I've never exactly enjoyed the usual consumer Windows experience. I tred to use Debian with KDE Plasma and Arch with Hyprland on my main desktop machine, but my engineering workflows are essentially entirely incompatible with Linux. This is a step-by-step writeup on how to make windows feel professional, complete, bloat-free, and most importantly, intentional.
I've organized the importance of each step as follows:
🟥 - Critical. Skipping these steps will ruin your experience and may make following further steps impossible.
🟧 - Highly advised. If you don't want to do these, you're free to, but I'll consider you weird.
🟩 - Very useful; You are however absolutely free to skip these if you want, I don't care.
This version of Windows is a stripped-down, stable version built for professional, "set-and-forget" hardware (like ATMs or medical devices). It lacks bloatware and forced feature updates.
- Use a search engine to look for
windows-11-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2024 site:archive.org
Using local login/password authorization is preferred. This will help avoid ugly [Name] [Surname] file paths being created.
Caution
If you're struggling to find a way to use non-email login, look for a mysteriously named domain join button.
This will go through all of the steps described in the Manual Installation Steps section
iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aweeri/Aweerified-Clean-Windows/main/full_setup.bat -outfile $env:TEMP\aweerified.bat; & $env:TEMP\aweerified.batPress Win+R and enter ms-settings:windowsupdate, then check and confirm any available updates.
Enjoy your Windows!
This version of Windows is a stripped-down, stable version built for professional, "set-and-forget" hardware (like ATMs or medical devices). It lacks bloatware and forced feature updates.
- Use a search engine to look for
windows-11-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2024 site:archive.org
Using local login/password authorization is preferred. This will help avoid ugly [Name] [Surname] file paths being created.
Caution
If you're struggling to find a way to use non-email login, look for a mysteriously named domain join button.
Press Win+R and enter ms-settings:windowsupdate, then check and confirm any available updates.
- Press the Win key, look up Powershell and open it with administrative privileges.
- In Powershell, paste in the following:
irm https://get.activated.win | iexthen press enter. - In the window that pops up select
[1] HWIDand follow the instructions on screen.
This one is rather easy, simply follow the instructions from https://github.com/minihub/LTSC-Add-MicrosoftStore/
Caution
The automated script uses an alternative, more reliable method that does not require external scripts.
Download and run core_apps.bat; it will download and update the following:
| Apps | Extensions |
|---|---|
| Windows Calculator | AV1 Video Extension |
| Windows Camera | HEIF Image Extensions |
| Windows Alarms & Clock | Raw Image Extension |
| Windows Notepad | VP9 Video Extensions |
| Microsoft Photos | Web Media Extensions |
| Snipping Tool | Webp Image Extensions |
| Windows Terminal |
Search can be initiated from the Start Menu itself therefore the search bar serves zero purpose besides taking up space. We're going to hide it. We're also going to left-align the taskbar and get rid of useless buttons.
- Download taskbar.reg.
- Run the downloaded file and confirm when prompted.
Windows 11 introduced awful "pretty-ified" context menus that require more clicks than what's really needed. We're going to revert to how they normally work while also removing the useless delay.
- Download basics.reg.
- Run the downloaded file and confirm when prompted.
| Software | Description | Installation |
|---|---|---|
| NanaZIP | It's a 7-Zip derivative intended for the modern Windows experience. | Run winget install M2Team.NanaZip --source winget in the Command Prompt. |
| WinEnter | This tiny utility hooks your keyboard to open CMD or Powershell whenever you press Win+Enter. It sits quietly in the system tray. |
Download winenter.exe from the repository, press Win + R, type shell:startup, and move the executable into that folder. |
| FFpresets | An ULTRA-lightweight video conversion tool built directly into your Windows right-click context menu. It lets you run ffmpeg commands that you most often need without having to mess with filenames or arguments. | Run the installation script included in the zip. |
| Wcap | A small and efficient screen recording utility. | Download wcap.exe to a directory of choice (e.g., C:\Tools), press Win+R and type shell:startup, then throw a shortcut to wcap.exe into the startup directory. |
Enjoy your Windows!