Taming Windows 11?

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I’m expecting a new laptop in 2 weeks loaded with Windows 11 pro, so in this interim, I’ve been researching various measures, thru 3rd party ‘apps’ (but I still think ‘programs’ & ‘directories’ (( not folders)) to rein in this monster.

Please help me on how to get rid of the expected Ads and promotions that I have heard so much about. With this how-to that I’m short on, I believe I have a good start: Ready to image /  re-image to revert back  as I experiment and have a library of articles on the means to tame the user-experience ….its the MS ads/promotions that are, in my way of thinking, superfluous.

Thanks in advance

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I have a W11 Home laptop and haven’t seen any ads or promotions.
All I did was removed the tiles from the start menu – things like news, weather etc
Use WuMgr to disable Windows Update checks and then I do them manually with WuMgr.

cheers, Paul

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I just set up (and reinstalled… and re-reinstalled…) Windows 11 on my Acer in my .sig, and it was loaded with ads. It’s possible that my definition of ads is broader than yours.

The start menu was full of links to things like Spotify, Netflix, and so on. Those are ads. When I looked at the list of preinstalled apps, it had even more such things. Ads. The Windows 365 and Office trials are ads. The Xbox apps and tray icon are ads. The OneDrive and OneNote bits are ads. The Teams icon and app are ads.

Fortunately, most of that can be easily removed. Each time after Windows was finished installing, I’d go to the apps listing under the settings and remove the things I didn’t want. Most of it is uninstallable, and so far the bits that are not can be turned off.

The ads in the start menu can easily be removed too. Right-click each item and select the option to remove it. The same applies to shortcuts on the desktop you don’t want, or pinned items on the taskbar, or unwanted tray icons for services you have never expressed interest in using.

I also installed Winaero Tweaker, and it has a section to disable a lot of the built in ads before you even see them. One such setting, “Storage provider notifications,” doesn’t sound like it should be an ad, but a while ago MS used the storage provider notifications to broadcast ads for OneDrive. Legitimate storage provider notifications would be things like the provider being inaccessible, the storage being full, stuff like that… not a special deal on storage for a limited time only. That’s an ad.

WinAero Tweaker also removed the ads that appear on the lockscreen. In fact, I just turn that off… it’s superfluous and adds an extra step to logging in. It boots right to the password input field rather than the lock screen that has to be dismissed with a keypress or click (which is not forwarded to the password field, so if you just start typing the password, it will be short one character).

I also installed O&O ShutUp10, which also works for 11, to block the tendency for Windows to excitedly tell Microsoft what it has learned about you and your PC. Some of those things are ad-related.

I didn’t keep using Windows 11 once I got it set up and working (finally), so I don’t know what kinds of things might come along after the initial wave of ads are removed. I did see it one time download an unwanted app and asked me to “check it out.” It was gone less than a minute later. I would hope that the changes from WinAero Tweaker and ShutUp10 would prevent more such things in the future, but I can’t say for sure.

Be sure to make backups at various steps along the way, with whatever backup program you choose.  I had Windows 11 break for no apparent reason (an update, perhaps?) and it was a lot more of a faff to get it working than I would have expected.

My go-to suggestion for Windows backup programs was Macrium Reflect free, but they nixed that, and IMO the paid version is too expensive. There are plenty more free options, but I have not kept up with them since I stopped using Windows as a daily OS, so I don’t know what’s good anymore.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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joltar, geekdom

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Free backup apps are aplenty.
MiniTool ShadowMaker
Paragon Backup
Aomei Backupper

cheers, Paul

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Thanks to y’all.

The expected business-class Lenovo laptop likely will not have any bloatware and I neglected to distinguish this and the MS / MSN originated stuff. I now see references to ‘widgets’ as well.  So it looks like the user just removes-from-sight various non-essentials – tiles and the like.

The device is last years model.  Come to think of it, I may not have  22H2 (Win 11 64 Pro), so I’ll deal with that if needed.

All in all, I’ve good references to O&O Shut up, Win Aero Tweaker, Stardock offerings, DoNotSpy11, ExplorerPatcher.

Decades ago I invested in TeraBytesUnlimited Image for Windows and that has been a life saver for staying out of trouble.

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O Boogie wrote:

Please help me on how to get rid of the expected Ads and promotions that I have heard so much about.

You might try O&O Shutup10 (as suggested by @ascaris), a software portable that inhibits some undesired Microsoft behavior.
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

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Hi O Boogie:

You might find some helpful suggestions in Susan Bradley’s Windows 11 Setup Tips for Consumers at https://www.askwoody.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Windows-11-Setup-Tips-for-Consumers.pdf.

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