One “simple trick” and your next Windows install will be blissfully free of bloatware.

Basically, install Windows as you normally would, but when asked for Time and Currency format, select English (World) instead of your country.

Then let the installer do its thing. Eventually, you will see a window with an ice cream cone on the floor with the words “Something went wrong” and the error message “OOBEREGION.” This cryptic message means that the “out of box experience” (OOBE) didn’t launch because it didn’t know which region to launch.

Click Skip, though, and Windows will install just fine. You won’t be prompted to buy Microsoft 365, you won’t be prompted to pay for a OneDrive subscription, and your Start menu won’t be cluttered with apps.

    • nostradiel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Exactly. Every time before I found out about LTSB and these scripts my idle usage wasn’t lower than 3-3.6gb. I went through all those running processes and said myself that there has to be better way. (And boy how I was pissed off when I found out about the telemetry…) It led me to Linux, but sometimes I need to use Windows so I have dual-boot with LTSB.