates.
 
That tweak guide is over the top. It would be nice if Microsoft offered a bare bones edition, without all the app store, cortana, and add ons that many users don't care about. Unfortunately, this is the path of future computing. Bare bones does not have general appeal and/or make money.
 
what the hell is fdossena.com?...and why should I trust that site?...I disable almost everything on the list in the first post manually (getting all the telemetry ones are tough so I don't bother with that anymore)
 
ewb302 said:
That tweak guide is over the top. It would be nice if Microsoft offered a bare bones edition, without all the app store, cortana, and add ons that many users don't care about. Unfortunately, this is the path of future computing. Bare bones does not have general appeal and/or make money.
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In a place like this you're going to have those folks that think that minimum, bare bones, no cloud, etc. is the pinnacle of computing efficiency and NO SPYWARE! Personal computing is simply a vastly different thing now that when Windows was introduced. But even so, the whole point of GUIs like Windows was to simply and reduce the complexity of using computers. To make it easier and more natural.

I'd say just speaking with ones voice to schedule a reminder and have that automatically sync up across devices is just furtherance of the idea of make computing devices more useful and easier to use for average people. I've thought for a while that much of the issue here is generational. As computing had evolved there are those that simply don't like what has come to pass. Meanwhile, the general market has more than accepted things like voice interaction and the leveraging of personal data to make computing device more personal and easier to use.

So sure, an off switch for it all has it's place but it doesn't really align with where mainstream consumer IT is today.
 
polonyc2 said:
what the hell is fdossena.com?...and why should I trust that site?...I disable almost everything on the list in the first post manually (getting all the telemetry ones are tough so I don't bother with that anymore)
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The items on that site are pretty much in line with the Microsoft enterprise guide. You try to tell people that that's were this stuff comes from, that it's well documented, but for some reason and logic don't apply to some in these conversations.
 
heatlesssun said:
In a place like this you're going to have those folks that think that minimum, bare bones, no cloud, etc. is the pinnacle of computing efficiency and NO SPYWARE! Personal computing is simply a vastly different thing now that when Windows was introduced. But even so, the whole point of GUIs like Windows was to simply and reduce the complexity of using computers. To make it easier and more natural.

I'd say just speaking with ones voice to schedule a reminder and have that automatically sync up across devices is just furtherance of the idea of make computing devices more useful and easier to use for average people. I've thought for a while that much of the issue here is generational. As computing had evolved there are those that simply don't like what has come to pass. Meanwhile, the general market has more than accepted things like voice interaction and the leveraging of personal data to make computing device more personal and easier to use.

So sure, an off switch for it all has it's place but it doesn't really align with where mainstream consumer IT is today.
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I agree with your comments. Yes I think it is a generational thing. A lot of users on this forum started with PC's back in DOS and the first versions of Windows. We learned how to make everything our own and it was personal, and we felt our data was safe and confined to our own machines (for the most part).

I also think it is a natural evolvement of technology and competition. Put together all of the technology other developers like Apple, Google, Samsung, etc. have introduced, and Microsoft was going to have to come out with their own versions or they were just going to be left behind. All the features of Windows 10 are there because of competition and modern appeal. That being said, it doesn't bother me much at all. I use the features I want, I ignore or turn off everything else.
 
schizo said:
Just run shutup10, it will take care of telemetry for you.

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
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seems like telemetry can never fully be erased with Windows 10...MS will keep continuing to re-release them under different names or hide them...even Windows 7 is getting more and more of them...programs that claim to remove all of them is more wishful thinking...there are probably many of them still hidden
 
Microsoft reenables all their telemetry with every major update, yes. You need to run shutup10 after each one. That's twice a year.

People have gone so far as to carefully watch every packet being sent from the system. Of course it's possible they missed some telemetry, but I very much doubt it. That doesn't mean MS can't patch in more at any time, of course.
 
schizo said:
They added the telemetry to windows 7 and 8 too.
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And that can be removed (or simply never installed in the first place if you're paying attention) on 7/8/8.1 - none of the telemetry updates are on my Windows 7 machines and never will be, but I'm no ordinary average computer owner - then again this is considered to be a computer enthusiast forum for the most part so, that's par for the course. :D
 
heatlesssun said:
In a place like this you're going to have those folks that think that minimum, bare bones, no cloud, etc. is the pinnacle of computing efficiency and NO SPYWARE! Personal computing is simply a vastly different thing now that when Windows was introduced. But even so, the whole point of GUIs like Windows was to simply and reduce the complexity of using computers. To make it easier and more natural...
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Minimum, bare bones that does everything I want is going to be better than a system that has a lot of things in it that I don't want. We all love car analogies. Why should I buy a car with a fancy 19 speaker super surround sound stereo, whale scrotum leather buckets, Redwood accents and a starving ethopian in the trunk if all I'm going to do is rip it out because it's useless weight and I want to drive fast? You like all that extra stuff in 10 and use it. I disable and remove it all because it's useless to me. I game and I browse the web. All I need is the ability to open Steam and launch/play whatever game I am using and that's it. Anything more is bloatware.
 
The bypass is only good until they patch that DLL again which could be next week for all we know.
 
Jeremy C said:
Minimum, bare bones that does everything I want is going to be better than a system that has a lot of things in it that I don't want. We all love car analogies. Why should I buy a car with a fancy 19 speaker super surround sound stereo, whale scrotum leather buckets, Redwood accents and a starving ethopian in the trunk if all I'm going to do is rip it out because it's useless weight and I want to drive fast? You like all that extra stuff in 10 and use it. I disable and remove it all because it's useless to me. I game and I browse the web. All I need is the ability to open Steam and launch/play whatever game I am using and that's it. Anything more is bloatware.
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Over the years removing "the bloat" from Windows has been something of a Holy Grail with certain Windows users. Overall performance gains resulting from the removing and disabling of services has always questionable. Windows 10 x86 is designed to run on hardware less capable than a higher end modern smart phones. I run Windows 10 32 bit on an 3 year Atom Bay Trail with 2 GB RAM/64 GB eMMC. There's a fair amount of cheapo Windows devices with similar specs and many people are pretty surprised by how well such low end hardware does run a full desktop OS. Millage varies, I have Windows 10 CU on the thing, have been doing in place upgrades on 10 on it for almost 2 years. It's mostly loaded with Store apps, I have Chrome on it. Not a lot of local data, use the cloud and an SD card for that but a default install with all of the default stuff installed, about 50 other store apps and it still have 30 GB free. And it's perfectly fine for web browsing, watching video, even light Office document duties using the Office mobile apps.

So while I can understand privacy concerns, the bloat aspects resulting in real performance gains are overrated.
 
Budwise said:
The bypass is only good until they patch that DLL again which could be next week for all we know.
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That is 100% true, but actually I don't think they will do that. MS hasn't gone out of their way to reenable telemetry in a sneaky way, like they did with their aggressive push to get people to upgrade to Windows 10 in the first place. I don't see why the CPUID checking would be any different. My realistic expectation is that MS will patch windows update without considering the CPUID patch at all, and they will break it from time to time, but they won't target it. So I would expect the change to revert with every major update (2x/year) and anytime they make WUpdate changes. And I have no real insight into how often they do that.

So yeah, you'll need to reapply the patch every so often.
 
Tiberian said:
I'm still amazed at just how many hoops people are consciously willing to jump through to use that damned OS, I really am. By the time all that shit is disabled guess what, it's practically an older version of the OS aside from the DX12 support (which is artificial for the most part).

You folks are just plain old crazy. :D
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Well considering i have no use for, xbox/dvr, cortana, win store, onedrive, etc Win 10 bloat. I am not going to have them run in the background for no reason. And i use 10 because....1. Where i work is 90% win 10 now so i need to become more familiar with it so i can support it and 2. With how manufactures are now locking features out from certain older os's its only going to get worse as you will be basically forced into Win 10.
 
nvgrim said:
Well considering i have no use for, xbox/dvr, cortana, win store, onedrive, etc Win 10 bloat. I am not going to have them run in the background for no reason. And i use 10 because....1. Where i work is 90% win 10 now so i need to become more familiar with it so i can support it and 2. With how manufactures are now locking features out from certain older os's its only going to get worse as you will be basically forced into Win 10.
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Ok, but this is not a new issue and the idea that it's "bloat" that you're going to trim and improve performance overall and noticeably probably isn't going to happen.
 
heatlesssun said:
Ok, but this is not a new issue and the idea that it's "bloat" that you're going to trim and improve performance overall and noticeably probably isn't going to happen.
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Its my legacy way of thinking, i dont like having things run in the background that do not need to be. Its like leaving a light on in a room you dont go in, its a waste. And its bloat to me as i have no interest/use for any of it. Same as the bloatware that comes preinstalled with manufactures computers, that trial version of nero could be useful to some but bloat to most.
 
nvgrim said:
Its my legacy way of thinking, i dont like having things run in the background that do not need to be. Its like leaving a light on in a room you dont go in, its a waste. And its bloat to me as i have no interest/use for any of it. Same as the bloatware that comes preinstalled with manufactures computers, that trial version of nero could be useful to some but bloat to most.
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I'm not arguing that these things shouldn't be removable, but practically them being there means nothing. Apps that you don't run don't use any resources, unless you have notifications on or allow running in the background and those can be completely disabled and the ones that need scripts to remove take up about half a gig. So you're just not going to get any performance or significant disk space increase from removing them. Take the Alarms & Clock app. 81k. Calculator is 100k. I think the biggest one of the bunch is Maps at about 20 MB, can take a up a lot more if you download the maps though, which isn't the default.

It's much to do about nothing other than obsessing over trivial resources at most. Again, that doesn't mean that they should be installable, it just doesn't make any practical difference. If these things were taking up gigs of space and chewed up CPU cycles, then yes, that'd be a real problem.
 
heatlesssun said:
I'm not arguing that these things shouldn't be removable, but practically them being there means nothing. Apps that you don't run don't use any resources, unless you have notifications on or allow running in the background and those can be completely disabled and the ones that need scripts to remove take up about half a gig. So you're just not going to get any performance or significant disk space increase from removing them. Take the Alarms & Clock app. 81k. Calculator is 100k. I think the biggest one of the bunch is Maps at about 20 MB, can take a up a lot more if you download the maps though, which isn't the default.

It's much to do about nothing other than obsessing over trivial resources at most. Again, that doesn't mean that they should be installable, it just doesn't make any practical difference. If these things were taking up gigs of space and chewed up CPU cycles, then yes, that'd be a real problem.
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I get what you're trying to get at, collectively they all probably take up no less than 50mb and them running uses hardly any resources. Im actually glad Microsoft gave us the option to remove these features, they could have easily just let things like xbox or maps be a mandatory thing like cortana.
 
heatlesssun said:
It's much to do about nothing other than obsessing over trivial resources at most. Again, that doesn't mean that they should be installable, it just doesn't make any practical difference. If these things were taking up gigs of space and chewed up CPU cycles, then yes, that'd be a real problem.
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I think you may have that backwards. It is Microsoft that seems obsessed in trying to get desktop customers to use their trivial apps. And just because they don't take up a lot of space or resources doesn't mean they aren't bloat. A bunch of unnecessary apps phoning home, barking notifications, and auto-updating themselves constantly is bloat in my book. No different on my phone - I like to get rid of the apps I don't use.

Worse, with every update, Microsoft seems to be adding more of them, many of which can't be uninstalled. It's like if you turn your back for one second, the damn things start multiplying.
 
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odditory said:
I think you may have that backwards. It is Microsoft that seems obsessed in trying to get desktop customers to use their trivial apps. And just because they don't take up a lot of space or resources doesn't mean they aren't bloat. A bunch of unnecessary apps phoning home, barking notifications, and auto-updating themselves constantly is bloat in my book. No different on my phone - I like to get rid of the apps I don't use.

Worse, with every update, Microsoft seems to be adding more of them, many of which can't be uninstalled. It's like if you turn your back for one second, the damn things start multiplying.
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You can turn them off in settings.
 
Shotglass01 said:
Fine. Still not the equal as never having been there. Although this thread should be kept clean. For those that want to use these options, look to OP. If not, who cares?
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I don't think anyone is arguing against an in the UI option to uninstall these apps. But the impact of them is being overhyped. If you never use them and have the store setup not to auto update, all they do is take up a bit of bit of disk space.
 
odditory said:
I think you may have that backwards. It is Microsoft that seems obsessed in trying to get desktop customers to use their trivial apps. And just because they don't take up a lot of space or resources doesn't mean they aren't bloat. A bunch of unnecessary apps phoning home, barking notifications, and auto-updating themselves constantly is bloat in my book. No different on my phone - I like to get rid of the apps I don't use.

Worse, with every update, Microsoft seems to be adding more of them, many of which can't be uninstalled. It's like if you turn your back for one second, the damn things start multiplying.
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Again, not arguing against have an in the UI uninstall, just saying the impact of the apps is only disk space if not used. And sure, I get the idea that Microsoft is being aggressive with UWAs. But for most people, there's some benefit to them. An in the box timer and stopwatch app? That's something that should have been in Windows long before Windows 8. And the store does have some good apps. Xodo, its an excellent PDF viewer and markup tool, there's nothing better free even in Win32.

It's just another source for software and it can be very useful for those with tablets and 2 in 1s. If the first instinct that everyone has is just to turn it all off without even looking at what might be of benefit, that's a bit short sighted.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't think anyone is arguing against an in the UI option to uninstall these apps. But the impact of them is being overhyped.
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Can't you literally stop here? I guess I can forget about trying to keep this one clean. I'm certain I'll be back to it once I'm ultimately required to move to 10. I'll certainly be interested in disabling and/or removing things.
 
Shotglass01 said:
Can't you literally stop here? I guess I can forget about trying to keep this one clean. I'm certain I'll be back to it once I'm ultimately required to move to 10. I'll certainly be interested in disabling and/or removing things.
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So take a look at Winaero Tweaker. I do listen to folks around here that disagree with me on these issues and that tool does all of the stuff mentioned in the OP and a lot more and is 100 times easier to use. I use Winaero Tweaker for certain things myself. I've countless times mentioned tools and the enterprise config guides that Microsoft publishes that explain exactly how to turn off every single connection to Microsoft servers, even the NCSI and time services. The guide in this OP is based right off that information.

I've said plenty of times there should be a UI for all of this stuff. But yeah, in the hands of a person who doesn't know what they are doing, at lot can get confusing. A modern OS does connect to a LOT of stuff and it's not all out to get you. But even something as innocuous as the NCSI does collect IP addresses.

I'm just trying to add a little thought into is all. Some are all up in arms about Windows 10 telemetry but Windows has long sent data back to Microsoft servers. And enterprise setup has always involved mitigating that. Windows Update & Defender, certificates, time sync, network connection status, screenblock, etc. When people say there should be a off switch for all telemetry, often they don't really know what that all means. It's kind of complicated.
 
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