11) Added comments to document where to locate each tweak in Windows and what they do, which also makes it much easier to find a tweak using a search box, since more keywords are available. Then used the registry paths as well as the comments to organize tweaks into related groups, and put things in alphabetical order too. Also, separated out individual tweaks that aren't directly related, such as the various xbox keys for example, so that they are modular and documented more accurately.
12) Did a bunch of basic formatting, like removing excess empty lines, trailing whitespace, and ensured the new registry file was in the correct UTF-16 LE encoding, since many of the old files weren't, as well as making sure to add ending newlines and other similar cleanup.
13) Deleted the VisualFXSetting key, and then fixed the overall Visual Effects settings by adding the new method for tweaking it. This adds 17 easy to use keys with a registry path of \Explorer\VisualEffects\ that have a simple "DefaultValue" which can be 00000000 to turn off a setting or 00000001 to turn them on, and they are all toggled individually, unlike the traditional route that uses a clunky mask and shellstate.
14) The Animation effects in the Accessibility settings page was fixed so that on a clean install it is now toggled off.
15) Fixed the DisablePCA tweak, because it was failing to apply to the registry, due to multiple invalid characters and parameters in the key. For future reference, it had a double equal (==) sign on the dword, as well as "smart quotes" which stand out due to them being in italics.
16) Converted DisablePCA and DisableAIDataAnalysis tweaks into local_machine so that it applies to all users instead, because I imagine that's actually what was intended for these, since many of the other registry tweaks target all users.
17) Deleted several redundant group policy tweaks that were using both current_user and local_machine. This is unneccessary as local_machine is all that's needed to affect all users, and stuff like this is a part of why it's so difficult to troubleshoot images on the internet, because so many people do this, "shotgun approach" where they go to extremes in, "ensuring a tweak sticks" by stacking them together, causing problems.
18) All the power plan tweaks gleaned from my Optimized Image guide aren't used correctly in this thread, because they were modified to be for the Ultimate performance plan, but that's not a real power plan which is why these tweaks don't work at the moment. Ultimate power is completely misunderstood by everyone, and I have posts explaining that (
link1,
link2) here. To fix this, I changed the tweaks back to the High performance power plan, but then I also added the hard drive timeout tweak which is all the ultimate performance plan really does.
19) In addition to the other power plan issues, there was never a tweak anywhere in this image that actually switched the power plan from Balanced to Ultimate, so even if the previous tweaks were correct, they weren't being actively used, because Windows defaults to the Balanced power plan on both W10 and W11 unless the user changes it. I fixed this by adding 2 keys that set the active plan to High performance.
20) StickyKeys flag was set at 2, but it needs to be 506 to disable the shortcut, so I fixed that.
21) NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate was set to 3 which disables it, but that also allows group policies to modify this setting, whereas a value of 1 keeps it from being conflicted with. It's not common knowledge, but the "Refs" key also gets set along with the "Ntfs" key when using the fsutil command, meaning people need to toggle both together, so I fixed that and set them both to disabled globally.
22) The tweaks gleaned from my Pause Windows Update guide were also incorrect in this thread, because later builds of W11 have now changed several of those keys and even added a new one. I fixed all of this, and now it's properly paused out of the box on a clean install.
