Guide: Optimized Image

Yeah, the "PowerSettings" branch is the master list of values for the power plans. If you click the "reset to default" buttons in the Control Panel for one of the plans, this registry branch is where the operating system pulls the default numbers from. On the other hand, the "User" branch is essentially a working copy of the master list, and manual modifications you make, such as going into the power options and changing the monitor timeout to 5 minutes, will appear on the working list, rather than on the master list.

Trying to use different tweaks or change the paths isn't going to directly solve anything, since these are confirmed registry tweaks so there's really only 2 possibilities for our situation, which is operator error or the tweaks don't work as-is on a certain build.

What happens when you do the instructions from the previous post, and download that file to install? If the keys don't work that way then there's definitely an issue, meaning the build, other tweaks interfering, oversights, etcetera. Also, after installing that .reg file, click the button to reset power plans to defaults and see if that reflects the new timeout values.
 
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Hellbovine said:
Yeah, the "PowerSettings" branch is the master list of values for these power plans. If you click the "reset to default" buttons in the Control Panel for one of the plans, this registry branch is where the operating system pulls the default numbers from. On the other hand, the "User" branch is essentially a working copy of the master list, and manual modifications you make, such as going into the power options and changing the monitor timeout to 5 minutes, will appear on the working list, rather than on the master list.

Trying to use different tweaks or change the paths isn't going to directly solve anything, since these are confirmed registry tweaks so there's really only 2 possibilities, which is operator error or they don't work on a certain build anymore.

What happens when you do the instructions from the previous post, and download that file to install? If the keys don't work that way then there's definitely an issue, meaning the build, other tweaks interfering, oversights, etcetera. Also, after installing that recently uploaded .reg file, click the button to reset power plans to defaults and see if that reflects the new timeout values.
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Alright, so here's what I managed so far. At the moment I am only able to test on my desktop, which only has the Balanced plan visible. So I copied name for the plan and replaced the only power saver name in the reg file.

Merging the file expressed no apparent change in the control panel and the Settings app. I checked the registry and found the key had indeed been added to PowerSettings and under the Balanced plan. Choosing to reset the Balanced plan to default settings, the merged file settings still did not take.

So I manually changed the system timeout to 2 hours and looked for the key. It was added to the Balanced profile branch under User\PowerSchemes. So perhaps Windows 11 works slightly differently in that regard then? Both the desktop and the test laptop are on the most recent version of Windows 11 22H2 Pro.

Another curiosity, if there is already a masterlist of settings under PowerSettings, what is the purpose of the "Default" branch under "User"?
 
tired-it said:
the merged file settings still did not take.
Click to expand...
I installed Windows 11 22H2 and got the extra power plan tweaks working. The culprit is a hidden Microsoft override that interferes. I ran into this problem a long time ago and documented it into the known issues section of this guide, regarding laptops (I believe the issue is related).

When I overwrite the override, the new sleep and display values appear in the control panel, and as soon as I remove my overrides the old values return. I achieved this troubleshooting by using the same registry paths from the sleep and display tweaks, but instead of using "ACSettingIndex" or "DCSettingIndex" I change the keys into "OverrideACSettingIndex" and "OverrideDCSettingIndex" which take precedence above all.

There are many workaround solutions to go with. You could use the override keys, use a group policy key, change the sleep and display tweaks into the \User\ path, use W10 instead of W11, make your own power plan, wait for Microsoft to fix it, or wait for me to solve it (v2.0 of the guide).
 
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Hellbovine said:
I installed Windows 11 22H2 and got the extra power plan tweaks working. The culprit is a hidden Microsoft override that interferes. I ran into this problem a long time ago and documented it into the known issues section of this guide, regarding laptops (I believe the issue is related).

When I overwrite the override, the new sleep and display values appear in the control panel, and as soon as I remove my overrides the old values return. I achieved this troubleshooting by using the same registry paths from the sleep and display tweaks, but instead of using "ACSettingIndex" or "DCSettingIndex" I change the keys into "OverrideACSettingIndex" and "OverrideDCSettingIndex" which take precedence above all.

There are many workaround solutions to go with. You could use the override keys, use a group policy key, change the sleep and display tweaks into the \User\ path, use W10 instead of W11, make your own power plan, wait for Microsoft to fix it, or wait for me to solve it (v2.0 of the guide).
Click to expand...
Huh, so Windows was doing sneaky things again. Adding "Override" and then resetting the power plan to default settings got the modifications to take for me too! Thank you so much. I may play around and see if adding "Override" to other settings gets them to work too.
 
Thank you for the time and effort you put in to this guide. I have tried a lot of "Optimsation" packs in the past to try and speed up Windows but I haven't come across one like this before.

Looking forward to future versions!
 
Do you plan to do a full reboot of this guide once 23H2 drops? For Windows 11 too? I noticed you said that you aim to make your guides suitable for the free version of NTLite, however I'd love to see a separate guide that optimises Windows 11 even further with the paid license.
 
Hxllandz said:
Do you plan to do a full reboot of this guide once 23H2 drops? For Windows 11 too?
Click to expand...
Yes, I also revised several of the guide's sections recently to address this better, since some other people asked about it as well.

Hxllandz said:
I'd love to see a separate guide that optimises Windows 11 even further with the paid license.
Click to expand...
NTLite's 4 built-in templates are a good choice to investigate here, and are the easiest way to see a license in action. My guides are compatible with templates and presets, so a user could process an image with one of those and then add my guide to merge their effects. I know this isn't the same as a curated image, but it puts more options on the table at least.
 
Hello friend.
Could you help me understand the reasons for using W10 21H2 instead of 22H2? I trust your judgment on this matter. But I am curious for why 21H2 was chosen?
 
BigBoyAdvance said:
Could you help me understand the reasons for using W10 21H2 instead of 22H2?
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Long story short, 22H2 was released by Microsoft in a buggy state, and it took most of a year to fix things. For the people that care primarily about performance and stability, it just wasn't a good build to use as a base image, so I kept my guides on 21H2. I will update the guides with 23H2 if it's stable at release, but if the new ISO is bugged I'll have to change my approach entirely.
 
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Hellbovine said:
Long story short, 22H2 was released by Microsoft in a buggy state, and it took most of a year to fix things. For the people that care primarily about performance and stability, it just wasn't a good build to use as a base image, so I kept my guides on 21H2. I will update the guides with 23H2 if it's stable at release, but if the new ISO is bugged I'll have to change my approach entirely.
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Thank you. Would it be possible to share a bit more info on what was bugged (or still is bugged) with 22H2? It would help me a lot.
 
BigBoyAdvance said:
Would it be possible to share a bit more info on what was bugged (or still is bugged) with 22H2?
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The details are spread over a number of threads, but I rehashed most of it (link1) recently. The links inside both spoilers will lead you down more rabbit holes on the subject. Microsoft also started removing downloads for older builds (link2) this year, which relates to this topic as well. I wouldn't get too bogged down in all this though, it's mostly moot now that 23H2 is coming out soon, and 22H2 has been getting bugfixed for a year.
 
Hi again.
One small thing:
You said: "6A) Click "Source" from the left menu,"

In the newest NTLite, the left menu contains:
Start
Image
Finish
Apply

There's no "Source". I'm guessing you meant to click on "Image".
 
I have a question:
AMD chipset drivers (from AMD website) also install AMD Power Plans. Will installing those chipset drivers mess up the power plan settings from your tweak files? Should I run the registry .bat files again after installing the chipset drivers to undo the changes made during the chipset drivers installation?
 
I don't have AMD to know for sure, but I imagine what they do is import their custom power plan file and then set the active plan to the imported one, and it's doubtful they would overwrite any of the other keys that I modify. After installing those drivers you would probably have to go into the control panel power options and click on the high performance power plan to switch back to it from AMD's custom plan. Alternatively, you could install the reg_0 file from my guide and it would switch the plan back too.

On that note, if anyone reading this is on AMD, I would love to get my hands on AMD power plans from different chipsets. I'm not at my main computer right now to post instructions on how to export power plans, but TenForums (link) has a good tutorial, which results in the .pow file I need. I'd like to study AMD's plans and see what they know that NVIDIA and the rest of us don't. For the people that do this, please be sure to reset the AMD plan to defaults before exporting it.
 
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Hellbovine said:
On that note, if anyone reading this is on AMD, I would love to get my hands on AMD power plans from different chipsets. I'm not at my main computer right now to post instructions on how to export power plans, but TenForums (link) has a good tutorial, which results in the .pow file I need. I'd like to study AMD's plans and see what they know that NVIDIA and the rest of us don't. For the people that do this, please be sure to reset the AMD plan to defaults before exporting it.
Click to expand...
I'm on B450 Tomahawk motherboard, running Ryzen 5800X3D CPU. I've reset the power plans to default using a cmd command, then used another command to restore Ultimate Performance plan (it disappeared after resetting to default). I followed the guide to dump 4 power plans.

Note: I don't know if there's something wrong with my Windows or if it's an AMD "feature", but my power plan likes to revert back to "Balanced" after a few days of the PC being turned on. I always set it to Ultimate Performance mode, but it keeps going back to Balanced. Do you have any idea why this happens? Does your "Optimized Image" prevent this from happening? Should I just use a cmd command to remove all power plans except for Ultimate Performance?

Note 2: In the past, I remember that installing AMD chipsets resulted in several AMD power plans being created. This doesn't happen anymore after installing the newest chipset drivers. I also don't have those AMD power plans in my list anymore (I probably got frustrated with the clutter and deleted them in the past).
 

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BigBoyAdvance said:
my power plan likes to revert back to "Balanced" after a few days of the PC being turned on. I always set it to Ultimate Performance mode, but it keeps going back to Balanced. Do you have any idea why this happens? Does your "Optimized Image" prevent this from happening? Should I just use a cmd command to remove all power plans except for Ultimate Performance?
Click to expand...
It's intended by Microsoft. Windows 10 and 11 have self-healing capabilities and this is one of them. Basically the power plans monitor activity and determine if they are being efficient, and if the situation is inefficient then they reset to the out of the box default. The tweaks in the reg_0 and reg_1 files fix this behavior.
 
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