[HN Gopher] Things you can do to clean up a fresh install of Win...
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       Things you can do to clean up a fresh install of Windows 11 24H2
       and Edge
        
       Author : mastazi
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2025-02-19 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | 1970-01-01 wrote:
       | Fresh install? Hit it with Blackbird and enjoy.
       | 
       | https://www.getblackbird.net/screenshots/
        
         | blackeyeblitzar wrote:
         | The documentation page of that website is pretty interesting.
         | Can disabling all those things break Windows in some way, like
         | making updates not work or something like that?
        
           | 1970-01-01 wrote:
           | Of course, that's the entire point of having 'admin' power
           | over the OS..                    blackbird -d =
           | Enable/Disable Windows Defender.          blackbird -u =
           | Enable/Disable auto-installation of Windows updates / Sets to
           | manual download and install only.          blackbird -m =
           | Enable/Disable auto-installation of Malicious Removal Tool
           | updates.
        
             | blackeyeblitzar wrote:
             | Well what I mean is, if you disable Cortana or the gaming
             | services or whatever, can it cause functionality like
             | windows update to stop working properly?
        
               | 1970-01-01 wrote:
               | no
        
               | hnuser123456 wrote:
               | No, there are thousands of pieces of random cruft in
               | Windows that can removed without breaking updates or core
               | functionality. There's only 12 or so processes that are
               | actually critical to keeping Windows running.
        
         | exceptione wrote:
         | That looks daring! But any update can undo privacy measures.
         | 
         | I think the safest option is to not allow windows any network
         | access. But that can be a pain in a dev vm, something like
         | visual studio needs to talk with a trillion domains for
         | installing. An MS does not provide static ip-lists for anything
         | azure.
         | 
         | The whole Windows ecosystem experience is such a backwardness,
         | each time I can shut down a win vm I feel relief.
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-19 23:01 UTC)