#windowsmods — Public Fediverse posts

anyway i'm running on my very own customized and fucked up windows 10 iot ltc install

the things i did towards the poor soul are the following:

• disable and remove the spyware, telemetry and bloat as possible while still not completely falling apart
• disable windows update because it can break with the fuckup i did to my install
• delete windows defender because i have lost control of my life (and also because of bullshit like false positives, blocking my torrent and piracy downloads, being another means of Microsoft spying me)
• make it look like windows longhorn 4074 for some reason... so retro
• restore the windows 7 control panel stuff as i could
• boobs

honestly at this point i should use some linux distro like fedora or opensuse, but i don't find any cool windows mod-like stuff there save for xfce-winxp-tc and aerothemeplasma... maybe chicago95 too
also some programs don't work well on WINE and all that... being a musician in linux can be pain

#windows #pc #computers #customization #windowsmods

How I Windows

This post is primarily for me to describe what I do to keep some sanity in my Windows life, but I know people don’t like the ways I hack at Windows to remove this stuff, so I plan to go over other methods to obtain the same thing, so you can make an informed decision for yourself, if you care as much as me. Don’t feel like you have to do anything though. I’m mostly writing this so people know what’s out there. I’m a power user, so this is probably for power users, or people who can take care of their technology like I think I can.

### First, what I do

I use [Ame Wizard](https://ameliorated.io/), with a playbook of settings and things to remove from Windows. Currently, the two best user-facing playbooks are [Atlas OS](https://atlasos.net/) and [Revision](https://revi.cc). These will help you remove Copilot, along with Windows Defender and many other things, but the process isn’t the most user friendly. You have to use a lot of object navigation with NVDA to get through the amelioration, but it’s possible. I find these playbooks leave me with a low CPU usage but without disabling too many features. Revision is the best if you’re new and just don’t want too many issues after the fact. Ame themselves make a playbook, but IMPO unless you want to go back to 2004 it will leave you with too much missing. I need to try their new in-beta playbook though—it has a different name so maybe things have gotten better in that department.

Secondly, after amelioration,
I may still need to use [Aurora](https://github.com/azurejoga/Aurora-Windows-Optimizer), [Winaero Tweaker](https://winaerotweaker.com/), or [Explorer Patcher](https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher) along with either the Revision tool, or the tweaks in the Atlas folder, but I’ve only ever used Explorer Patcher to fix up Explorer things after I ran Ame Wizard. Aurora is useful for a few different reasons, and it’s maintained by a blind person. It’s also pretty close to playbooks as well. The reason I don’t put it in alternatives is because I assume that people will look at this thing the same way they look at playbooks.

### What are some other options?

There are some other options you have, which might be less impactful in comparison but will get you close to the CPU improvements.

* First is just adding exclusions to Defender—for example, App Data, Program Files, your audio games that Windows Defender flags as a virus but are not one, etc. I’ve heard that just adding Thunderbird’s app data folder to Defender will kill a lot of accessibility slowness with Thunderbird. So why not just add the whole fucking App Data folder to it. I think it’s crazy that people don’t see a problem with this state of affairs, but moving on…
* The second option I think you have is [tricking Defender into disabling itself](https://github.com/es3n1n/no-defender). I have not tried this.
* The third option you have is [completely removing Defender from a Windows ISO](https://github.com/soncms/StripWindowsDefender). This makes amelioration such a fun experience since you don’t have to go through disabling Windows Defender.
* Lastly, you could try [tiny11 builder](https://github.com/ntdevlabs/tiny11builder), which will allow you to apply tiny11 tweaks to any ISO you download. I have not tried this.

I hope you enjoyed this article and learned something new about optimizing Windows for yourself. Maybe one day AI will make this article seem pointless and old. Nah.

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