getting close to the end... now removing telemetry components, tracing, logging, event files that apply to windows 8-10. won't need to bother with all those anti windows spy tools. turned out to take longer than I thought as i'm trying to do a proper job of it, combing through all the folders and registry, having two vm's open at the same time, one with w10 and one with w7 so i can compare the two and remove stuff here n there.
patience my friend i just finished reverting event logs back to w7 levels and all is working, even managed to kill some more files in the system folders, one is microsoft-windows-system-events.dll which is a new dll, not present in w7, in my w7 vm advapi32.dll is used by event logging (don't ask why as i don't know) removing microsoft-windows-system-events.dll and rebooting resulted in event logging not working anymore, so i went and changed all the winevt / eventlog keys to reference advapi32.dll, made a snapshot and rebooted, and bingo, event logging still works and microsoft-windows-system-events.dll was no longer in use by anything. spent most of day going through the event logging reg keys....was pleased when i got to the end as it did my head in staring at numbered keys for ages ( i took breaks) still did my head in. the amount of stuff i've removed for the entire thing is quite a bit now and windows is still working nicely, audio, web browsing, devices, bluetooth etc etc.. suppose i should mention the following are examples of removed features / components thus far; windows apps + all supporting files, reg keys, folders, services etc (entire appx platform) system apps + all supporting files, reg keys, folders, services etc windows runtime components, system files, background stuff, services, folders, reg keys etc proximity, perception, holographic, smart glass, xbox, gamebar, gamemode, game monitor, hello, modern printing, 3d printing, edge + all support files + rendering engine, modern defender + services + extra related packages, all hyper-v packages and leftovers, all optional features not present in windows 7 but prescent in windows 8-10, control center, composable shell, soft landing, virtual touchpad (all shell experiences), windows media streaming, game dvr, casting, 99% of the services new to 8-10 removed (a few remain that break windows if removed), all event logs / traces not present in w7 removed, cortana and every other component, people stuff, phone / cellular stuff and the list goes on... and it's all done so the only errors you will come across are ones in event viewer. if you try and access any of the modern shell stuff from the taskbar / right click desktop and so other shell buttons, you either get nothing come up or an openwith dialog saying you need ms-settings to open this with which is gone. still got to look up how to do a custom right click menu for the desktop, one for 3rd party display settings (resolution) scaling it already re-implemented by w8.1 display cpl and one for personalization (now using files from w8.1) old colour mixer opens but only seems change window boarder colours, old desktop wallpaper works as intended though! only things i couldn't restore were display resolution and taskbar settings, replacing taskbarcpl.dll still resulted in ms-settings is needed to open this....i think it's coded into explorer and shell32 and those files seem to get called (new explorer process opens) when i looked closed via process hacker. project folder size is now 42mb. still to-do; some more reg removals more file removals system32 / syswow64 time for another upgrade install to see if all works again, i keep doing upgrade reinstalls as sometimes it fails and i have to do a clean install and then do removals again but sometimes it's been file by file or reg key by key, time consuming yes, been doing this in stages, taking note of stuff making backups along the way etc...sounds boring but i'm enjoying it, slowly making a better, less bloated installation, i've also dabbled in ntlite and windreucer along the way but they just f'd things up. (shame they don't give list of files etc they remove as they kept breaking windows setup) some of stuff ntlite removed broke stuff, but when i removed it myself it didn't break what ntlite broke, that's why i don't like those programs. It's sooo much more satisfying to do it yourself. still only takes a few minutes to do the removals on clean install which is good, would be way too fiddly to remove all this stuff and make an iso, did think about that but decided this way is best as you can see what's being removed.
still working on it, done a few more in-place upgrades and they all went smoothly over the stripped down install. removed registry keys lists are pretty extensive now, everything is laid out in folder structure matching the folder structure of the registry to keep track on what is removed. finished removing all the services / drivers new to 8 & 10 (the ones i could remove that is) now doing extra file removals and reg trawl for leftovers matching keywords like cortana, edge, cloudexperience, xbox etc
^^ good news dude, and I desire all luck in your project sincerely still you are as me always searching, searching so someday reach he best results
I got sick of upgrading to each new final build only to discover more new crap i'll never use, I despise the metro stuff, the crappy basic apps, the store, the buggy games, truly a cancer on the os.
^ yep remember that inside OS still have a lot of things related mobile devices and so on if you see WDFirewall with advanced security you can see a lot of things that make your Internet slow so also remember to remove this "bad software" too; in another hand another day I discover right solution is simply PowerShell 6.0.1 along side with WMF 5.1 by Chocolatey and a lot more things by Powershell.org ok but unfortunately is not easy task works with them
I've removed pretty much all the tablet / mobile / phone stuff, i've just left the tablet stuff that was in w7 like windows mobility center and tabletpc feature. i've already noticed decreased memory usage on explorer and svchost processes super quick logon (was fast before)
finally replaced the two right click desktop menu items for display and personalization, now the display one opens the w8.1 scaling cpl and the personalization one opens the w8.1 theme cpl. also renamed wumt to wuapp and placed the 64 bit exe in system32 and the 32 bit one in syswow64 and added windows update back to cpl, opens wumt, also the windows update menu option in IE now works again as it requires wuapp, so clicking that just opens wumt. i did manage to partially restore the old wu but it didn't work properly, so wumt in cpl is best as it will be. i've added general tweaks and these will be in various .reg files (partially categorised) optional, they are what i use; disable all the taskbar clutter (cortana, people, taskview), disable lock screen cloud stuff, general explorer tweaks like nav pane off, small taskbar, unhide tray icons, no windows sounds, set cursors to none (classic), window border padding to lowest setting, autoplay off (all devices) etc.... still doing file and reg removals, will update you guys when it's share time.
Hello Dear friend, I read your initial proposal and a little of the comments made by our colleagues about the difficulties of their task, and I have to say that I enjoyed it very much. An arduous task is full of unforeseen and only yourself to say how many corrections and how much time and dedication to clean this system which in my opinion MS made under some request from agencies like the NSA, in order to spy on users, as the character "Finch" in the "Person of Interest" series in a conversation about social networks and said "Facebook" was created just so they had access to user information in real time. I hope you can clean this giant keyloger called Windows 10. Best regards, Sushi.
in regards to privacy, I've tried to remove every new trace / log, scheduled task and service new to windows 8 / 10 so all that should help reducing tracking / spying etc. removing all the new event logs and traces was quite time consuming as I had to compare a few hundred reg keys with ones on windows 7 to remove all the new ones, took best part of a day but i think it was worth it, less logging going on now. I get lots of errors in event viewer but it's mostly due to removed services etc. Main thing is event viewer still works so one can still view logs. i don't rely on event logs much as they usually really vague on what the error is, so i set them all to 1mb which is the minimum size, and have them overwrite so the least resources are used.
restored another two cpl's, performance information and tools, winsat tests works and displays the rating & system cpl from windows 8 showing rating. screen shot from virtual machine.
Could you post a seperate tutorial on how to restore the Experience Index for W8.1? That would be awesome!
probably best if you wait for the whole thing to be shared, bunch of reg keys need adding and several files just restored the windows 7 netplwiz, can now add users without immersive ui (the massive blue dialog that fills most of the screen on windows 8 and on windows 10 greys out the screen) no more disabled screen!
have added dxdiag from xp which works on 10, the graphics tests don't work though. just found that one more useful as it has the extra tabs for things like list of installed directx files. not sure why ms removed nearly everything useful from it. taskbar settings can't be restored as it's not a cpl file or separate dll, it gets called from shell32 which wants to load the settings app, i tried placing an older shell32 in the system folders but with a different name like shell33.dll but the control panel link for taskbar settings says module not found so given up on that, pretty much the same with resolution settings, doesn't seem to come from display.dll but from explorer / shell32 which wants to load the settings app.
done a bit of digging regarding display settings, opened up shell32.dll in HxD as it has a text search, looked for Microsoft.Display which is cpl entry in the registry for display settings (resolution), windows 8 shell32.dll came up with Microsoft.Display 9 times, but the windows 10 creators update shell32.dll was missing them all. this was the same for Microsoft.Taskbar which is the cpl entry for taskbar properties, missing stuff in shell32.dll
latest stuff i've added back; windows desktop gadgets (from windows 8 beta 8400, latest files i could find, including media center gadget from an older build, seems to be missing from other builds) windows mail (from windows 8.1 6.3.9600.17024, latest i could find + missing .dlls and registry stuff) windows journal (from ms download site) ms games (from 6.2.7989.0, latest files i could come up with, still needs slc.dll for games to work which is from the 3rd party games installer available on many sites) + reg stuff windows calendar (haven't figured out how to get the calendar button in windows mail to open it though...yet, works on it's own though) windows media player taskbar player from wmp11 x86/x64, just need to register the dll and it works still removing windows 10 files related to telemetry, apps, runtime, xbox etc taking a while but it'll be worth the wait.
changed some minor stuff, renamed some control panel items; Security and Maintenance > Action Center Windows Defender Firewall > Windows Firewall File Explorer Options > Folder Options removed storage spaces from control panel added inkball game to microsoft games folder (wasn't included with 7 but was a classic on previous windows) currently investigating if it's possible to add defender from 8.1 and remove update orchestrator without breaking the windows update service. replaced sihost.exe with one from build 10240 and this allowed me to delete windowmanagement.dll and the runtime reg keys without desktop glitches. (previously removing that dll caused glitches on screen resize, black bar at side and taskbar would get stuck part way up screen)