Windows 11 Enterprise 23H2 bloatware cleanup

[DavidLevine]

I'm new to NTLite. I used to use WimWitch, but NTLite looks pretty nice.

Wondering if anyone has a handy list of which extraneous apps they like to remove from the install.wim. I'm setting up desktops for employees in a small company and like to start with a cleaned up Windows installation. I was a big fan of Windows 10 LTSB and LTSC for that reason.

I see that NTLite has a color scheme with the list of components. Looks like the ones with green tend to be what I consider to be bloatware, e.g. Cortana, Xbox, Microsoft News, etc.

Thanks in advance!

David Levine

 

[garlin]

The color scheme matches the built-in NTLite templates for Component removals. Privacy is the safest for not breaking critical features, and the next templates will progressively remove more features until users begin to notice apps, or Windows features are broken.

- Privacy (Green)
- Gaming (Blue)
- Lite (Yellow)

Some keys to note:
- If you remove Edge browser, try to keep the "Edge (Legacy)" components. This is the IE11 compatibility library, and a fair number of 3rd-party apps expect to use functions related to local HTTP requests.
- Same for Windows Media Player, with playback codecs.
- If you try to remove an important pre-requisite for other Windows features, NTLite will block you until you enter the Compatibility mode (click on the broken page icon on the toolbar's top left) and disable the protection.

Your idea of what's safe to remove might be different from what your users will require. Install a test image with the same applications, and see if everything's still working afterwards.

Ironically, the GamerOS preset is a fairly good balance between removals and preserving most app compatibility.

 

[DavidLevine]

Hello Garlin,
Thanks so much for your helpful response. Are those templates available in the free version? I also wonder how much I can test with the free version before trying to ask for funds to purchase from my manager.

 

[Annie Ng]

Wondering if anyone has a handy list of which extraneous apps they like to remove from the install.wim.

You may take a look at the deprecated features in Windows, which Microsoft no longer develops, and remove them in NTLite or with PowerShell scripts. For example, all the XBox-related apps, the "Microsoft Mixed Reality" apps, "Bing" apps, the "Alljoyn" and "WordPad", "Zune" and "Steps Recorder", etc, are nice removable candidates.

 

[garlin]

Thanks so much for your helpful response. Are those templates available in the free version? I also wonder how much I can test with the free version before trying to ask for funds to purchase from my manager.

The templates are available in any edition, but some of the removals will be ignored if they're licensed.

There's enough default apps in free mode to begin understanding what NTLite can do. You can at least learn the workflow of how NTLite handles image processing compared to WIM Witch. The bigger selling point to your manager is how much time you're saving in refining images.

 

[DavidLevine]

You may take a look at the deprecated features in Windows, which Microsoft no longer develops, and remove them in NTLite or with PowerShell scripts. For example, all the XBox-related apps, the "Microsoft Mixed Reality" apps, "Bing" apps, the "Alljoyn" and "WordPad", "Zune" and "Steps Recorder", etc, are nice removable candidates.

Thanks Annie, this is very helpful. It's surprising how many useless apps (from the business point of view) are still part of the Windows architecture.