Debloated ISO's or Best Ways to Debloat after Install

[Spec_tech]

Hi all. For some reason, a previous post I made about installing Windows 11 in a way that’s the most debloated is gone now. From what i remember, the best way that was figured out about was downloading whatever version of Windows 11 you wanted through UUPDump, and then using Chris Titus’ WinUtil script and the “MicroWin” function to basically rebuild a new ISO that is already debloated.

I don’t know if any part of that is illegal or not sanctioned, but it seemed pretty innocent to me. If somebody could please let me know so I know for the future. But ultimately, can anybody inform of any ways they know to best debloat Windows 11, before or after install, but preferably options for both?

[xrobwx71]

I tried The Titus debloat script on a test PC and it caused a ton of negative issues.

You can look through some of our resources here: https://pchelpforum.net/resources/

[Spec_tech]

Interesting. It seemed ok, but i didn’t try it in “production” on my own desktop. But booted up a VM with it.

I checked out the resources section and there doesn’t appear to be a section for Windows 11 yet. And from my search, I couldn’t really find any articles on tools to debloat Windows ISO’s. But I saw a few on post-install cleanup and privacy lockdowns like ShutUp10/11 and the “Computer Optimization Batch File” tool.

From what I looked up on ChatGPT, it gave suggestions on tools like Tiny11 Builder, MSMG Toolkit, Windows-ISO-Debloater, and UnattendedWinstall. But MSMG and Windows-ISO-Debloater are the only ones that allow customization on picking what to remove or keep. That’s kind of what i’m looking for, but i haven’t tested them out. Probably going to check those out here.

[xrobwx71]

Let us know how you get on with those if you have time.

[Spec_tech]

So MSMG looks to be the most promising. It’s slightly convoluted in going through the process of mounting the image files, removing things, then creating the new image, but it’s doable.

But I just tried the Chris Titus WinUtil MicroWin tool again too and compared spinning up a new VM, and MicroWin seems to do a lot better job at removing junk apps than MSMG. There were things like Microsoft Teams and OneDrive that didn’t show up in the MSMG removal selection, but still showed up after install.

Whereas with MicroWin, there was next to nothing leftover other than the basics like Edge, Microsoft Store, etc. So overall, I still prefer the WinUtil. I’m going to take a chance on it and use it for the install.

[xrobwx71]

Thanks for the update!

[Bruce]

@Spec_tech - any news?

[Bruce]

@Spec_tech - any news?

[Bruce]

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[Bruce]

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