Home windows-as-a-nuisance: How I clear up a “clear set up” of Home windows 11 and Edge

Enlarge (credit score: Aurich Lawson | Getty Photographs)

I’ve written earlier than about my nostalgia for the Home windows XP- or Home windows 7-era “clear set up,” when you possibly can considerably enhance any given pre-made PC merely by taking an official direct-from-Microsoft Home windows set up disk and blowing away the manufacturing facility set up, ridding your self of 60-day antivirus trials, WildTangent video games, outdated drivers, and no matter different software program your PC maker threw on it to assist subsidize its value.

You possibly can nonetheless try this with Home windows 11—in actual fact, it is significantly simpler than it was in these ’00s variations of Home windows, with a number of official Microsoft-sanctioned methods to obtain and create an set up disk, one thing you used to wish to amass by yourself. However the ensuing Home windows set up is rather a lot much less “clear” than it was once, given the continuous creep of latest Microsoft apps and providers into increasingly components of the core Home windows expertise.

I regularly write about Home windows, Edge, and different Microsoft-adjacent applied sciences as a part of my day job, and I signal into my daily-use PCs with a Microsoft account, so my utilization patterns could also be atypical for a lot of Ars Technica readers. However for anybody who makes use of Home windows, Edge, or each, I assumed it is likely to be helpful to element what I am doing to scrub up a clear set up of Home windows, minimizing (if not completely eliminating) the variety of annoying notifications, Microsoft providers, and unasked-for apps that we’ve to take care of.