making a minimal install of win10

Hello @2074,

Welcome to TenForums.

The screenshot [ from what I can see ] you posted does NOT appear to be maximised. Try maximising it and see if you get the scroll-bar on the right-hand side.

Please be aware that you can no longer upgrade from Win 7 to 10 for free if that's what you were hoping - MS has recently closed that off.

You can uninstall apps after installing Win 10 should you so wish, of course.
If your PC has > 256Gb disk and 8GB RAM or more, trying to 'slim down' Win 10 is unlikely to gain you much.

I dont have anywhere near the many options as he does

I also suspect that's a rather old list of apps.. some of which I've not had on mine.

Hello @2074,

I have customised many OS's since Vista using various software and utilities, pre-install [ ISO ] and post install.

One of the biggest requirements is to fully understand the dynamics, intricacy, and operational aspects of the system in order to know what can and can NOT be changed to keep an OS alive and working, especially Services and Registry.

It is a BIG learning curve involving a LOT of trial and error and a LOT of time and effort.

- just wondering, Paul- how much did you gain in performance, disk space (%ge) and RAM?

@dalchina,

For all the time and effort over the years, knowing how the OS pretty much works, I personally did get quite an increase in performance. My Win 10 install was under 9 GB, unfortunately I can't remember exactly what it was. Obviously these days, hardware is so much quicker than before. It really depends on what somebody wants to use their OS for and if they want to get rid of the things that they will NOT use.

For me, it was more of a project to see how far I could push things without breaking the OS.

@2074,

Chris Titus has done a lot of good videos over the years as you will find by performing a search.

I personally have tried MANY of the customisation programs including MSMG Toolkit, WinToolkit, WinReducer, NTLite, etc. etc.

Here is a link to one of my posts > My Post outlining my 'Current Strategy'

Others by me will be available by performing a search.

Here are a couple that you might want to investigate:

> The 9 Best Tools to Tweak and Customize Windows 10
> 10 Best Windows 11/10 UI Customization Tool in 2023

A further search will find MANY more.

2074 said:

hello friends

so im still on windows 7. got a newer pc (used) and plan to play newer games and photo editing. but im trying to follow this guide on how to install a minimal w10 install. Minimal Windows 10 Install | ISO Creation, Setup, and Config - YouTube

but when I opened mine up with wintoolkit, I dont have anywhere near the many options as he does in his video to disable.

Well, you are, by your own admission, a newbie to Windows 10. Don"t you think you should learn to walk before you run.

This and other forums are littered with the carnage of people who "simplified" Windows 10 without understanding the interactions between items they "carved out" leading to issues ranging from breaking OS through to inability to update.

The majority of Win32 apps can be uninstalled from the start menu after installation. If you really want to remove others, remove then one at a time, making image backups as you go along.

Trying to remove them all in one go is like trying to carve a joint of beef with a chainsaw.

@cereberus has just said what I was going to..

If you hack away randomly doing whatever you feel like doing.. you're going to end up in trouble and be asking for someone's time to get you out of it. Please don't do that...

Ever heard of 3rd party disk imaging? Search tenforums.. Make sure you have secure backups - so YOU can recover from your own worst mistakes- and even a failed disk or ransomware.

============
Like you, I use a 2nd hand Lenovo - as you can see from my specs. It's about 8 years old now.. 3 years old ex-business when I bought it.

forced updates

I disagree with that term. If you have Home, then you opted for a license where you will receive updates. Your phone (if you have one) gets updates.. I bet you don't complain they are 'forced'.

There are quite easy ways to block Windows updates- one of the tutorials covers that. Don't randomly try to do that yourself- it's not reliable.

You can also opt to stay on the same major build using 'target feature update' (search the Tutorials section).

Had you bought Pro you would have better control via 'Notify' in Group Policy.

I've not removed anything much.. and have a lot installed. I've not clean installed it since I got it.. over 5 years ago. Now that's pretty good stability.

Randomly disabling services gains you very little in practice- Paul Black's the expert. Services are often inter-dependent - so disabling them randomly can have unexpected effects.

To avoid using Edge and ensure everything is directed to your default browser try
MSEdgeRedirect (free).