Make Windows less terrible. (Removing OneDrive from WIM)

[coffeeprogrammer]

So I am spending my Saturday creating a clean Windows 10 installer. I bought PowerIso because it seems to do a good job with its built in DISM tool. One thing that the user interface does not do is let me remove OneDrive, but I did figure it out by searching the internet. When you have a WIM image mounted you can load a registry hive and modify it, the screen shot below shows how to disable OneDrive at first Windows login. (just delete that OneDriveSetup)

One thing I don’t get is that on the computer I am doing this, the operating system is Windows 11 Professional that I bought as retail at best buy and in the screen shot below it shows the “Cloud Edition” thing, man I hate that.

One thing I am not sure of is how to edit group policy of a WIM image, maybe just applying reg files, I think group policy is really just applying registry changes under the hood.

When Steve talks about all the AI crap that is going to end up in Windows, I really hope they make it easily removable, then people like me who do not want it, can get rid of it.

 

[PHolder]

While it may be [temporarily] more annoying, all I do is use the "Add & Remove Programs" feature of Windows to remove OneDrive as soon as I log in for the first time. (Granted I have very limited experience with Windows 11, so I am mostly speaking from experience with Windows 10.) It used to be if you did this (in earlier versions of Windows 10) that it would come back during the next upgrade... but this seems to have eventually stopped happening... but that may also be tied to the settings I set in Group Policy.

I haven't tried this personally, but there are ISOs known as Tiny10 and Tiny11 as well as this script to build you own: https://github.com/ntdevlabs/tiny11builder

 

[coffeeprogrammer]

While it may be [temporarily] more annoying, all I do is use the "Add & Remove Programs" feature of Windows to remove OneDrive as soon as I log in for the first time. (Granted I have very limited experience with Windows 11, so I am mostly speaking from experience with Windows 10.) It used to be if you did this (in earlier versions of Windows 10) that it would come back during the next upgrade... but this seems to have eventually stopped happening... but that may also be tied to the settings I set in Group Policy.

I haven't tried this personally, but there are ISOs known as Tiny10 and Tiny11 as well as this script to build you own: https://github.com/ntdevlabs/tiny11builde

I am not sure if this will keep over updates, but I will find out, I am poking around in the registry, I am wondering if this one might be a good one to change
I am wondering if Microsoft documents these keys or if end users just have to figure it out.

 

[coffeeprogrammer]

While it may be [temporarily] more annoying, all I do is use the "Add & Remove Programs" feature of Windows to remove OneDrive as soon as I log in for the first time. (Granted I have very limited experience with Windows 11, so I am mostly speaking from experience with Windows 10.) It used to be if you did this (in earlier versions of Windows 10) that it would come back during the next upgrade... but this seems to have eventually stopped happening... but that may also be tied to the settings I set in Group Policy.

I haven't tried this personally, but there are ISOs known as Tiny10 and Tiny11 as well as this script to build you own: https://github.com/ntdevlabs/tiny11builder

O, that is a cool link, I use stuff like that on GitHub to figure out what works and does not. It is a good source of ideas, I don't normally just run it however.

 

[Tazz]

I have not used this as I currently have Windows just the way I want it but would have no problems with it. A little utility from ChrisTitusTech - https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil.

Here's a youtube of how it's used.