Windows 11 made our recent roundup of our least favorite “enshittified” products, which will come as no surprise to those of you who have followed our coverage of it over the years. What began as a more visually cohesive coat of paint for Windows 10 has given way to a user experience that has gradually coasted downhill even as it has picked up new features—a “clean install” of the operating system is pretty annoying, at a baseline, even before you consider extra software irritations from your PC, motherboard maker, or Microsoft’s all-encompassing push into generative AI.
We’ll never stop asking Microsoft to put out a consumer version of Windows that acts more like the Enterprise versions it gives to businesses, with no extra unasked-for apps and less pushiness about Microsoft’s other products and services. But given that most of us are saddled with the current consumer-facing versions of Windows—Home and Pro, which treat their users basically the same way despite the difference in cost and branding—we’re updating our guide to cleaning up a “clean install” to account for Windows 11 24H2 and any other changes Microsoft has made in the last year.
As before, this is not a guide about creating an extremely stripped-down, telemetry-free version of Windows; we stick to the things that Microsoft officially supports turning off and removing. There are plenty of experimental hacks that take it a few steps farther—NTDev’s Tiny11 project is one—but removing built-in Windows components can cause unexpected compatibility and security problems, and Tiny11 has historically had issues with basic table-stakes stuff like “installing security updates.”
Source : https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/what-i-do-to-clean-up-a-clean-install-of-windows-11-23h2-and-edge/
