It seems like a fair assessment to state that the many ‘AI’ features that Microsoft added to Windows 11 are at least somewhat controversial. Unsurprisingly, this has led many to wonder about disabling or outright removing these features, with [zoicware]’s ‘Remove Windows AI’ project on GitHub trying to automate this process as much as reasonably possible.
All you need to use it is your Windows 11-afflicted system running at least 25H2 and the PowerShell script. The script is naturally run with Administrator privileges as it has to do some manipulating of the Windows Registry and prevent Windows Update from undoing many of the changes. There is also a GUI for those who prefer to just flick a few switches in a UI instead of running console commands.
Among the things that can be disabled automatically are the disabling of Copilot, Recall, AI Actions, and other integrations in applications like Edge, Paint, etc. The reinstallation of removed packages is inhibited by a custom package. For the ‘features’ that cannot be disabled automatically, there is a list of where to toggle those to ‘off’.
Naturally, since Windows 11 is a moving target, it can be rough to keep a script like this up to date, but it seems to be a good start at least for anyone who finds themselves stuck on Windows 11 with no love for Microsoft’s ‘AI’ adventures. For the other features, there are also Winaero Tweaker and Open-Shell, with the latter in particular bringing back the much more usable Windows 2000-style start menu, free of ads and other nonsense.
I like the way you think – it’s very wishful.
When Microsoft wants to hard-push extremely unpopular features (which is nearly all of them) they like to tie it into the functionality of every single part of the OS so it’s impossible to disable without gimping the whole system. And then if you somehow manage to finesse it, there’s about 43 sneaky hidden processes which will silently undo your work when you aren’t looking. They practically invented “asshole marketing.”
There is still the small light at the end of the tunnel, where professional and industrial customers really don’t like the insecurity, unpredictability, and spying features like an AI reading your every key press and sending it back to the cloud.
Major industrial players are starting to opt out of using Windows as the front end of industrial PLCs for user interfaces and monitoring etc. and offering FreeBSD and the like instead, because the constant update hell undoing configurations, re-introducing spyware that they already thought they opted out of, and simply breaking custom stuff is really getting on their nerves.
They still offer it as an option, but the writing is on the wall, and if MS wants to stay in the game they have to keep the option to opt out of all the bullshit somehow. Otherwise they’re digging their own grave.
“FreeBSD and the like instead,” meaning 99% Linux. FTFY.
It’s interesting to see how much abuse Windows users took from Microsoft, before they finally started saying enough.
I guess the final nail in the coffin was blatant data stealing by AI, that nobody asked for.
Another excellent bloatware removal: https://archlinux.org/
Call me troll if you want, the way IT is going requires radical changes. Linux isn’t exactly radical, but MS and Apple took a path that only braindead can follow.
We all have an excuse to run windows somewhere, and it’s usually a bad excuse (that has with productivity to do).
Thus this kind of tools, an attempt at staying afloat while all technically nonsense drag you at the bottom.
I used https://linuxmint.com/download.php which proved 100% effective at removing all the obnoxious features of Windows 10 and 11
Recommending Arch to a Windows user is like recommending a .44 Magnum revolver as a starter gun to a 70 year old woman. Yes some may handle it, but most wont and you scare them away for the rest of their lifes.
LOL, let me guess : “This is America !?!”
Why would you give a gun to a 70 years old lady in the first place ? I guess pour carefully picked metaphore proves my point: windows is all about weponizing. AI is a weapon against the oriental threat (or whatever else like the recession), tracking is a weapon against ist own users – serves only the monopoly, closed source kernel is a weapon against hackers,…
Computer is also a way to access the information, like a book but with additional features,…and a lot of bullshit today.
Linux ist still not ideal, but that’s the best option one can get in 2025. I migrate entire administrations, companies, my family and friends to it since 10 years. So far, all I have to complain about is compatibility of edgy software. But users: the learn to love it, fast.
As a general feedback: it doesn’t run on Linux? Then it’s probably not worth it. Wanna run Pro Engineer, a strange CNC driver, Fusion 360, do it offline!
The joke flew over your head. It’s recoil. The recoil of Arch (an expert distro) is way too strong. You recommend newbies Ubuntu. You show them different desktop environments, install their printer (big challenge). Have I mentioned proprietary laptop wifi drivers?
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2501:_Average_Familiarity
If you recommend people Ubuntu, you shove them into an ecosystem that pretends to serve their needs but ultimately doesn’t, and that’s just as much a disappointment and a cautionary tale.
Linux just isn’t ready for the masses, Arch or Ubuntu. Don’t try to put makeup on a pig and call it Madonna.
LOL, let me guess; you’re European?
We have ladies here in their 70’s and even 80’s that own and actively use firearms. No normal person here in the US wets their panties over it. Why do you?
Good. High bar of entry for computing, it’s a miracle in the hands of the few adept and a dehumanizing nightmarish monstrosity when it is democratized. People unfortunately have a cognitive bias that prevents them from ever noticing this very obvious phenomenon.
The issue with Linux and other libre UNIX-like OS is they’re so extremist. You can either:
- make them “computing for the illiterate” experience and it results in something Android-like where nothing can go wrong really, but at the same time it’s so dumbed down, even a toddler can do stuff.
- turn them into PURE PRODUCTIVITY machines, free of any bullshit pushed on by Microsoft or Apple – but if it breaks, you’ll be really glad you read those textbooks by Tanenbaum and Nemeth.
Unlike Windows, there’s simply no middle-ground for people who are not idiots, but are not computer scientists / software developers / hackers either. For example, on Windows my dad can understand how to pirate and then install drivers and software for that CAN adapter for his used car, so that he can program in a new keyfob. If something doesn’t work, it’s very likely he’ll be able to communicate the issue and get support on a forum (they’re not dead yet). Tell him to screw around with
lsusb,dmesg,fstabor some othersystemdbullshit and all I can say is “gl & hf”.Microsoft can be evil, but they certainly understood how to make computers accessible for average lusers while also keeping them open enough for geeks who know things but have not yet become full-on artistic nerds.
Also, doing something as trivial as unplugging a plug-and-play USB device usually doesn’t cause NT kernel to crash and burn like it did with Linux kernel for about a year before it was properly fixed in 2023 (not 2003 but 2023) https://www.phoronix.com/news/Logitech-USB-Unplug-Linux-Crash
From your source and the bug reports linked, it looks to me like the bugs related to the disconnects were fixed in 6-12 weeks from when they were reported, and not about a year. Seems like a pretty good turnaround to me for a free operating system.
Yes they ‘understood’ as in past tense, they decided to go a new route, a route many of us can not follow anymore.
And doing so sort of takes away the choice for many people, where before you had a group who said ‘linux is nice, but I like certain windows software and I’m used to windows’ you now are in a new situation where for many windows just isn’t tenable anymore.
And now MS says the whole concept of the OS for users is going away and it will become a box of AI agents and you just tell it what you want and it does it for you… which is NOT what a great many of us want at all. Nor is there evidence it’s even feasible from observing AI agents so far.
Perhaps it’s good though, it makes the choice even easier.
they are only embedding this into the os so that normal people can fund their ai r&d while they desperately try to make ai turn a profit rather than just be a financial shell game.
It’s always been like this. Imagine the difference in experience between technicians and lay folk as owning a car became less optional across much of the ‘first world’ in the 1960s. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s ‘no big deal’, in fact we can see the disaster in parallel, as non-technicians spend more money on their cars for a less safe and reliable service, and car ownership becomes inextricably linked to the poverty that defines the bottom edge of the middle class.
Have you ever seen those dementia simulator videos where the camera pans around and the whole layout of the grocery store is different? That’s what I imagine my parents’ experience is using Windows 11. Neither of them really know how to use computers, but can remember a sequence of actions needed to do what they want. So any time Microsoft sneakily changes something, I get to hear about it, as the family computer person. It is a frustrating experience.
There are now two Control Panels, two right click menus, and items like “copy” and “paste” replaced with strange hieroglyphs. Nothing my parents even do on the computer is any different than the things they were doing 20 years ago, but for some reason somebody thinks they have to relearn those skills every couple years.
This. This is my biggest beef with post-7 Windows.
windows has been renaming and moving things since i started using windows (95 was my entry point). moving the goal posts is how they can justify all their certification programs. after windows 7 i guess is where all the old guard had retired and been replaced with a bunch of young whipper snappers raised with smart phones in their pocket. rather than understanding all the nuances of the windows ui, instead they try to reinvent the wheel in their own image.
i hate seeing phone iconography on my computers. i wouldn’t so much mind the new phone style control panel if they had bothered to make it as useful as the real control panel. you dont need simple interfaces when you have a keyboard and mouse, and plenty of screen space. phones simplify and hide functionality because of a lack of these things. it makes sense on a phone. on a computer is just a waste of decades of institutionalized muscle memory. let phones be phones and computers be computers.
I saw a documentary about congenitally blind people and how they’re attempting to treat them. One fellow had been completely blind since childhood up to adulthood, and they did some surgery or gene therapy or whatever to restore decent vision, which they had never had before.
The person told the interviewer that it was a nice thing to see, but they really didn’t understand any of it. They had already learned the names of colors, light and dark, and learned that this big blob of “green” means it’s grass, or that “gray” blob was the asphalt road, but there was no intuition behind it whatsoever. They did not see in the way we feel connected to the environment: they felt these strange sensations and could successfully identify some of them, react to some of them, but in general it was simply a bunch of junk coming in. Completely meaningless. Things like, how far away something is – no idea. What does this shape mean? Nothing.
That’s more like what “dementia” is. It’s not like the grocery store has changed while you weren’t watching, it’s not even a grocery store anymore. If it was still a grocery store, you could quickly re-orient yourself by looking for common cues, but it isn’t. It’s not different, it no longer makes sense.
I mean that’s just a false dichotomy right there. I’ve been using Zorin OS for a year now, and it hits that middle ground perfectly. I just worked out of the box, but I’ve also done some customizations and things that I wanted through the terminal. It’s been entirely chill to use, so much so that I’m going to help my 76 year old dad install it. The idea that Linux is only either Arch ricing or braindead simple like iOS is just wrong.
I think the extremist OS is the one which resembles an evil little sleepless gremlin that lives in the corner of your room and constantly attempts to sabotage and subvert your intentions every single moment you’re not actively watching it, gaslighting you and re-arranging the furniture while you’re away. And desperately trying to force Edge browser and Bing on you.
Windows 95 was one of the biggest tragedies in human history, I think.
It allowed uneducated users with their unwashed paws to click on random icons until something worked.
A far cry from the previous DOS users who had learned to type and had learned how directory structures work.
Windows 95 had allowed cavemen to operate a computer, so to say.
All in all that’s as responsible as allowing a crowd who neither had been issued a driver’s license nor ever been attained driving school, to drive a car.
Microsoft really has done a disservice to humanity here, I think.
Windows 95 should have come with a computer learning/tutorial program,
like the previous Windows 3.1 did feature in limited form (that mouse tutorial in help section of Program Manager).
In an ideal world, I think, computer users should have been required to have a computer driving license when buying a new computer (in the 90s).
Like it is required to have a driver’s license when buying/registering a new car.
Something like the former ECDL license. To prove they can operate a PC correctly and won’t do cause harm to others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Certification_of_Digital_Literacy
Imagine how much this would have helped against mental degeneration of society.
People would have needed to earn their privilege to use a PC first.
It would have prevented so many headaches at the workplace caused by non-PC savy co-workers.
I’ll have to respectfully disagree there. Arch is its own bloat, they just redirect it. Instead of getting cruft up front in the way of preinstalled garbage, you’re getting it on the backend with strict adherence to systemd’s “best practices”. People called it FUD for ages, but all you need to do is look at the openssh/xz/liblzma incident to understand just how massive an attack surface it is. While everyone was scrambling to fix now-backdoored sshd’s, it was business as usual in OpenRC/runit/S6 land. Arch is what you get when you want to feel 1337, but don’t have the patience to do it the right way. That said, run what you want…
With regard to bad excuses, I have no choice. I have to have SOLIDWORKS/Fusion and a few other tools for my CAD/CAM workflows and sim, but I can’t abide Windows on bare metal. Thus, QEMU/KVM to the rescue. If you do it right, you can get near bare metal performance (or better, in some high-SMT cases like Threadripper/EPYC, thanks to Windows’ godawful management/NUMA-awareness) and never have to worry about Windows getting in the way again.
Personally I think arch is overrated, I did try it but you don’t seem to have much control over package versions in that everything seems to be cutting edge so it’s prone to breakage.
My current favourite at the moment is gentoo but with binary package settings enabled, that way the majority of stuff is installed as binary packages with any outliers just being source compiled (which isn’t as bad as it used to be with modern hardware).
By default you have the stable channel but can custom unmask unstable packages individually.
I’ve made several friends really happy by revitalizing their old laptops for their children to do homework. Windows had become sluggish and unusable. Swapped the hard disk with a 10€ SSD and installed an older version of Linux Mint. They immediately were comfortable and familiar with the desktop and the apps. The laptops responded quickly and were given a new life which otherwise, like most people, would have trashed it and bought another Windows laptop.
Exactly. I did the same with 3 kids recently. Computer too slow for Windows, but excellent with Linux Mint. They even installed Steam on it themselves and are playing games. New life for old machines, and less stuff in the landfill. No big brother spyware, no AI data stealing.
I would pay good money for a Windows that is simply an OS and just does that well. something that works with drivers, it lets the programs and games run and lets me modify its behavior as i need them.
Instead of this bloated billboard filled with non-optional adware of which most of it doesn’t actually serve any purpose beyond making a line on some random chart to go up as part of some self-fulfilling prophecy to sell to shareholders.
If you have access to the Microsoft volume License, you can try Windows 11 LTSC edition with no bloatware.
or use a gray market key.
I don’t run Windows on bare metal at all, but my (highly tuned, QEMU/KVM) runs Windows Server 2025 with the desktop experience… because it’s essentially Windows 11 without all the jank. I’ve had ZERO problems getting normal stuff working on it, from the nvidia drivers for the passthrough RTXes, to SOLIDWORKS, Fusion, PrusaSlicer and so on. I need it for work, but I refuse to run Windows on bare metal. I haven’t found anything that complained about it being Server 2025 yet… even Epic and Steam work flawlessly.
If you have the means (or if you want to sail the high seas), I recommend it over just about anything Windows-ey. You get “mainline” without all the cruft. Only “serious” change you need is changing from “background tasks” in system properties.
i am of the opinion that an os should just be an os and not a suite of applications. nothing more or less than what is needed to configure the operating system.
Peter Girnus 🦅
@gothburz
Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.
$30 per seat per month.
$1.4 million annually.
I called it “digital transformation.”
The board loved that phrase.
They approved it in eleven minutes.
No one asked what it would actually do.
Including me.
I told everyone it would “10x productivity.”
That’s not a real number.
But it sounds like one.
HR asked how we’d measure the 10x.
I said we’d “leverage analytics dashboards.”
They stopped asking.
Three months later I checked the usage reports.
47 people had opened it.
12 had used it more than once.
One of them was me.
I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.
It took 45 seconds.
Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.
But I called it a “pilot success.”
Success means the pilot didn’t visibly fail.
The CFO asked about ROI.
I showed him a graph.
The graph went up and to the right.
It measured “AI enablement.”
I made that metric up.
He nodded approvingly.
We’re “AI-enabled” now.
I don’t know what that means.
But it’s in our investor deck.
A senior developer asked why we didn’t use Claude or ChatGPT.
I said we needed “enterprise-grade security.”
He asked what that meant.
I said “compliance.”
He asked which compliance.
I said “all of them.”
He looked skeptical.
I scheduled him for a “career development conversation.”
He stopped asking questions.
Microsoft sent a case study team.
They wanted to feature us as a success story.
I told them we “saved 40,000 hours.”
I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.
They didn’t verify it.
They never do.
Now we’re on Microsoft’s website.
“Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot.”
The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.
He got 3,000 likes.
He’s never used Copilot.
None of the executives have.
We have an exemption.
“Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction.”
I wrote that policy.
The licenses renew next month.
I’m requesting an expansion.
5,000 more seats.
We haven’t used the first 4,000.
But this time we’ll “drive adoption.”
Adoption means mandatory training.
Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.
But completion will be tracked.
Completion is a metric.
Metrics go in dashboards.
Dashboards go in board presentations.
Board presentations get me promoted.
I’ll be SVP by Q3.
I still don’t know what Copilot does.
But I know what it’s for.
It’s for showing we’re “investing in AI.”
Investment means spending.
Spending means commitment.
Commitment means we’re serious about the future.
The future is whatever I say it is.
As long as the graph goes up and to the right.
Original twit: https://x.com/gothburz/status/1999124665801880032
I have copilot by default enabled on all M$ products we use. Insofar it is hit and miss, often times I have to disable it so that it would stop screwing up what I am typing (code). It has its own whimsical ideas what I mean when I type, so it is of rather limited use. I do appreciate auto-lookup for the rarely used commands, but beyond that it is a bother.
I am pretty sure all of my so-called “managers” use it to auto-write emails, I can spot standard phrases, but beyond that I am not even sure managers are needed to start with – if copilot can write emails, than what is the role of the managers?
I am also pretty sure AI will figure this out and re-route critical tasks around managers’ emails. Because that’s how critical tasks usually work, without useless people bothering actual workers doing actual work that needs to be done.
Job security-shmecurity, AI has different ideas. For this part alone I am glad it is around.
Man they REALLY need to re-instate that character limit and algo-punish people who do that weird double spacing beat poetry thing
Nah. At least they knew what they’re doing.
It’s far more annoying when it’s done by people who think they need to hit enter before they reach the border of the text box, and they’re doing it with an ancient 1024×768 monitor so they end up doing it every five words. It’s the difference between pretending to be stupid for a joke, and the real deal – the humor is replaced with annoyance and vicarious shame.
I removed windows from my PC some 15 years ago.
And there are some annoyances. For example when I want to buy an industrial (1.5kW or so) servo motor with motor drive, it nearly impossible to find Linux software to adjust the control loops.
But apart from such specialized things. Linux Mint works pretty smoothly for the last 8+ years while windoze may creep back in it’s own hole and rot over there.
Now all we need is an AI that recognizes when an AI feature is added to Windows. It would: recognize the new feature. Make a plan to remove the feature. Organize the drone strikes. Run the script to remove the new feature.
This might be satirical, but I honestly believe there is a real future in antagonistic counter-AI. It probably will be a huge business someday soon. Enormous amounts of global compute are going to be dedicated to ruthless AI agents which exist simply to thwart and slow down and frustrate other malicious AI agents, the latter trying to scam and attack the owners of the former at such rates and volume that there’s no way even a group of very good human agents could fight it.
more bandaides. the amount of stuff i need to install just to make windows usable is absurd.
im kind of curious about windows 11 ltsc as a possible solution.
There used to be a good package of scripts for de-shittifying Windows 10. It was simply called “DESTROY WINDOWS 10.” I appreciated that name. It’s way way out of date now unfortunately.
I would upload my W10 script, but it not universal. There are so many W10 editions and versions. The script works smooth only for one version.
Maybe it’s just me, but…
Microsoft owns practically the whole tech stack. Of course Windows will come with additional software features – go use Linux if you don’t like it.
Go stand up LLM-powered tools on Linux, for that matter.
But shying away from AI is just unwise. That cat isn’t going back into the bag. Get good at using it, it can be useful. Think of it more as an amplifier for human thought, than as any sort of free agent.
Hallucinations are often a symptom of poor prompting, context management, or unreasonable expectations.
If you don’t use AI, others will, and you’ll fall behind.
Is this meant to be a joke? Because it’s basically a copy/paste Clanker-lover spiel.
… still know how to cut, bend, TIG weld and paint a steel patch to fix a corroded fender on your Renault Kangoo so it looks good and keeps passing yearly inspections without complaints.
… still know how to service and maintain your MF 6140 tractor and its implements.
… still know how to correctly cultivate your patch of land where you grow wheat, rye, sunflowers and potatoes so that it remains fertile and gives good yields every year.
… still know how to keep your house in a working order, like for example replacing an old tap/faucet which started to leak.
… still know how to diagnose and fix your bicycle so you don’t get screwed by workshops demanding absurd prices for shoddy work.
And so on…
All the stuff LLMs can’t do and won’t be able to do no matter how much energy another big datacenter burns through. All the stuff that’s becoming increasingly expensive if you can’t DIY as there’s less young people entering workforce each year; and the remaining ones prefer wasting their youth studying bullshit humanities, only to end up as Outlook-Excel debt slaves, doing meaningless corporate work for some rich assholes who are always high on coke.
I like coding, embedded systems, microcontrollers and other IT work as it pays well, but I was lucky and wise enough not to become dependent on it to maintain my living. Sure, it might not be as glamorous as your average Instagram influencer, but it’s also free from ongoing madness and positive feedback loop of debt, therapy and antidepressants.
“But shying away from AI is just unwise. That cat isn’t going back into the bag. Get good at using it, it can be useful. Think of it more as an amplifier for human thought, than as any sort of free agent.”
I don’t think so. Windows 7 did exactly what I needed it to do. Without AI, ads, bloatware, and other
system hogging resources. It just did what was necessary without all the stuff no one wants, no one asked for, and no one needs. As long as the computer does what I want and need, I don’t need anything else.