Windows Is there a way to stop windows 11 downloading unwanted apps?

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6pack

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I just bought a Nokia laptop which came with windows 11. It came without any bloatware or crap when i first ran windows 11. Just the usual file explorer etc where there. I just connected it to the net to download some small apps like cpuz, crystaldiskinfo, mpv and Firefox. After installing these apps, i saw windows 11 had downloaded Instagram, Facebook, Adobe Lightroom or something similar, Twitter, SoundCloud, and some other shit. Wtf?
Is there a way to stop this stupid os from downloading anything it wants?
 
To avoid all this I have installed portableapps.com platform. It has portable versions of all the popular utilities and apps like chrome, firefox , 7-zip, vlc-player etc. You can selectively choose and install the required applications as you wish.
 
Too complicated for my liking. Decided to take a disk image and then wipe off windows 11. Too much headache with registry and what not just to stop it from downloading unwanted apps. Will install MX Linux or Linux Mint or PopOs.
 
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6pack said:
Too complicated for my liking. Decided to take a disk image and then wipe off windows 11. Too much headache with registry and what not just to stop it from downloading unwanted apps. Will install MX Linux or Linux Mint or PopOs.
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Try Win10. No such issues.
Just like phones, seems brand OS comes with these apps per-loaded and just need a connectivity to actual get them downloaded.
 
6pack said:
Too complicated for my liking. Decided to take a disk image and then wipe off windows 11. Too much headache with registry and what not just to stop it from downloading unwanted apps. Will install MX Linux or Linux Mint or PopOs.
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if you go totally out of windows it does not mean much. What is the complication you feel in this approach? It is a one time activity .
 
krsamy said:
if you go totally out of windows it does not mean much. What is the complication you feel in this approach? It is a one time activity .
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Na, don't want to mess with registry and also there's no guarantee that MS will overwrite the settings in another update. Just don't want to deal with windows 11. I've been using Linux Mint from 5+ years and it has never crashed even once. I can't switch back to windows now. My daily routine is stuck with linux. I end up searching for how to do stuff and waste time in windows.
 
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6pack said:
Na, don't want to mess with registry and also there's no guarantee that MS will overwrite the settings in another update. Just don't want to deal with windows 11. I've been using Linux Mint from 5+ years and it has never crashed even once. I can't switch back to windows now. My daily routine is stuck with linux. I end up searching for how to do stuff and waste time in windows.
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Yes it makes sense if one is comfortable with Linux. But for others who primarily use windows and not interested in trying linux, protableapps.com is a great way to use popular programs without messing with individual installations of programs.
 
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I was typing linux terminal commands in powershell and thinking why it was not working and got confused and trying windows terminal commands in linux live cd which obviously didn't work and got even more confused. LoL.
 
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This behavior is present in Win10 too to an extent. Most users here would already have Win10 installed for years now and may not know this as it was introduced a couple feature builds before around v1903 maybe... but if you clean install latest Win10 21H2 now you would see a similar behavior.
For this reason I've modified the install images of Win10/11 I have with some registry tweaks already to remove some of the pre-installed apps and disabled this very behavior of "Cloud Content" and "WindowsConsumerFeatures" as Microsoft likes to call it and made by own custom ISO which I use to deploy on any new machine.

I hate using consumer editions of Windows. For a bit more control I'm using Education edition.
 
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ibose said:
Alternatively use the LTSC edition
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Used that since the start, I'm fully aware of it. It doesn't have Store and Xbox app. I need those for game pass.
Also there are some VisualC++ runtime APPX libraries (for UWP apps) missing from the latest LTSC 2021 SKU which means the ISO images are kinda broken. They cause high CPU usage randomly. I can manually download those and sideload to fix the issue but the store and Xbox app issue remains. Also with LTSC you don't get feature upgrades which newer games and even Nvidia drivers do need as a minimum OS version check.

BTW even those apps can be sideloaded but it's not a full-proof solution. Hence, debloating and tweaking business editions is the way to go for me.
 
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enthusiast29 said:
For this reason I've modified the install images of Win10/11 I have with some registry tweaks already to remove some of the pre-installed apps and disabled this very behavior of "Cloud Content" and "WindowsConsumerFeatures" as Microsoft likes to call it and made by own custom ISO which I use to deploy on any new machine.
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How did you make this custom ISO, is it safe to use 3rd party closed software’s, backdoor attacks are possible
 
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sonicc said:
How did you make this custom ISO, is it safe to use 3rd party closed software’s, backdoor attacks are possible
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Windows ADK tools
I've never used closed source software to modify windows install images.

You can also try using MSMG toolkit. It's not closed source and is essentially a large batch script.
 
ibose said:
For someone not into gaming and downloading apps from Store, LTSC is the best possible option. Apparently, the store is sorta deactivated and can be easily activated and you can download the Xbox app as well. I personally have not tried this since the system where I use it, I don't need store etc.
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I've done this, currently running some latest version of windows 10 LTSC that I got from mydigitallife forums (Really confusing forum, hard to find links at times). Did this just to play spiderman and forza horizon on my pc because my windows 10 ltsc version was too old as well lol. Ended up not really playing the game anyways.
 
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