Platform differences with Windows 10

[MW0SEC]

I am a bit puzzled. I have a Windows 10 installation disk which I previously used to install W10 on various tower PCs. It is my normal practice to immediately remove the unwanted twaddle, such as updates, telemetry, edge & cortana which was never a problem and easily achieved with the towers.

Recently I was given a rather nice HP Pavilion laptop and re-installed a clean W10 system. It works very well, but I have discovered that while I can shut up the uninvited stuff, it is most difficult to remove it permanently. The usual well-known hacks through gpedit, registry or powershell do not remove the offending bits completely and the binaries are found not to have been loaded in to the usual places.

My question is: Is there some cunning means of W10 being set up in varying modes dependent upon the platform in use - specifically laptops?

[Brunel]

Try using the "free" version of REVO UNINSTALLER

[Radio Fixer]

Why remove updates ? Some maybe valid and useful.
Why remove other things you mention ? as disk space is no longer a problem so just dont use them.
Why is there so much dislike of Edge? I use it and it is problem free.

Gary

[Mike Watterson]

Edge is spyware. As is Chrome which it is based on.

[MW0SEC]

Regarding updates - once something works as required, why add unnecessary changes which often have side effects? Anyway, W10 updates are no more. Regarding Edge, the thing is still consuming some memory and a pointless background process. Thanks for the REVO tip, will investigate. I'd still like to know if anyone can explain the apparent platform-specific differences though.

[Radio Fixer]

Tried Chrome and it wanted to take over my life so that went. Edge gives me no feeling of bring spied upon and any of them can log the sites you visit. In my case, as an old man, I have nothing to hide so no worries. Amazon must have loads of data on me, from all the Kindle books I read, but again apart from them for marketing, of little interest to anybody else.

Gary

[BusyBee]

I wonder if it is information in the bios as Windows does get it's system information somewhere, even though you are never asked to enter it.


Tracy

[BusyBee]

I am suspicious of Edge as users are steadily being pushed into using it. On my recent video calls to my son, using Facebook, it is now required to use the Facebook app (freely available from Microsoft Store). This uses Edge.

As for unwanted apps.  There are a number which I will never use installed. Maybe not an issue in itself but I just did a quick check with task manager and I easily found three which are not easily removed. These are obviously slowing current operation. I don't want 'Phone Link' or 'Microsoft Pay' and 'News and Interests' is a horrible time wasting distraction.

No, I can see things are Ok for many casual users but, over time, these additions probably do clog things up.

Tracy

[ppppenguin]

Unless you really need Windows why not switch to Linux? I use Linux Mint Cinnamon edition and am very happy to be rid of Windows. 

If you stay with Windows the least intrusive mainstream browser is Firefox.

[MW0SEC]

I wonder if it is information in the bios as Windows does get it's system information somewhere, even though you are never asked to enter it.


Tracy

I wondered the same, but an inspection of the BIOS revealed nothing obvious, apart from the fact that it is one of the delightfully simple original types, rather than the UEFI variety. I did eventually manage to banish Edge by the rather crude method of renaming it's parent directory to".old" after zapping the processes.

Regarding Linux, I do use it for my mail server and databases, but quite a lot of software I use (particularly music creation stuff) is not available in a Linux port. Having spent a good deal of my working life on System 5 Unix, I'd be delighted if more vendors would take the trouble to support Linux.