As you can probably tell here, I've got a stock Windows 11 installation. It still has the widgets. It's got the normal start menu.
It's got the Microsoft Store still installed. It's got Copilot here on the taskbar and OneDrive is also trying to start up automatically. So basically this is just a stock Windows 11 Pro 23H2 version that I've got running here.
Now, in this video, I want to show you how you can use Chris Titus Tech's Windows utility to make Windows better. And this is a utility that every Windows user must know about. So if you do a Google search for the Chris Titus Windows utility, you'll normally get these two pages as the best results.
One of them takes you to his website and the other one takes you to the GitHub page. It doesn't really matter if you use his website or the GitHub page. But what you're looking for are these launch commands here. So we're just going to launch the stable branch by copying this command here. And then you want to right click on your start button and then either open the terminal or PowerShell as admin. If you have user account control enabled, you'll see this screen.
Then you can just click on Yes. And that's going to open the terminal or PowerShell. You can then press control and V, which will paste that command.
And then you can press enter and it's going to start launching the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility on your computer. Now, one misconception is that people think this is a program that gets installed onto your computer, it doesn't get installed onto your computer. It's hosted on the Internet at ChrisTitus.com and it just runs through PowerShell.
So nothing actually gets downloaded to your computer. Now, it's launched on my computer here. And if for some reason it doesn't seem to fit on your screen, you can always just double click anywhere on this empty white space here and it'll make it full screen. And also, if you double click on it again, it'll just minimize that window.
So if you have some issues with display, you can just double click on it to make it full screen. Now, at the time of this recording, if we go to the settings here and we look at the About section, here you can see the version number and the Windows utility gets a lot of regular updates, so I can almost guarantee you that in a year or two from now, the utility might look completely different than what you're seeing in this video right now, but most probably it'll still work exactly the same. So for starters, you've got a few different tabs up here and I'll go through each of them with you in this video, but starting with the Install tab, here you can select a bunch of utilities that you can install on your computer. So what happens is, let's say I select something like 7-zip, for example, and I click on Install. If I go ahead and press the Windows key, you'll see that there are two different terminals open.
One is the GUI for the Chris Titus Tech Windows Utility, and then there's also the terminal window here or the PowerShell window that shows you the status of what's happening. So the very first time you install something with this utility, it's going to update WinGet if it's outdated and it might also download some other dependencies as well, like you can see here. And then once WinGet and all of the prerequisites are installed, then it'll start installing the package or packages that you selected to install.
So I just selected 7-zip as an example. And then once it's finished, you'll see that installs have finished. And if I now have a look at the computer, I've got 7-zip installed on this PC. Now, one of the cool things about this install section here is if you're someone who sets up a lot of different computers and you're planning on using this Chris Titus Tech Windows Utility to help you streamline that process and save a lot of time, what you can do is you can go through and select all of the utilities that you would normally install on a computer.
So just as an example, let's say I always install 7-zip and shell the expanded context menu on every computer that I set up. You can obviously go ahead and select a bunch of these utilities, everything that you would normally install. And then you can go ahead and click on the gear icon up here and then click on export. Now you can save this as like a preset. And I'm just going to save it on the desktop and then click on save.
And now you'll have this JSON file here. And you can save this on a USB flash drive. So you always have access to it on different computers.
But what you can do in that case is if I click on clear selection, you'll see it's no longer selected, then if you click on the gear icon again and you click on import and you import that preset file, then it'll automatically select all of the utilities that you've selected to install on the computer. And then you can click on install and upgrade selected. And this also accounts for all of the tweaks that you would select or basically anything else that you would select in this utility. You can create a preset file so you don't have to go and manually select every single thing every time, then on each computer you can just import that preset into the utility and then run the tweaks and install the programs, which will save you a lot of time when you're setting up new computers. But that's about it for the install section. So let's go to the tweaks section.
Now, the Windows utility tweaks that I have in my UnattendedWinstall answer file, basically a lot of them comes from this page here. So what you would normally do here is just click on the standard button and then it's going to select a bunch of these tweaks here. So before it runs any of these tweaks, it'll create a restore point. If you have that selected, which is selected by default when you click on the standard selection up here, but it also has a lot of other useful tweaks. You can delete the temporary files.
You can disable consumer features, which is basically like ads in Windows. You can disable telemetry. You can disable activity history, disable the game DVR, disable hibernation, disable home group, which doesn't actually exist anymore in Windows 10 or 11 I think. You can disable location tracking. You can disable storage sense teredo, which is a network tunneling feature that can cause additional latency. You can disable Wi-Fi sense. And as you can see, if I hover over these tweaks, it gives you a little tool tip of what this will do.
Then it'll also run disk cleanup. And one of the latest additions in this version, at least is replacing the default PowerShell 5 with PowerShell 7. And then I'm not using a laptop, but you can set hibernation as the default for laptops, as it's good for laptops. And then I guess you won't disable hibernation up there if you do that. And then this last one that sets services to manual, that's actually what causes the lower process count in Windows 10 and 11. So if I go ahead and I open the task manager on this stock Windows 11 install, you'll see that it's still on 145 processes.
And if I run these tweaks, you'll see that this will be a lot lower. So right now we have about 3 gigs of memory in use and the CPU utilization is like between 7 and 15%. So a lot of people says that lowering the process count doesn't really matter. I don't agree or disagree.
I'm just saying, why would I want 143 processes running in the background when it could be down to like 70 or 80, whether that makes a performance difference or not, why would I want all of these processes running if I'm not using them? But getting back to the utility, then you also have some advanced tweaks. So you can do an Adobe network block and Adobe debloat. If you want to do that, you can also disable IPV6, but then you can disable full screen optimizations, you can disable Microsoft co-pilot. So for this video example, I'm going to do that because I also have that included in my UnattendedWinstall answer file.
Then you can also disable Intel MM and you can hover over that to see exactly what it does. Now you can also disable the notifications and this also disables the calendar, unfortunately, because that's just the way that Microsoft programmed it. Then you can also set the display for performance. For this video I'm just going to go ahead and do that. You can set the classic right click menu.
You can set the time to UTC and this is usually when you're also using Linux on the same system. So I'm not going to do that, but one of these options here is to remove all the Microsoft store apps. So you can go ahead and do that because that's what a lot of people want when they use the UnattendedWinstall answer file. You can also remove Microsoft Edge and you can remove OneDrive. What I'm going to do is I'm going to run all of these tweaks right now.
So I'll click on that and then just press the Windows key again and then go to the terminal so we can see exactly what's happening. So now it's busy running all of these tweaks that this is the edge removal script. So right now it's uninstalling Microsoft Edge. And if I move this over, you'll see at the back here, there's also some other operations going on, which is removing the Microsoft apps from the system. Now the edge removal script is finished and you can see, you can also type the name of another browser in here if you want to reinstall it using this PowerShell window. But I'm just going to be using the Chris Titus utility to install another
browser. So you can just go ahead and close the edge removal window if you removed Microsoft Edge. And as you can see, the rest of the tweaks are still running because I have the disk cleanup running here. So this could take quite some time, but I'm just going to speed it up in the video. So disk cleanup has just finished running. So I'm just going to click on OK.
And it looks like it's doing the upgrade of PowerShell 5 to PowerShell version 7. So while it's installing that, as you can see, the taskbar already looks different than when I started with this process, there's no widgets on the taskbar anymore. The search bar is also gone. And then I see that I still have Edge on here.
But as you see, if I click on it, it doesn't open. So I can go ahead and unpin that. And removing Edge from Windows 10 and Windows 11 is always going to be a pain. There's always going to be some sort of remnant left of it on your computer. Like you can see, it's still in the pinned apps here, but it doesn't launch. So you'll just manually have to go and unpin this from any menu that you see.
You can see that I can't unpin Microsoft Edge from this all apps menu. But what you need to do is you need to go to open file location. And then you just need to delete the shortcut here from the start menu programs folder. And then if you go back, it should be gone from the list of apps on your start menu. But like I said, you'll always have some remnants of Microsoft Edge on the computer left because it's part of Windows. Removing it completely is very difficult.
But once all of those tweaks are finished running, you'll see that the tweaks are finished. Another thing that I just wanted to show you here is you can also click on this run O&O Shut Up 10 button. Now, if you don't know what O&O Shut Up 10 is, if I click on that, it basically launches this software here. And this also helps you get better privacy on Windows. So you can either set the settings for the current user or for the local machine.
And you'll see that there are some different settings switching between these two tabs. But you can go through each of them individually if you want and decide what you want to disable or leave enabled. But you can basically click on actions here. Then you can apply the recommended settings or you can apply the recommended and somewhat recommended settings, or you can go ahead and apply all settings.
Now, basically what these three settings mean is applying only the recommended settings means your Windows experience will still be stable. Applying the recommended and somewhat recommended settings means you might run into some trouble with some apps that you're trying to use. And then if you apply all settings, there's definitely some stuff that's just not going to be working in Windows anymore. But you can also create a system restore point before doing this. So if something breaks, you can just go back to the system restore point or you can also undo all of the changes and just go back to the factory settings. So just for the sake of this video, I'm just going to apply all the settings because this is a test machine.
And if something breaks, then we'll also see it in the video. But I'm just going to apply all of the settings. I'll create a system restore point just so I can go back.
And you should definitely create a system restore point if you're doing this on your computer. So as you can see, the settings have been applied both to the current user and the local machine. So now you can just exit out of O&O ShutUp 10 again.
Now, as you can see here, some of these settings may possibly revert after Windows updates. So you can just go ahead and run O&O ShutUp 10 again with the settings that you selected. And then you'll have all of those privacy settings applied again. You'll also see that I'm prompted to restart Windows to apply all of these changes. And we're going to be doing that at the end of this video. So for now, I'm just going to close this window.
But what I wanted to mention to you as well is you can use the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility as well after every Windows update, because Windows update has a way of re-enabling a lot of stuff again that you might not know about. So running these utilities again after each Windows update is always a good idea. But moving on with the utility here, you can see you also have some preferences here where you can easily enable or disable some settings in Windows. So, for example, if I click on the slider for the dark theme, it'll then enable the dark theme in Windows. So you'll see the start menu is dark, but the taskbar isn't. But after we restart Windows, the taskbar will be dark as well. So you have a lot of these preferences here that you can go through and enable or disable to your liking. For example, the Bing search in start menu.
I'm going to disable that because I don't want search results from Bing in the start menu. You can switch on the num lock on startup. You can show file extensions by default.
You also have these snap windows and assist fly outs and mouse acceleration, which I'll definitely disable. You can enable the taskbar search. You can enable widgets, task view button and sticky keys. Then lastly, you can also add and activate the ultimate performance plan. So if you go ahead and click on that and you come over to the config tab up here and you go to legacy windows panels and you click on power panel, it'll take you to this screen where you'll have the additional plans where you can then activate the ultimate performance plan on your computer, which can obviously give you better performance because it uses more power and then in turn provides ultimate performance on higher end PCs. But going back to the tweaks here, you can also create a WinUtil shortcut.
And I guess you can just select the save location. So for example, if I save it on the desktop, then you'll have a shortcut to the windows utility on your desktop. But going over to the config tab here, you can also install some of these features here like dot net framework, windows subsystem for Linux, windows sandbox. And then you can enable that legacy if it boot recovery screen that you used to have in Windows 7, for example.
Then you also have some fixes here like setting up auto login. You can reset windows update. You can reset the network. You can do a system corruption scan, which basically runs SFC scan now and DISM repair. So if you're having some issues on your computer, you can use this to try and fix that. You can reinstall WinGet and then you can remove the Adobe Creative Cloud from your computer. Then like I showed you earlier, you can get access to the legacy control panel
windows panels. So for example, the network connections, you can get to that easily from here. You can get to the user accounts screen easily from inside of the Chris Titus tech windows utility. Then if you go over to the updates tab here, this is where you can set settings for Windows update. So you have the default settings, which is what every normal install of Windows will have. Then you have the security recommended settings, which is basically the same way
that I have it set up in my answer files. But one thing I want to mention here is it says it'll delay feature updates by two years and it'll install security updates four days after release. But from the info that I got, you can only delay feature updates by one year. So I think this tool tip might be incorrect.
But anyway, this is where you can only apply security updates. So you can set those update settings here or you can disable all of the updates. And as you can see, it's not recommended because then you won't get security updates.
But some people just don't care about it and they'll just disable all of the updates. But for this video, I'm just going to select the security setting here. So if I click on that, the recommended update settings has been loaded. So I'm just going to click on OK.
And then lastly, MicroWin is another project inside of the Chris Titus tech Windows utility where you can basically upload an ISO file, a Windows 11 ISO file. You'll see all of the instructions here. You can basically remove these things from the Windows image. So you can remove the telemetry and tracking. You can add the ability to use local accounts.
You can remove the Wi-Fi requirement to finish the install. You have the ability to remove edge. You have the ability to remove defender.
You have the ability to remove teams. It also debloats apps, which is basically the same type of thing that my answer files do. But the process is just a bit different because you actually mount the ISO file and then the scripts run on the Windows image. Then the Windows image gets put back into the target ISO file. And then you can use that ISO file to install Windows.
So basically, you can create a custom ISO file with MicroWin it's basically the same way that tiny 11 builder works where you provide a Windows ISO file. Then all of the scripts run on the Windows image because it's mounted in DISM. Then it repacks that Windows image into the ISO file, which is usually also a lot smaller than the official Windows ISO file. And another great thing that Chris Titus and the developers have added here is you have the ability to add drivers to that Windows ISO file.
So for a lot of you working in the tech industry, this might be a good project to keep an eye on because it will also help you create custom Windows ISO files that you can use to prep a lot of different computers. Now, I might make a different video in the future looking specifically at MicroWin so you can keep an eye out on the channel for that. But this is all that I wanted to show you in the Chris Titus tech Windows utility. So I'm just going to exit out of it and then close the terminal as well. Once again, you can see I still have this Microsoft edge icon here that if I double click on it, it's not going to launch because it doesn't work anymore.
So I'm just going to delete it and then empty the recycle bin as well. And then I also still have this preset file that I showed you earlier. But let's go ahead and restart the computer. So once we get back, we can just have a look at some of the settings that we've changed. So after the restart, you can see that dark mode is completely enabled now. If I open the start menu, it's still populated with a lot of these apps.
So it doesn't get rid of everything like my answer file does. But you can also just go ahead and right click on these apps and click on uninstall, which will also uninstall it from the computer. And you can do the same thing with these apps here.
But I guess you don't want to go through all of the trouble going through these things one by one, uninstalling them from the computer. But if we have a look at the settings here. And we have a look at privacy and security. I'm interested to see what these settings look like. So these are all turned off. If we have a look at speech, it's turned off.
Typing personalization is turned off. Diagnostics and feedback. These are all turned off, which is good to see. The activity history should be turned off.
So I think a lot of these settings were set by O&O Shutup 10. So also using that in the Chris Titus tech windows utility is a good thing. And if you go to system and we have a look at the notifications, that is also disabled. And that's also good to see because that's one of the settings we selected.
The Windows update will also still work normally. And because I selected the recommended settings, which is only to install security updates, that's the only updates that will be installed. But like I said, after installing Windows updates, it's a good idea always just to run the Windows utility again and select those tweaks again and then run them on your system. Now, if you right click on the start button and you go to installed apps, you can actually uninstall these apps as well, like the calculator and the camera app, for example, as well as Cortana. So you have the option of uninstalling these apps in your computer without the Chris Titus windows utility. As you can see, Microsoft Edge and Edge update is still here, but it doesn't work.
Like I said, there will always be some remnants left on the system. But if you want to get rid of these other apps that you're not using, like Quick Assist, for example, you can also uninstall that. You can uninstall the sticky notes.
You have the option of uninstalling these apps inside of Windows as well. But that's the whole point of the answer files that I created and why I created that UnattendedWinstall GitHub repo, because I set up a lot of different computers and going through this process on each computer that you set up is very annoying and takes a lot of time. So the whole point of those unattended when still answer files is to automate a lot of the processes that I would normally have to do manually. And as you can see, the process count is also down compared to the stock Windows install that we saw earlier. And like I said, a lower process count might not necessarily make your computer faster. But why would I want a whole bunch of processes running in the background when they don't need to be running when I'm not using them? So that's my thought process behind it.
And like I said, this is one of the ways that you can use to basically get the same type of experience that I have in my UnattendedWinstall answer files on an existing Windows installation. And I know my standard file also removes the Microsoft store. And you can see that you can't uninstall it here, but you can actually uninstall it using the terminal or PowerShell as admin. And you can do that by just running this command here. If you run that, it's going to uninstall the Microsoft store from your system.
So this is only for the people who don't use it. But the rest of these apps, you can go ahead and right click on them and then just uninstall. Same with the Xbox app and all of these other apps you can install in the same way. But like I said, that's why I have the answer files. So this process is already automated for you. And you don't have to go through this if you're installing Windows on a bunch of different computers.
But I really like the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility. It helps you a lot on computers that already has a stable running Windows where people have already installed their apps and files and they can't necessarily afford to reinstall Windows and go through the entire setup process again because they have specific software that they use with the license keys and all of that then running the tweaks in the Windows utility is a very good choice for getting a more debloated experience in Windows. But with that being said, if you got any value out of this video please remember to give it a like and I'll talk to you guys soon.
2024-07-22