Debloated Windows 11 Installation Guide for Astrophotography Computers

Debloated Windows 11 Installation Guide for Astrophotography Computers

A fresh Windows 11 install comes with a ton of crap software bundled with it that slows your computer down significantly. Windows also aggressively automatically updates, almost as if it enjoys restarting your computer right in the middle of an imaging session. With the free tools in this guide, you can install a debloated version of Windows that is optimized for your dedicated astrophotography PC. With a debloated Windows installation, you get:

  • No Microsoft account linked to your Windows sign-in
  • No automatic Windows updates
  • Long filepaths enabled
  • Remote desktop enabled
  • No silent download and installation of "suggested apps" (ads) that Microsoft tries to push onto your computer
  • No Bing search results when you search in the Start Menu
  • No double-layered right-click menu in File Explorer
  • Disables Edge from running in the background all the time
  • Removes Windows 11's unnecessary hardware requirements for TPM, Secure Boot, etc.
  • Remove these pre-installed programs: 3D Viewer, Clipchamp, Copilot, Family, Game Assist, Mail and Calendar, Mixed Reality, News, Office 365, OneNote, People, Recall, Skype, Solitare, Steps Recorder, Teams, To Do, Wallet, Windows Fax and Scan, WordPad, Phone Link, Bing Search, Camera, Cortana, Feedback Hub, Internet Explorer, Maps, Movies & TV, OneDrive, OneSync, Outlook for Windows, Paint 3D, Speech, Sticky Notes, Tips, Voice Recorder, Weather, Xbox Apps. 
    • You can optionally keep any of these when configuring your install. And if you wind up needing one later, they can always be downloaded after installation.

Note: This guide is if you want to perform a fresh installation of Windows. This involves completely erasing your disk. Back up anything on your disk that you might want to keep (NINA profiles, PHD2 guider settings, etc). There is unfortunately no way to debloat Windows as cleanly without doing a fresh reinstall.

Prerequisites:

  1. You must be comfortable installing Windows onto a computer, including knowing how to access the boot menu to boot from USB and how to find & install network drivers for your Astro PC when you don't yet have a Wi-Fi connection. 
  2. Download a Windows 11 ISO directly from Microsoft. 
    1. Scroll down to "Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices"
    2. Select "Windows 11 (multi-edition ISO for x64 devices)" from the dropdown
    3. Click "Confirm"
    4. Select your language, click the "Confirm" button below this dropdown
    5. Then click "64-bit Download". This should download a .iso file that is ~7 GB in size. 
  3. Download and install the free version of Anyburn
  4. Download and install a Windows x64 version of Rufus. You can download the "Portable" version if you want -- it doesn't require installation, it just runs self-contained. But either the "Portable" or "Standard" version will work.

Rufus and Anyburn (used in this guide to modify your Windows 11 ISO and burn it to a USB drive) are only available for Windows. There are Linux and macOS equivalents (I believe Xorriso can do everything needed here), but I have never used them -- you'll have to figure that part out. I'm sure ChatGPT can help with that; it's not terribly complex.

Autounattend.xml Generator

When Windows is installing, it will look for an "autounattend.xml" file for instructions on how it should install itself. There are various tools to generate a customized autounattend.xml to modify your Windows installation. I recommend you use Schneegans's autounattend.xml generator. 

If you'd like, you can configure the autounattend.xml entirely yourself so you fully understand all of the changes that are being made; it's not very difficult if you're somewhat computer-savvy. But if you want, I have created a preset template that has most of the settings I recommend. You can start from my template by opening this link, though there are a few things you'll still need to change:

  1. Region and language settings: Select the Windows display language that corresponds to the language you selected when you downloaded your Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft. Likewise, select the appropriate keyboard layout. 
  2. Computer name: I've opted to name the computer "AstroPC". You can change this if you'd like.
  3. Partitioning and Formatting: Most of you will want to let windows wipe, partition, and format disk 0 automatically. But if you have multiple disks, consider selecting "Partition the disk interactively during Windows Setup"
  4. User Accounts: I've created one user account with a placeholder password that you should change to something you will remember. You may also change the account name to something other than "User" as well.
    1. Note: Windows Remote Desktop will not work if you opt to leave the password field blank.
  5. Remove Bloatware: I've configured this to be pretty aggressive, leaving behind only items that most people would wind up actually using on their dedicated astrophotography PC. Give this a quick skim so you know what will be removed. You can always re-install these later on if you wind up needing them.

Once you're happy with your configuration, click "Download .xml file" at the bottom of the page. Make sure it is named "autounattend.xml" -- if it has a different name, change it to this. 

Put the Autounattend.xml File Into Your Windows ISO

  1. Open Anyburn (which you installed previously).
  2. Click "Edit image file" (right side, towards the bottom).
  3. Select your Windows 11 .iso file that you downloaded previously.
  4. You should see the following screen. Click "Add" at the top of the window.
  5. Select the autounattend.xml file from your Downloads folder. You should see that it's been added to the file tree underneath "autorun.inf".
  6. Click "Next", then click "Create Now". Click "Yes" when it asks if you want to overwrite the Windows 11 .iso.
  7. Once it says "Creating image file finished successfully", click Exit.

Rufus

Rufus will let you burn the modified .iso file onto a USB drive. It must be a flash drive with at least 8 GB of space. The contents of the flash drive will be completely erased in the process. 

  1. Select your USB drive under the "Device" dropdown. Make sure it is the correct drive and that you're not going to accidentally overwrite an external SSD or something. 
  2. Select your ISO image using the "SELECT" button to the right of the dropdown. Rufus will detect that this is a Windows ISO and configure some of the other settings for you automatically.
  3. Click "START"
  4. Rufus will ask if you want it to make some modifications to your installation of Windows. Deselect all of these, as you've already customized your windows installation using the autounattend.xml that you generated previously. Leaving any of these selected will overwrite your autounattend.xml with Rufus's own. Click "OK".
  5. Confirm that you are OK with the contents of your flash drive being deleted
  6. Once the progress bar finishes, you can close Rufus.

Windows Install & Setup

Install Windows as you normally would. It will ask for a few inputs during the installation, but otherwise it should be automatic. Once Windows is installed, it will reboot and automatically log in to your user account. In the background will be several post-installation tasks running to finish your windows configuration. You might notice that Windows suddenly switches to dark mode or your wallpaper changes to your preconfigured wallpaper color -- this is normal. 

Then, assuming you need Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, find the network drivers for your specific computer from the manufacturer's site and install those. Don't trust drivers from third-party sites.

Lastly, you'll want to run Windows Update manually. It is disabled by default due to your autounattend.xml configuration, but now is a good time to let Windows grab all the updates that weren't included in the .iso file you downloaded. To run Windows Update manually, navigate to the Windows Update area in Windows settings, click "Resume updates", then reboot when it's finished updating. Do this process a few times (Windows sometimes needs multiple update > reboot > update > reboot cycles to collect all of the pending updates). Your computer will go back to not allowing automatic updates after you reboot.

From here, you should be good to set up your astrophotography software as normal.

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