Guide: Optimized Image

Hellbovine said:
I haven't had a chance to test battery life to get definitive numbers, but it should only positively affect battery and heat, since it's reducing overhead, so computer parts do not have to work as hard, especially the CPU. If you find that battery life isn't as good as it used to be though, change the power plan back to balanced, since this guide sets it to high performance. I use this image on both my desktop and laptop, without any issues.
Click to expand...

How do you change it to high effiency mode? Thanks
 
It's contained within the Power settings of the Control Panel. A fast way to change it would be to enter this text into a command prompt or the run box: powercfg /setactive scheme_balanced

You can also use "powercfg /list" without quotes to see which plan is active. To switch back to the high performance plan substitute the above with scheme_min or if you want the power saver plan use scheme_max instead.

If you are building this image, you could also just edit the registry files and delete the keys that change the power plan into high performance, and it will then default to balanced instead.
 
Yeah, sorry for the confusion, I will consolidate things between step 6 and 7. The reason 7 has the "process" is because it isn't done at the end of step 6, instead I explain what each registry file does, and that was really long so I wrapped things up in the next step. I've been reformatting the guide's text often, based on feedback, and at this point I just need to overhaul and simplify this guide, which will be done when I update it to version 2.
 
Question-I noticed in a screenshot that the taskbar color and wallpaper are disabled. Is that the default or did they do that themself? If it's the default how can I not have that happen?
 
The screenshots are taken from the desktop as it appears when the guide is followed as-is. If yours doesn't look like that, then you may have done something that is interfering, such as using a different operating system or majorly different build version, adding extra tweaks that break things, or using third party tools like theme patchers, startisback, etcetera.
 
I see and understand thank you. It was a screenshot someone else posted and I'm not sure what thread it was in. Do I have to disable the firewall? You've said you have to to use NTLite.
 
Firewalls would only need to be temporarily disabled for NTLite if they prevent NTLite from patching itself, or if you are using NTLite's Windows Update feature, and antivirus programs should be disabled for NTLite no matter what, since these things can block or corrupt files.
 
I see thank you. I'm not using NTLite's Windows Update feature since I'm using a 21H2 image and following your guide. I know to disable defender when using NTLite.
 
Hellbovine said:
This guide walks users through...
Click to expand...

I'm so very grateful for the huge amount of work you've put into this and for sharing it openly.

I signed up to the forum and purchased NTLite more than a year ago because of you. I remember giving this post a thumbs up back then but at the time meant to actually say thank you. I guess life got in the way but: thank you.

You made Windows usable for me back then and whilst I've been using Linux for the past six or so months because of the freedom it provides me, I now need to run a dual boot Windows-Linux system and am not dreading this in the way I would have otherwise thanks to the image I created back then that was only possible thanks to your kindness in sharing your work, a few tweaks of my own, and the NTLite software.

I can only speak for myself, but I suspect you've made a real difference to an awful lot of people in terms of reduced stress and time saved, as well as an all-round more enjoyable and streamlined Windows experience.

I hope this post isn't OTT but I really do appreciate what you've done. Again, thank you!
 
First...Thank you for the amazing guides you provide to the community.

I was wondering if I should always apply the registry changes across all editions? or only in step 5B?

Looking forward to the updated guides you mentioned in your update.
 
Midnite Ryder said:
I was wondering if I should always apply the registry changes across all editions? or only in step 5B?
Click to expand...
Only do it in the step it says to, and then the remaining tweaks will go into only the WIM portion of the image by default. Here's why:

1) These other parts of Windows are barely ever used, they really only get touched by users while installing or repairing the operating system and then they spend the remaining 99.99% of their time on the WIM portion of the ISO files. Because of this, there aren't many reasons to put time into researching and testing non-WIM tweaks, unless it's necessary for a specific goal.

2) The non-WIM parts don't accept all the registry keys that the WIM does, because it's my understanding that these non-WIM parts are basically stripped versions of the WIM and have extremely limited capabilities (my layman explanation). This means when you use NTLite to integrate a bunch of registry tweaks into the non-WIM parts of Windows, some of them will actually throw an error in NTLite and say they cannot be integrated, presumably because those editions don't have any coding that can actually utilize those tweaks.

In a scenario like this, good quality control practice dictates that due to the unknowns there is a high probability of discovering bugs or quirks by messing with this (thus creating self-inflicted problems), and coupled with the negligible rate of return on this investment, the right choice is to avoid tinkering here and only integrate tweaks across all editions if you are certain they have a purpose and are guaranteed to not cause problems.

I do apologize for the long explanation, but this was a great question and I'm surprised it doesn't come up more often in general, especially from the extreme crowd that lives by the shotgun approach to tweaking, so this post serves as an answer for that in the future too.
 
The default rule – if a Registry setting has no importance to a specific Windows instance (normal Windows, WinPE, WinRE) then it's silently ignored as dead weight. For convenience, you can apply Settings changes to all editions and generally expect to do no harm.

WinPE is a subset of normal Windows which is stripped of most services and apps; it's only role is to boot, recognize HW devices, prep the system for basic disk or network configuration, and install Windows files. Or run basic repairs.

WinRE is the Recovery environment, which is a different set of Windows to run the Recovery tools. The difference is WinRE is designed to be regularly updated (patched), and will copy over the same drivers as your normal Windows.

In real life, hopefully you won't be spending much time in WinPE or WinRE. Tweaking those images doesn't result in much advantage.
But it's usually not harmful. Just make sure you have the right expectations.
 
Hello there
I was just trying to understand which settings you want to set with the Reg_1_Power.reg to check whether they are okay for me too.
I have the impression that I found some incorrect settings, could that be?

For example, in lines 41-44 it says:
; Start > Windows System > Control Panel > Power Options > Choose what the power buttons do > When I close the lid > Sleep
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e7347\5ca83367-6e45-459f-a27b-476b1d01c936\DefaultPowerSchemeValues\381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e]
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000001
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000001
Click to expand...

You set both values to "00000001" for "sleep"
But there seems to be no "00000001"

As Regedit says, for option 1 = sleep set "00000002"
1709001121410.png

The PowerSettingsExplorer.exe says the same:
1709001703610.png
Am i wrong? Please tell me, before i go to change all these values ;)

An by the way: Great work! I love people thinking the way you do :D
 
Cragganmore said:
Hello there
I was just trying to understand which settings you want to set with the Reg_1_Power.reg to check whether they are okay for me too.
I have the impression that I found some incorrect settings, could that be?

For example, in lines 41-44 it says:


You set both values to "00000001" for "sleep"
But there seems to be no "00000001"

As Regedit says, for option 1 = sleep set "00000002"
View attachment 11365

The PowerSettingsExplorer.exe says the same:
View attachment 11366
Am i wrong? Please tell me, before i go to change all these values ;)

An by the way: Great work! I love people thinking the way you do :D
Click to expand...
What I am seeing that it's not the correct directory. The right directory starts with 381b4222...... it is below the defaultpowerschemevalues Folder
 
Lone-Wolf said:
What I am seeing that it's not the correct directory. The right directory starts with 381b4222...... it is below the defaultpowerschemevalues Folder
Click to expand...

Yes, you're right, in the 381b4222... the value is been set. But the descrpition of the possible values is above, the directories 0...3.
1709002908643.png

Both are set to "00000001" what i think is not allowed.
 
In the first screenshot (link1) trace the red arrow back to the yellow "1" folder where it originated from and that's the answer. The user's AC/DC settingindex correlates to the yellow numbered folders just above "DefaultPowerSchemeValues" rather than the "SettingValue" key.

You can also verify this with a registry compare tool by changing another setting, such as AHCI Link Power Management from within the Control Panel to "HIPM+DIPM" and it will set a value of 2, rather than 3 which would match its "SettingValue" key.

Microsoft is actively evolving power plans, so there are a few bugs and issues that affect users, and some newer Windows builds are ignoring various power settings now, which requires extra efforts to mitigate. The tweaks being discussed currently (what happens when power/sleep buttons are pressed) are among those affected, and the solutions for that are here (link2) if you have an affected build.
 
Last edited:
Hellbovine said:
Update (December 29th, 2023): I am actively working on revising this guide and all others for the latest Windows builds. See the following reply (link1) for detailed information about why there was delays on progressing things further.

This guide walks users through the creation of an optimized Windows 10 image designed for maximum performance, with general annoyances and telemetry addressed too. These tweaks have been thoroughly researched and tested to provide a safe and official approach, suitable for gamers, power users, and everyday users as well. The guide was tested on Home edition, meaning the tweaks will also work on all other editions.

The long-term goal here is to make a highly refined image, so that by the time Windows 10 reaches end of life we can take this guide which will be in its final form by then, and install a fully patched and optimized operating system that can be used for many more years, until too many developers drop support and users are eventually forced to migrate. This is a very popular strategy that countless users have settled on, jumping from Windows 98 > XP > 7 > 10, since the in-between releases tend to flop with the masses.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
- This guide is for Windows 10 version 21H2, build 19044.1288, but many of these tweaks will work elsewhere if you want to assume responsibility for adapting it to your needs. What I mean is, I will not help troubleshoot something majorly off course, such as using Windows 11 with this guide, because it is a different operating system and still evolving, and it needs new tweaks that are not relevant to other builds.

- Users have limited options in choosing an operating system these days, because numerous companies are now onboard with Microsoft's end of life road maps. Major platforms (Steam, Blizzard, Chrome, etcetera) have dropped support for older Windows, and there has been such a hard push in 2023 to make everything except Windows 10 and 11 completely obsolete, that in 2024 many developers will only support these two options.

- My research and testing indicated Windows 10 version 21H2 was the best of the modern options at the time this guide was created, which is why it was chosen. It is also the version that Enterprise 2021 uses, which helps support the notion that it is stable. While comparing Windows 10 to 11, it was easy to see that Windows 11 scored the same or slightly worse in every benchmark, and had substantially higher DPC latency. I plan on testing Windows 10 vs 11 again after every major version release and will update all my guides accordingly, but Windows 10 is the current winner.

- This guide is intended to be updated annually for the latest Windows ISO version that gets released around November of each year, but due to the low quality state that Microsoft released 22H2, I chose to stay with 21H2 for now. The bugs and performance issues were too numerous to bother with, and it was taking too long for Microsoft to address them all, so it made more sense to stick with a stable build until the new 23H2 can be tested.

- Almost all performance images on the internet pause or disable Windows Update. This guide pauses it forever, and it can be manually started and paused again by the user, but I do not recommend using the Windows Update feature due to the huge number of problems it can cause, and users should instead create a new image using this guide at the start of every year and cleanly install that. This reply (link2) explains the issue in more detail.

TWEAK METHODOLOGY
We need to define what "optimized" means, and why this custom Windows is unlike most others on the internet.

- This guide does not focus on component removals, instead it uses registry keys. This method ensures that nothing "breaks" in Windows, since all the keys are the same official method that Microsoft would use, and these tweaks can be reversed on a live install too. No apps have been uninstalled, no dependencies lost, it is just much faster and better on resource usage, with common annoyances resolved. In other words, Microsoft could release this as a "Gaming" or "Lite" edition of Windows 10.

- Every individual tweak has been meticulously tested to ensure they work for this operating system and version. They all integrate into a clean install, and apply to all users created. This is important because many tweaks on the internet are not tested properly, since most people go by "feel" which is usually placebo effect. Basically, I do not include tweaks if I cannot manually confirm they are doing something beneficial.

- This image was constructed in a modular way, meaning you can take pieces from it, or you could use the whole guide and layer it on top of other custom NTLite images, to enhance one of the built-in NTLite templates or a user's custom preset.

- This guide was posted on August 23rd, 2022 and no issues have been discovered so far. The various problems in the thread replies have been determined to be inaccurate or unrelated, which is a common occurence on forums, since people will add their own tweaks and tools while using a guide, then randomly place the blame when things break. At this point, it is safe to say this image has no issues when the instructions are followed.

KNOWN ISSUES
There are no known issues with this custom image, but some notes are discussed below.

- The Xbox Game Bar will not run when you click on it from the start menu, which is by Microsoft's design and is not intuitive. If you need to use the Game Bar just go to Start > Settings > Gaming > and toggle it on, then the Game Bar will run when clicked from the start menu.

- On laptops, Microsoft alters the power buttons so that instead of turning off when "Shut down" is clicked, it silently goes to sleep instead (same for restart). I know that I can address this in a proper way, but it is consuming too much time, so I will solve it in the future. This is Microsoft's issue though, because Windows detects the power capabilities of a computer and then adjusts settings during install, which override ours.

- The Microphone is initially off, but can be turned on by going to Start > Settings > Privacy > Microphone > toggle "Allow access to the microphone on this device" followed by "Allow apps to access your microphone" and then "Allow desktop apps to access your microphone" last. Some programs require all three settings to be enabled in order for voice chat to work.

- I tried to avoid group policy registry keys unless it was absolutely required, but I had to use about a half dozen in total. This is not a bad thing, but the downside to policies is that they lock settings so the user cannot toggle them on/off in the Windows interface, until the policy is deleted from the registry. I will work to eliminate all policies in the future.

- Defender and Firewall have been turned off for gamers (easily enabled again), but it is not as scary as some people say. Use a good browser (Chrome), practice common sense (download only from reputable sources, do not visit shady sites), and things will be fine. Install a good ad-blocker (uBlock Origin) though, since that will dramatically improve browsing security/performance, while also blocking ads everywhere (including YouTube). Also, use NAT in your router and do not directly connect your computer to the DSL/Cable modem.

RELEASE NOTES
August 23, 2022: Released version 1.0 with 584 total registry keys. It took about 640 hours over 8 months to create it, and versions 2.0 and 3.0 are planned out. Since good testing is so time consuming, each new version takes several months or more to complete. If anyone finds any issues, those will be fixed and the guide updated with a minor version change.

December 28, 2022: Updated to version 1.1 after adding a registry key that prevents Windows from forcibly downloading and installing a display driver, even if Windows Update was paused. Also, cleaned up the guide's formatting and added information about the release of 22H2.

STEP 1: GETTING STARTED
Before you begin, check that you have everything you need in advance.

1A) Download the attachments. The "Screenshots" folder contains images showing the Task Manager and LatencyMon results. Compared to a stock Windows 10 21H2 install, this optimized image has 17% fewer processes, 34% fewer threads, 23% fewer handles, memory usage down to 1.0 gigabytes, and many tweaks that improve the user-experience which do not have a way to be measured by a tool. The "Tweaks" folder contains the layout and registry files needed to create the image. After downloading the folders, right-click on them and "Extract All", choose a destination, click "Extract" and then delete the original zipped folders.

1B) Exit out of all open programs and reboot.

1C) Temporarily disable any antivirus, such as Defender, since they slow down NTLite and may cause image corruption.

1D) Right-click on NTLite and select "Run as administrator".

1E) In NTLite, click on the "Main menu" button on the top left (signified by 3 horizontal lines), then "Check for updates" and then click the first "Update" button, under the "Tool" header. If it is grayed out then you are on the latest version already.

STEP 2: START MENU, TILES, AND TASKBAR
This step prevents all the "bloat" from getting installed, such as games and apps you did not ask for, and other ads and sponsored software. You can still use live tiles and customize that panel, this tweak just cleans up the stuff that many users do not like.

2A) Load an unmodified, official, Windows 10 21H2 image into NTLite by going to "Add" then choosing "Image directory" and select the Windows image folder you want to use and NTLite will refresh. Now double-click on "Windows 10 Home" or whichever edition you have a license for, and it will begin loading. If you do not have an image to use, check other guides (link3) for instructions, and for an official 21H2 (link4) download.

2B) After the image has finished loading it automatically moves into the "Mounted" section, which means we can begin editing. Right-click on the "Windows 10 Home" that has a green circle and select "Explore mount directory".

2C) Left-click twice in the blank space of the address bar, to the right of "NLTmpMnt" and add the following text exactly as shown below.

\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\

Make sure it is one long address now, combined with the previous address, and no white spaces between anything, then press enter and it should take you to a folder that has 1 file inside.

2D) Next, copy and paste the custom DefaultLayouts.xml and LayoutModification.xml files that you downloaded earlier into this mounted Shell directory, choose the option to "Replace the file in the destination" when prompted, and then hit "Continue" on both screens to approve the action.

2E) Exit the mounted shell window now, but leave NTLite open.

STEP 3: UPDATING POWER PLAN
This registry file is going to be integrated into all four parts of the Windows image (Install, PE, Setup, Recovery) which changes the default power plan from Balanced to High performance in each of those. This greatly increases the speed at which Windows will install, reducing the total install time by about 50%. This also fixes a bug in Windows, which causes certain older SSD to hang or be extremely slow during Windows Setup.

3A) Click "Registry" from the left menu, then "Add", choose "Registry files" and select the Reg_0_NTLite file you downloaded earlier and NTLite will refresh to show that those keys were added.

STEP 4: UNINSTALL COMPONENTS
This step is optional, but I strongly urge everyone to do it anyway. Here we are removing the only component in this guide, OneDrive. There are several reasons to do this, the biggest one being that it is a resource hog, and it is not integrated into Windows, instead it is a standalone installer that does not actually install until the first user is created, meaning it is not integrated into the image.

Even if you want OneDrive, it is better for users to directly access the OneDrive cloud via their web browser, than to use the app, because the app adds unnecessary resource usage to the background of Windows, eats up internet bandwidth, and you will inevitably experience syncing issues and/or file corruption. It makes more sense to adjust how you use OneDrive, than it does to try and optimize this unnecessary app.

4A) Click "Components" from the left menu, then expand the "Remoting and Privacy" tree and also expand "Cloud Files API" so that you can now uncheck "OneDrive".

Note: This is the only tweak in all my guides that require a paid NTLite license, while everything else works 100% on the free edition. However, a license is worth it, because it gives you much more power to do additional component removals and such, if desired. You will also be supporting the tremendous amount of work that has gone into the NTLite program, while indirectly supporting the volunteers, since the community and the tool grow in relation to each other.

STEP 5: APPLY AND PROCESS (PART ONE)
At this point we are done with the first set of tweaks and ready to process this image into something we can install Windows with. You could stop after this step and have a great base image to do your own tweaking with, or continue with the guide to add these tweaks.

5A) Click "Apply" from the left menu, then select "Save the image and trim editions" which will eliminate all of the unused editions, such as Pro, Education, and Workstation, without affecting the edition that you have currently loaded in NTLite.

5B) Now expand "Reapply tasks across editions" and check the box for "Integrate - Registry".

5C) On the top left menu bar select "Process" to begin creating the customized image.

Note: It will take several minutes to process the image and a message will appear when it is complete. Do not try to combine this step with the ones below. It is best practice to integrate registry keys after processing the removal of components, otherwise you may end up deleting some tweaks when components are uninstalled.

STEP 6: IMPORT REMAINING REGISTRY FILES
To finish this custom image, we need to take the previously processed image and add a few more layers into it.

6A) Click "Image" from the left menu, then double-click on the same "Windows 10 Home" option from earlier to load it again, and it will now include all the previous tweaks we added. If you previously stopped after step 5C and are returning to this guide to add more tweaks, the image may not still be visible in NTLite, so you may need to repeat step 2A again. After it loads, click "Registry" from the left menu and then continue below.

6B) Click "Add" and choose "Registry files" to select "Reg_1_Power" for integration. Repeat this step until Reg_2_Security, Reg_3_Settings, Reg_4_Control, Reg_5_Apps, and Reg_6_Other are all added.

Below are some highlights these files are responsible for. Right-click and edit a registry file from within Windows File Explorer to read the comments inside. If you do not want a certain feature to be tweaked then you can delete those tweaks from the files before integrating them, but I highly recommend trying everything as-is for a week, to give this curated product a fair try, since a huge amount of time and effort went into this.

Reg_1_Power: Disables hibernation (saves several gigabytes of space, while still keeping sleep available), disables fast startup, converts the High performance power plan into the equivalent of the Microsoft Ultimate and Bitsum's power plans combined, plus additional improvements. Temperatures do not increase though, because the reduced overhead of the image makes up for that.

Reg_2_Security: This file has to do with the Windows Security center app, it disables Defender, firewall, and many of the overly aggressive security features which substantially interfere with gaming, especially multiplayer. This is where most gaming issues come from, and is the reason why older operating systems perform better, because they lack these features.

Reg_3_Settings: There are tons of tweaks in this file, and all of them are things that a user can toggle from within the Windows "Settings" pages. There are tweaks that fix DWM and theme management in Windows, disables syncing, disables telemetry, pauses Windows Update forever (can be manually resumed and paused again as desired), and so much more.

Reg_4_Control: Everything inside this file has to do with settings inside the Control Panel. A lot of annoyances are addressed here, such as disabling various user tracking, cleans some of the user interfaces, basic keyboard and mouse tweaks for gamers, disables the constant user account control nagging, and many other similar changes.

Reg_5_Apps: This file contains the settings that handle all the apps, and stops them from running in the background, but still allows them to work in case someone actually wants to use any of them.

Reg_6_Other: Miscellaneous tweaks are here, such as desktop and taskbar tweaks. Also disables prefetch, disables superfetch, disables indexer, disables file compression, and a number of other tweaks to make things less annoying, more stable, or to reduce overhead.

STEP 7: APPLY AND PROCESS (PART TWO)
For the last step all we have to do is process the addition of these remaining registry files.

7A) Click "Apply" from the left menu, then select "Process" to begin creating the customized image.

7B) Once processing has finished, exit NTLite and then copy the Windows files onto the root of a USB drive, then boot into that drive and install your custom Windows! If you are unfamiliar with this, see my other guide (link5) for instructions on how to do it.

Note: Unplug from the internet before installing Windows or it will force you to use a Microsoft account during setup, as well as potentially downloading updates which could undo some tweaks. This will be resolved in version 2.0 of the guide.

Visit the Gaming Lounge to find more guides like these.
Click to expand...
Hello, I like the sound of what you say. But I am very interested to know if this preset can work on w11 23h2. ??
 
Hellbovine said:
In the first screenshot (link1) trace the red arrow back to the yellow "1" folder where it originated from and that's the answer. The user's AC/DC setting index correlates to the yellow numbered folders just above "DefaultPowerSchemeValues" rather than the "SettingValue" key.

You can also verify this with a registry compare tool by changing another setting, such as AHCI Link Power Management from within the Control Panel to "HIPM+DIPM" and it will set a value of 2, rather than 3 which would match its "SettingValue" key.

Microsoft is actively evolving power plans, so there are a few bugs and issues that affect users, and some newer Windows builds are ignoring various power settings now, which requires extra efforts to mitigate. The tweaks being discussed currently (what happens when power/sleep buttons are pressed) are among those affected, and the solutions for that are here (link2) if you have an affected build.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. So what I wrote in Link1 is actually true and the regestrie entries in Reg_1_Power.reg are partly "wrong", but there are still bugs with some Windows builds? What do you mean by "OverrideACSettingIndex", I can't find that anywhere in the Reg_1_Power.reg?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top