0:04 Today we're setting up Windows 11. Now,
0:05 I saw a recent Linus Tech Tips video,
0:07 which I'm going to refer to here, and
0:08 I'll actually leave a link to Linus'
0:11 video. Uh, the method he used was just
0:14 kind of a tried andrue older method, a
0:16 little slower than what I'm going to
0:18 show today. Uh, quite a bit slower
0:19 compared to what we're going to be
0:22 doing. Uh he did have a fantastic tip at
0:24 the end of that video which talked about
0:27 auto unattended uh XML files and how it
0:29 would automatically bypass all the stuff
0:32 during the install. That is essentially
0:35 what we're doing and uh I'm picking all
0:37 that information for you. So this is
0:39 going to be very easy. First off,
0:42 download Windows 11. Now in his video he
0:43 talks about using the installation
0:45 assistant. Don't do that. About a year
0:48 ago, Microsoft introduced ISO direct
0:50 downloads. Just select the edition you
0:53 want. Click download now. Select your
0:56 language and then just click download.
0:58 This is the easiest way to download ISOs
1:01 directly from microsoft.com. Here's the
1:03 link right there at the top of the page.
1:05 Download your ISO and we're off and
1:07 going. Always get the official Microsoft
1:10 ISO and then you can launch into my
1:12 utility. Now the Windows utility has
1:14 been around for over gez going almost
1:17 six years now. Actually 5 years and some
1:19 change. We have almost 8 million
1:23 downloads and over 200 contributors. Uh
1:24 I'm constantly working in this every
1:27 single week. Uh latest update was just
1:29 uh this past week and I'm about to
1:31 release another update. Usually I look
1:33 at this at a bare minimum once a week
1:36 and update it at least usually once a
1:40 month. So a lot of time and effort has
1:42 put in this both me and many
1:44 contributors over the years. And I'm
1:47 going to address the first first comment
1:49 I know I'm going to hear on this thing
1:53 and that is just use Linux. And a lot of
1:55 uh my audience uses Linux and a lot of
1:59 it uses Windows or some both. Um and
2:00 it's kind of funny because on the
2:02 contributors note a lot of the
2:03 contributors that have come and gone
2:06 over the years, well frankly they just
2:07 stopped using Windows and they do move
2:10 to Linux eventually. Uh and I've noticed
2:12 that kind of happen like OG Merc. I
2:14 haven't seen too many PRs from him. He
2:16 still pops on Windows every once in a
2:18 while, but I know he's primarily a Linux
2:21 user now. And uh I was talking to Martin
2:23 as well. He's done a lot of poll
2:26 requests and now he has moved to Linux
2:29 as well and he still does PRs and he did
2:31 a lot of updates this past month. But
2:33 it's kind of funny to see the es and
2:35 flows over the years and and it's good
2:37 to see that back and forth. Know that
2:39 Linux is an option, but it's not a Linux
2:40 video. So, I just thought I'd make a
2:43 little footnote here for you. So, first
2:45 uh launch it. You can either launch it
2:47 directly using the PowerShell method
2:49 where you just copy this command and
2:52 paste that into a terminal or PowerShell
2:54 with admin and then it will launch the
2:57 utility. Or if you want, you can donate
2:59 directly and buy the $10. There's a
3:01 little link probably down below you
3:02 could use as well if you want an
3:05 executable. Both methods give you the
3:07 same thing. And this version is free.
3:09 Just thought I'd mention it. This does
3:11 help support the project though. So now
3:13 that we launch it, I want you to come
3:15 over to Microwin. And in Microwin,
3:17 there's a couple different options.
3:20 There's this download OCSD
3:24 img.exe from the ctt GitHub repo. Man,
3:25 that's a
3:28 mouthful. Essentially, this is using
3:31 Windows ADK, which is a deployment kit
3:34 from Microsoft. That's this guy right
3:36 here. Now, you can download and install
3:38 this directly from Microsoft. The only
3:41 reason I download that one executable
3:43 from my repo is I've copied it from the
3:46 ADK and it's only like a couple hundred
3:49 kilobytes where this entire ADK is I
3:52 think about 2 gigs. So it might save you
3:54 some time, but if it does fail, you can
3:57 always just manually install the recent
3:59 Windows ADK should something change in
4:01 the future. Everything I'm showing you
4:03 is open source and directly from
4:06 Microsoft. So we'll uncheck that and you
4:09 can say get automatically the ISO and
4:10 hit download. It'll try and download it
4:12 directly from Microsoft. But since we
4:14 already have our own ISO, we'll go ahead
4:17 and select that. Now upon loading the
4:20 ISO in your prompt that you used to
4:22 launch or it launched directly from the
4:24 executable in this case, uh you'll see
4:26 all this information in the background.
4:28 You know when it's done because you'll
4:30 be presented with this screen down on
4:32 the bottom. This whole section right
4:35 here is not filled in automatically.
4:37 This is actually blanked out until you
4:39 load the ISO. So, it does take some time
4:41 to mount and load this. I just wanted to
4:44 show all the manual methods first. Now,
4:46 a couple things here. Inject drivers.
4:47 This is if you know how to manually load
4:49 drivers. Most people watching this video
4:51 will not, so I recommend unchecking
4:54 this. This is the instructions for using
4:56 the download or the injection of the
4:59 drivers right here. just for advanced
5:01 users. For today though, we're just
5:02 going to import drivers for the current
5:04 system. And we're going to also include
5:06 Vert IO drivers. So, we can use this in
5:10 a virtual machine or if we just directly
5:13 reinstall this through a USB drive like
5:15 you're probably going to do. I would
5:16 just say, hey, if it's using the same
5:19 system, just just use the drivers here.
5:21 And that way, when you reinstall, you
5:22 don't have to go and hunt and find
5:24 drivers from the manufacturers's website
5:27 or install custom tools. I'll show that
5:28 a little bit, but for the most part,
5:30 just click this and we're off and
5:32 running. Uh, now the custom user
5:34 settings. I'm going to just put my
5:36 username as subscribe and blank the
5:39 password. I want my system to autolog in
5:42 and just throw me on a desktop. Now, in
5:44 Linus' video, he did talk about the out
5:47 of-box experience or OB. Uh, we're going
5:48 to be skipping all of that. Uh, we're
5:51 going to just be doing all auto
5:54 unattended XML. Now, as I've said at the
5:57 very beginning, thousands of installs,
6:01 all I did with my autoended is pick sane
6:04 defaults that Microsoft should choose
6:05 when installing the system instead of
6:07 all the bloat and garbage that they toss
6:11 on a modern system. I kind of rewind the
6:13 clock and how Windows 7 was when you
6:15 installed it directly from Microsoft,
6:18 that's how I made Windows 11. No system
6:20 settings are removed. Everything is
6:23 stock. So that means Microsoft Store is
6:25 there, Defender's there, all the stuff
6:28 is there just at sane defaults. It's not
6:29 going to be sitting there prompting you
6:31 all the time. So let's start the
6:34 process. We're going to name this micro
6:38 win. And then I'm going to date this 65
6:41 uh 2025. And this is going to go ahead
6:44 and make that ISO. This will take some
6:46 time. Usually on a good system, this
6:48 will take about 10 to 15 minutes to
6:51 build out. So, let's give it a whirl.
6:52 Right now, in the lower right here, you
6:56 can see it is 1:47 my time, and we'll
6:58 see how long this takes on my system.
7:00 Now, during this process, you'll notice
7:02 certain things being removed from the
7:05 system. Old school internet explorer
7:08 which is still used a little bit uh
7:11 throughout uh certain um things like
7:16 co-pilot also are removed by default and
7:18 uh one drive and many other features
7:20 that kind of just bloat up a new system
7:22 are also being removed. Uh many of the
7:25 provisional downloads, alarms, and most
7:28 Microsoft Store apps are also removed
7:29 during this section. Meaning you have to
7:32 kind of pick everything as it is.
7:34 Instead of having all these junk apps,
7:36 as I'd call them, because most people do
7:39 not use them, uh I would recommend just
7:41 picking your own, which we'll go into.
7:43 Now, in Linus' video, he used Nightight,
7:45 which is kind of an older tool I used
7:48 about 10 15 years ago. Uh these days I
7:52 use Windgit uh with my toolbox which uh
7:54 on reboot you'll see the cool thing
7:56 about my utility is it runs once and
7:58 then after you close it it's not
8:01 installed on your system meaning every
8:02 time you run it it has to basically go
8:04 out to the internet see if there's an
8:07 update and then launch and then that's
8:09 it. It just runs in current memory and
8:12 as soon as you close it it's gone. And
8:14 that's how I think most programs in
8:16 Windows should work, especially programs
8:19 that go and get drivers and fix things
8:21 up. So, uh, we're about 5 minutes in, a
8:24 little over 5 minutes now, and, uh, it
8:26 should be close to finishing up. You
8:29 should notice that this method does work
8:31 a little faster than Intite and many
8:35 other ISO tools out there. We did a lot
8:37 with actually multi-threading and and
8:39 getting and kind of pushing what's
8:42 available in these Windows tools. Uh
8:44 this does use dism and many other
8:46 built-in Microsoft tools with your
8:49 system. So we're not using any external
8:51 uh executables. Everything is directly
8:53 from Microsoft. And that's kind of how I
8:56 like to keep it as these are the tools
8:58 we use in business. Also, another
9:00 notable thing that happens, there are
9:03 certain registry tweaks we do. In Linus'
9:07 video, he touched on disabling TPM and
9:10 other uh older bypasses. All that's done
9:12 by default. And frankly, if you didn't
9:15 and weren't using my utility, Rufus has
9:18 those built into them as well. Since my
9:20 tool is doing all of those on stock
9:22 defaults, because why wouldn't you?
9:24 There's kind of no point in them even
9:26 existing. Uh that's just this the stock
9:28 setting. So no matter what system you're
9:30 installing, you don't ever have to worry
9:33 about customizing TPM or removing any of
9:35 these uh artificial limits from like a
9:37 processor or anything like that. All
9:39 that's done by default. So you can use
9:42 this ISO on any
9:45 system. All right, there we go. just a
9:48 little hair over um 10 minutes for the
9:50 whole creation of ISO, but that includes
9:52 all our customization, all our drivers,
9:54 all the modifications you could possibly
9:57 want on a stock image of Windows
9:59 directly for Microsoft. So, now that we
10:02 have the ISO located right here on our
10:04 desktop, we're going to open up Rufus
10:07 and write this to our USB drive. Now, to
10:09 download Rufus, you can get it directly
10:10 from their website,
10:13 rufus.ie, or you can click install from
10:15 the Windows utility. Either way is fine.
10:18 Uh, go ahead and launch this utility and
10:21 then select your USB drive. Select your
10:24 ISO from the desktop. It'll say standard Windows
10:25 Windows
10:28 installation. Do not put Windows to go.
10:30 That would be very bad. And then go
10:32 through. All right, we're good. We're
10:34 good. Uh, one thing, it might prompt you
10:37 for any Windows 11 setup customizations
10:40 like removing TPM or any of those. We
10:41 already took care of all that because we
10:43 have our own autoattended on this ISO.
10:45 So we don't need to do any of that. So
10:49 we'll just click start. So uncheck all
10:50 of that. Remove requirement for
10:54 Microsoft account. Remove TPM. Uh create
10:55 all this. This is essentially an
10:58 unattended which microw comes with
11:00 directly. So we would just hit okay and
11:02 then write it to the disk and then we're
11:05 going to reboot our system and start the install
11:07 install
11:08 process. All
11:11 right. Now in the actual installation,
11:13 you're going to notice a couple things.
11:14 is you're going to have less options
11:16 here. So, we're just going to go next.
11:19 Next, agree to delete everything. Next,
11:21 we're going to say don't have product
11:23 key and then select your unallocated
11:26 space or delete any partitions that are
11:27 there. Just know you will erase
11:29 everything on the drive. So, be careful
11:30 with this. And we're just going to hit
11:33 next and install. Now, the beauty of
11:36 this is it will go out and install
11:39 everything. So, you shouldn't have to
11:41 have any more things to the desktop from
11:43 this point forward. Let's see. All
11:45 right, here comes the first reboot. That
11:47 took about two and a half minutes for
11:51 the full install on my system. Now, I do
11:53 anticipate this going through. Now,
11:56 normally in in uh stock directly from
11:57 Microsoft, this is where it kind of
11:59 starts bloating the system up. And
12:01 really, what it's doing here is
12:02 installing the drivers for the system
12:04 that we already preloaded. We're going
12:07 to get one reboot here usually, and then
12:10 it'll sit there and kind of set up the
12:12 desktop for you. And here we go. Roughly
12:15 about five minutes start to finish from
12:17 when we hit next. Uh that last one and
12:20 we got the blue screen. Uh we'll let
12:22 this finish getting ready. I'll show you
12:31 like. All right. And this is our
12:34 desktop. You notice not too much is
12:36 going on here. We have one quick little
12:39 install we do with microw at the end.
12:44 And this is pretty plain Jane. You still
12:45 have the store, you still have Defender,
12:46 you still have all your regular
12:50 security, but just a base local account.
12:51 Everything else can be set up and
12:54 customized from here. First thing I
12:55 always do on a fresh install is come
12:57 into device manager. Look for any
13:00 missing devices. As you see, since we
13:02 imported all our drivers, they're all
13:04 right here. So, this is looking good.
13:06 The next thing I always do on any new
13:09 operating system install is go back into
13:12 settings, go down to Windows update.
13:14 From Windows update, hit check for
13:17 updates just to verify that you got all
13:19 your updates in here. This is another
13:22 thing I like to do uh on any system
13:24 because before you start bloating it up
13:26 or anything like that, you do that. And
13:28 as you see, hey, yeah, there's still
13:30 some updates here even though we just
13:33 downloaded this ISO. It's just the
13:35 nature of Windows. All right, now that
13:37 we have all our drivers are installed,
13:39 we double checked that we did all our
13:42 updates. Now, let's install some stuff
13:44 on there. As we see, we got a really
13:47 good starting point for our system.
13:49 Instead of night, we're just going to
13:51 launch into the toolbox. Since I don't
13:52 have the executable or anything here,
13:53 we're just going to do it through
13:55 PowerShell. And the beauty of doing it
13:57 this method as well is Windgit will
14:00 manage the the program. So you can autod
14:01 do like a mass upgrade of all the
14:02 programs that gets installed this
14:04 method. It's just a better way of
14:06 installing and managing your packages in
14:09 Windows. So let's say you pick your
14:10 browsers, pick your communication.
14:12 You're going to grab Git, go ahead and
14:15 grab it. uh document viewers if you want
14:17 to grab any of these. You can see it's
14:19 very expansive and we're always adding
14:22 and changing things in here as uh things
14:25 get uh added to Windgit, but pretty much
14:27 everything is here that you need and
14:30 it's a vast selection. Now, one thing I
14:32 will note, let's say you're having
14:34 problems finding certain drivers for
14:35 your system, which happens all the time,
14:39 I do recommend Snappy uh driver utility.
14:42 So, if you look here, we go to s snappy
14:44 driver installer or you can just type
14:47 snappy and grab it here. Let's clear
14:51 that out. So, now we have brave get and
14:54 snappy driver install utility all
14:56 selected. And then we're just going to
14:59 say install and upgrade. And it'll go
15:01 through and install these three
15:03 programs. You want to see kind of a
15:05 selection of hey, what else is doing in
15:07 the background? Should go through and
15:10 install and update these. And once uh
15:11 wind gets updated, which it'll do
15:13 automatically, it'll go ahead and start
15:16 installing our applications. And there's
15:18 all our installs. So, automatically
15:21 installed all of those guys. So, next
15:22 thing and the last thing I want to leave
15:25 you with here is just a couple standard
15:27 things. So, I usually just say standard.
15:29 Look through here if there's anything I
15:32 like to change on top of it. Um, if you
15:34 do debloat edge, that's for people that
15:37 don't use edge typically. If you do use
15:39 Edge, you probably don't want to debloat
15:42 it because uh it will limit uh some of
15:43 the changes because there's a lot of
15:46 telemetry built into Edge, meaning they
15:47 phone home to Microsoft all the time. If
15:50 you're okay with that, that's fine, but
15:52 don't just click all these and get
15:56 crazy. Other big things I like to do is
15:58 I'm not a big fan of notification trays,
16:01 but it will disable the calendar, so
16:04 don't just go crazy. Uh, I always set
16:07 classic right-click menu. So, I really
16:09 enjoy the old right-click menu from
16:12 Windows 10 and before. So, I always put
16:14 that. If I'm dual booting Linux, I
16:17 always enable UTC since Microsoft's a
16:19 little bit crazy. A lot of times they
16:21 default to local time, which is held on
16:23 the computer itself instead of a
16:26 standard time like UTC and every other
16:29 operating system in the world uses UTC
16:32 except for Windows.
16:33 And then the rest of this I kind of
16:35 leave. Um, one drive doesn't get
16:36 installed with micro, so you don't need
16:38 to remove it if you have Razer devices
16:40 and you don't want to use Razer stuff.
16:43 Again, the big thing here is this guy
16:46 right here on your tray. The idea here
16:49 is don't have it full of crap. That's
16:51 the biggest thing we do. Like every
16:53 probably once or or twice every every
16:57 couple years, I'm reloading Windows. And
16:58 you don't want to bloat this up. You
17:00 don't want to install a bunch of
17:01 manufacturer applications that run all
17:03 the time. You don't want the ASUS army
17:07 crepe crap or MSI's uh giant driver
17:11 suite. All that stuff costs you because
17:13 it's constantly running. It's constantly
17:15 phoning home and it's constantly
17:18 checking for updates that probably will
17:21 never get anything and it's not worth
17:24 doing. So that's why I say this is what
17:26 you want to do. We'll hit run tweaks.
17:29 And for this one, I like to kind of come
17:31 to the command line here just to kind of
17:33 look exactly what's doing. It'll say
17:36 each step of the tweaks process. And
17:37 this just kind of cleans things up.
17:39 After like a big install, you might want
17:41 to rerun tweaks. Any kind of feature
17:42 update to Windows, you're going to re
17:44 want to rerun tweaks. But after this,
17:46 we're going to close out a utility.
17:47 We're not going to need it again.
17:50 Probably for 6 months to a year, unless
17:52 Microsoft drops a big update on us
17:54 tomorrow. But usually they don't they
17:56 save those big updates for maybe once or
17:59 twice every six months. Updates. A lot
18:01 of times I just grab security updates.
18:04 If I'm on pro, this is pro systems only.
18:06 This just kind of limits some of those
18:07 updates so it's not going to sit there
18:11 and constantly churn out updates. Uh it
18:14 just does more sane defaults. So we're
18:17 pretty much done here with this set of
18:19 the tweaks. Uh, other things I like to
18:22 do on the actual taskbar, I kind of
18:26 clean all these up. Just unpin, unpin,
18:27 search menu. I don't really like having
18:30 that. So, I go to taskbar settings,
18:33 search box, I hide, and then I kind of
18:35 like the old school on the left for my
18:38 tray icons. So, under task behavior, I
18:42 change from center to left. And h pretty
18:45 much everything else is stock. So, at
18:47 the end of the day, most systems I
18:49 configure look something like this.
18:52 Minimal start menu just with some of the
18:55 stuff I install, not loaded down with a
18:57 bunch of garbage. And from a performance
19:01 perspective, uh, usually about 120, 130
19:03 processes. Yeah. So, that's about par
19:06 for the course. This is not debloating.
19:08 It's not an extreme anything. It's just,
19:10 hey, Microsoft, this is what Windows
19:12 should look like. I shouldn't have to do
19:14 what I just
19:18 did. But again, Microsoft's lost lost
19:23 the plot. Or maybe maybe ah let's not
19:26 just do this or use Linux. I'm good with
19:29 either, but uh hopefully this helps you
19:32 out uh and and gives you a good spot so
19:34 you can have a good experience with
19:36 Windows because the stock experience is
19:38 just absolute garbage. And with that,
19:39 let me know what I forgot down in the
19:41 comments. And I'll see you in the next one.
