Updated: June 20, 2025
A quick baseline & recap for ye of low Dedoimedo readership. I don't like Windows 11. I don't want to use it, like at all, nopety nope. But I do occasionally test the system, just so I can report my experience, as I've recently done in my June review. That experiment was so bad that I actually decided to fully reset the system, and see what happens once I wipe the slate clean. Ought to be interesting.
Beforehand, to reduce the "noise" in the system, caused by the accumulated usage cruft, rigorous tweaking and lots of problematic updates, I also conducted a separate, clean setup of the system to see what gives. Indeed, just a day ago, I also shared my results on a fresh Windows 11 install. That wasn't that bad, but I did choose the Pro version and not Home, the likes of which is installed on my test laptop. Let's commence, and see what gives, shall we?
Reset process
It went fine, overall. It took about one hour and three reboots, actually shorter than my update experience from a few weeks back. Furthermore, my dual-boot setup was NOT affected. Windows did not touch the bootloader, which is quite nice. Once the purification process was done, I logged into the desktop, first as the Administrator (with the account now seemingly fixed from its foobar state before the reset). My oh my, was this bad.
Look at this desktop. Look at the overload of colors and senses. So many apps, so much crayon for the average ape. And of course, an attempt to get me to install McAfee, which is part of the unnecessary bundle that shipped with this laptop (even in its original Windows 10 guise). But don't forget, you can't toggle Windows Defender off easily (unless, apparently, you install another anti-virus program). Horrendous. Pointless.
Cleanup process
I embarked immediately on a two-hour removal journey, to get rid of all the junk. This is how it went:
- I used my own privacy guide as a baseline.
- My privacy settings were largely kept intact (for both users), but not all.
- I had to remove a lot of pointless apps. Edge refused to go, even after setting the right registry key. This is identical to the new installation I did recently. This means Edge will be neutered via IFEO. So be it.
Here's another example of the sleazy, scummy "modern" corpo behavior. Outlook did not show in the original list above, for whatever reason. But I did uninstall it via the system menu. The same applies to a bunch of other tools shown here.
And I repeated it all for my own user:
This is a pretty picture, mind. Shiny, happy, colorful. But it's also useless, and it's all about that sweet, sweet user data. Which is why you need to fight it with every shred of decency you have.
And here's the system menu with "cloud" search enabled - a bunch of random nonsense and useless factoids, silly games, and travel recommendations (I purposefully blanked those), which are about as good as randomly throwing a dart at the world map. What the ...
After some extra taming:
Several days later ...
I thought I had done it all, but no.
- Windows kept throwing notifications about Defender not running.
Even though I toggled virus & threat protection notifications off, it STILL kept on pestering!
- I got rid of these pointless spammy popups by setting the right registry option. Namely, I created a registry file (e.g.: silence.reg) with the following content, ran it, and applied the changes. This works well.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Defender Security Center\Notifications]
"DisableNotifications"=-
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender Security Center\Notifications]
"DisableNotifications"=dword:00000001
Windows wanted to remind me to complete the "online" nonsense process. I had forgotten to turn off the suggested notifications. I had to do this separately in both the Administrator and my own standard account.
Windows reinstalled some of the apps, even though I had explicitly removed them. GTFO. The best example is Outlook, the new and turdy "app". Nope. Never will I use it. Never ever.
Back in the mid-2000s, what would you call software installed (and reinstalled) without user consent? Hmm.
Among the various turds, Microsoft reinstalled AMD software, Lenovo software, Game Assist, and Outlook. Why? Why would you reinstall these if I removed them? What's your logic, other than stupidity, desperation, blatant disregard of user choice and privacy, and a sleazy attempt to get people to use pointless, touch-inspired apps that have no place on the desktop? What's the reason?
Disable services
As a result, I went in loco and disabled about a dozen services. Some were stubborn, so I used the lovely ExecTI tool, Run as Administrator, and then launched services.msc, and disabled a bunch. There were still a few that misbehaved, and for those, I will write a dedicated guide soon. The list:
- AMD Crash Defender Service
- AMD External Events Service
- Appx Deployment Service (no more Store apps)
- BitLocker Drive Encryption Service
- Geolocation Service
- Microsoft Store Install Service (no more Store itself)
- SSDP Discovery
- Web Threat Defense Service (three instances, related to Defender)
- WSAIFabricSvc (no idea what this is, probably Recall related)
In addition to Windows Defender, which I deeply purged, a bunch of services reported failed states, including WaasMedicSvc (as I had uninstalled the Medic app), workfolderssvc, ZTHELPER (no idea what this is).
Now, Web Threat Defense is quite interesting in that it still actively runs even though I removed the anti-virus. They really wanna know what people do on the Internet, do they. All for the sake of "security" and "protecting" the people from themselves, it seems. Not, interested, in, the, slightest.
I also toggled to manual:
- Update Orchestrator Service
- Windows Update
This means I can trigger updates when I like, and not when Microsoft thinks I should.
Disable Smart App Control
I noticed another vector of profiling and user control - Smart App Control. Funnily, if you disable this thing, you need to reset Windows to get it enabled again. What awful implementation is this? Or is this made to sound scary this way so that people don't turn it off?
Basically, this feels like anti-virus 2. But also something that checks what you run. More profiling, even if it's supposedly done for benevolent purposes. But the fact it uses words like "smart" and "app" means I definitely don't want to use this. And I definitely don't want some random cloud thing to decide if I run specific programs or not. My machine, not yours. Never.
Then, if you try to learn more about this (the link up there), it prompts what browser you want to use, even though I had explicitly marked Firefox as my default browser. Just look at that sad, sorry desperation. They have to prompt you (and ask you to reconfirm) not to use their ugly browser.
Trust me, Edge is NOT my default browser. This is just desperation in digital form. Why would they ask, if Edge was default, hm.
Bye, bye. You won't be missed.
Just look at how many attempts to MAKE me use these pointless solutions. Defender, which I neutered. Web Threat, which is another Defender element, real time, too. Smart App Control, another software monitoring tool. And of course, all of this is opaque, and hard to do (especially Defender services). Don't want.
But then, not a single suggestion to use Exploit Protection, which is amazing and effective. Windows comes with this wonderful mitigation framework, it's robust and works well, it's not intrusive, but it's never once suggested. Instead, these data-happy cloud-based pointless tools are shoved down the user's throat.
Conclusion
That would be the sum result of my reset process. At first, things were kind of okay. But then, a week later, the nudges, the apps, the constant, continuous crap started in earnest. Unwanted bundled junk, pointless touch-based tools that are not worth the kilobytes they take, a barrage of messages, security solutions that refuse to go away, for "my benefit", of course. A waste of time and life and space and intellect, all of it. Just modern dystopia that has no purpose.
So yeah, my impressions from the previous years stand. Windows 11 is useless, and it's getting more useless and aggressive by the day. You really need to go under the hood to get rid of all the crap. Well, hopefully, this was sad and entertaining for you. My next piece will show you how to handle services that refuse to stop or be set into disabled state, and then, we will follow up with how to stop the "cloud content" noise. Take care.
Cheers.