Maximize Your Windows 11 Experience with Chris Titus TCH Utility

> - This video covers Windows 11 installation, features, and optimization using various utilities.
> - Chris Titus's TCH Windows utility is highlighted as a must-know tool for Windows users.
> - Instructions are provided for utilizing commands to run TCH Windows utility.
> - Tips are given for customizing Windows installations, improving performance, and managing updates.
> - Other tools like O&O ShutUp10, Windows debloating scripts, and system cleaning methods are discussed.

In this video, as you can probably tell, I've got a stock Windows 11 installation. It still has the widgets, it's got the normal start menu, it's got the Microsoft store still installed, it's got co-pilot here on the taskbar, and OneDrive is also trying to start up automatically. So basically, this is just a stock Windows 11 Pro 23 H2 version that I've got running here.

Now in this video, I want to show you how you can use Chris Titus's TCH Windows utility to make Windows better, and this is a utility that every Windows user must know about.

If you do a Google search for the Chris Titus Windows utility, you'll normally get these two pages as the best results. One of them takes you to his website, and the other one takes you to the GitHub page. It doesn't really matter if you use this website or the GitHub page, but what you're looking for are these launch commands here. 

So we're just going to launch the stable branch by copying this command here, and then you want to right-click on your start button and then either open the terminal or PowerShell as admin. If you have user account control enabled, you'll see the screen, then you can just click on yes, and that's going to open the terminal or PowerShell. You can then press control and V, which will paste that command, and then you can press enter, and it's going to start launching the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility on your computer.

Now, one misconception is that people think this is a program that gets installed onto your computer. It doesn't get installed onto your computer; it's hosted on the internet at ChrisTitus.com and it just runs through PowerShell, so nothing actually gets downloaded to your computer.

Now it's launched on my computer here, and if for some reason it doesn't seem to fit on your screen, you can always just double-click anywhere on this empty white space here, and it'll make it full screen. Also, if you double-click on it again, it'll just minimize that window.

If you have some issues with the display, you can just double-click on it to make it full screen. At the time of this recording, if we go to the settings here and we look at the about section, you can see the version number and the Windows utility that gets a lot of regular updates. So I can almost guarantee you that in a year or two from now the utility might look completely different than what you're seeing in this video right now, but most probably it will still work exactly the same.

For starters, you've got a few different tabs up here, and I'll go through each of them with you in this video. But starting with the install tab here, you can select a bunch of utilities that you can install on your computer.

So what happens is, let's say I select something like 7Zip for example and I click on install. If I go ahead and press the Windows key, you'll see that there are two different terminals open. One is the GUI for the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility, and then there's also the terminal window here or the PowerShell window that shows you the status of what's happening.

So the very first time you install something with this utility, it's going to update Winget if it's outdated, and it might also download some other dependencies as well, like you can see here. Once Winget and all of the prerequisites are installed, then it'll start installing the package or packages that you selected to install. 

So I just selected 7Zip as an example, and then once it's finished, you'll see that installs have finished. If I now have a look at the computer, I've got 7Zip installed on this PC. 

Now, one of the cool things about this install section here is if you're someone who sets up a lot of different computers and you're planning on using this Chris Titus Tech Windows utility to help you streamline that process and save a lot of time. 

What you can do is you can go through and select all of the utilities that you would normally install on a computer. Just as an example, let's say I always install 7Zip and Shell the expanded context menu on every computer that I set up. You can obviously go ahead and select a bunch of these utilities, everything that you would normally install, and then you can go ahead and click on the gear icon up here and then click on export.

Now you can save this as a preset, and I'm just going to save it on the desktop and then click on save. Now you'll have this JSON file here, and you can save this on a USB flash drive so you always have access to it on different computers.

But what you can do in that case is if I click on clear selection, you'll see it's no longer selected. Then if you click on the gear icon again and you click on import and you import that preset file, then it'll automatically select all of the utilities that you've selected to install on the computer and then you can click on install and upgrade selected.

This also accounts for all of the tweaks that you would select or basically anything else that you would select in this utility. You can create a preset file so you don't have to go and manually select every single thing every time. Then on each computer, you can just import that preset into the utility and then run the tweaks and install the programs, which will save you a lot of time when you're setting up new computers.

But that's about it for the install section, so let's go to the tweaks section now. The Windows utility tweaks that I have in my unattended Winstall answer file, basically a lot of them come from this page here.

So what you would normally do here is just click on the standard button, and then it's going to select a bunch of these tweaks here. Before it runs any of these tweaks, it'll create a restore point if you have that selected, which is selected by default when you click on the standard selection up here. 

But it also has a lot of other useful tweaks. You can delete the temporary files; you can disable consumer features, which is basically like ads in Windows. You can disable telemetry; you can disable activity history, disable the game DVR, disable hibernation, disable HomeGroup, which doesn’t actually exist anymore in Windows 10 or 11. 

I think you can disable location tracking; you can disable storage sense. Theo, which is a network tunneling feature that can cause additional latency. You can disable Wi-Fi sense, and as you can see if I hover over these tweaks, it gives you a little tool tip of what this will do.

Then it'll also run Disk Cleanup, and one of the latest additions in this version, at least, is replacing the default PowerShell 5 with PowerShell 7. I'm not using a laptop, but you can set hibernation as the default for laptops as it's good for laptops, and then I guess you won't disable hibernation if you do that.

This last one sets services to manual; that's actually what causes the lower process count in Windows 10 and 11. If I go ahead and I open the task manager on this stock Windows 11 install, you'll see that it's still on 145 processes, and if I run these tweaks, you'll see that this will be a lot lower.

So right now we have about 3 gigs of memory in use, and the CPU utilization is like between 7 and 15%. A lot of people say that lowering the process count doesn’t really matter. I don’t agree or disagree; I'm just saying, why would I want 143 processes running in the background when it could be down to like 70 or 80? Whether that makes a performance difference or not, why would I want all of these processes running if I'm not using them?

But getting back to the utility, then you also have some advanced tweaks. So you can do an Adobe network block and Adobe deblo if you want to do that. You can also disable IPv6; then you can disable full-screen optimizations; you can disable Microsoft Co-Pilot. 

So for this video example, I'm going to do that because I also have that included in my unattended Winstall answer file. Then you can also disable Intel MM, and you can hover over that to see exactly what it does. Now you can also disable the notifications, and this also disables the calendar. Unfortunately, because that's just the way that Microsoft programmed it, then you can also set the display for performance.

For this video, I'm just going to go ahead and do that. You can set the classic right-click menu; you can set the time to UTC, and this is usually when you're also using Linux on the same system, so I'm not going to do that.

One of these options here is to remove all the Microsoft Store apps, so you can go ahead and do that because that's what a lot of people want when they use the unattended install answer file. You can also remove Microsoft Edge and you can remove OneDrive.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to run all of these tweaks right now, so I'll click on that and then just press the Windows key again and then go to the terminal so we can see exactly what's happening. 

It's busy running all of these tweaks; this is the Edge removal script, so right now it's uninstalling Microsoft Edge. If I move this over, you'll see at the back here there's also some other operations going on, which is removing the Microsoft apps from the system. 

Now the Edge removal script is finished, and you can see you can also type the name of another browser in here if you want to reinstall it using this PowerShell window, but I'm just going to be using the Chris Titus utility to install another browser. 

So you can just go ahead and close the Edge removal window, and as you can see, the rest of the tweaks are still running because I have the Disk Cleanup running here, so this could take quite some time. 

But I'm just going to speed it up in the video, so this cleanup has just finished running, so I'm just going to click on okay, and it looks like it's doing the upgrade of PowerShell 5 to PowerShell version 7.

While it's installing that, as you can see, the taskbar already looks different than when I started with this process. There's no widgets on the taskbar anymore; the search bar is also gone. 

Then I see that I still have Edge on here, but as you see, if I click on it, it doesn't open, so I can go ahead and unpin that. Removing Edge from Windows 10 and Windows 11 is always going to be a pain. There's always going to be some sort of remnant left of it on your computer, like you can see, it's still in the pinned apps here, but it doesn't launch.

You'll just manually have to go and unpin this from any menu that you see. You can see that I can't unpin Microsoft Edge from this "All Apps" menu, but what you need to do is you need to go to open file location and then you just need to delete the shortcut here from the Start menu programs folder.

If you go back, it should be gone from the list of apps on your Start menu. But like I said, you'll always have some remnants of Microsoft Edge on the computer left because it's part of Windows. Removing it completely is very difficult.

But once all of those tweaks have finished running, you'll see that the tweaks are finished. Another thing that I just wanted to show you here is you can also click on this Run O&O ShutUp10 button. Now if you don't know what O&O ShutUp10 is, if I click on that, it basically launches this software here, and this also helps you get better privacy on Windows.

So you can either set the settings for the current user or for the local machine, and you'll see that there are some different settings switching between these two tabs, but you can go through each of them individually if you want and decide what you want to disable or leave enabled. 

But you can basically click on actions here, then you can apply the recommended settings, or you can apply the recommended and somewhat recommended settings, or you can go ahead and apply all settings. 

Now basically what these three settings mean is applying only the recommended settings means your Windows experience will still be stable. Applying the recommended and somewhat recommended settings means you might run into some trouble with some apps that you're trying to use, and then if you apply all settings, there's definitely some stuff that's just not going to be working in Windows anymore.

But you can also create a system restore point before doing this, so if something breaks, you can just go back to the system restore point or you can also undo all of the changes and just go back to the factory settings.

So just for the sake of this video, I'm just going to apply all the settings because this is a test machine, and if something breaks, then we'll also see it in the video. 

But I'm just going to apply all of the settings; I'll create a system restore point just so I can go back, and you should definitely create a system restore point if you're doing this on your computer.

So as you can see, the settings have been applied both to the current user and the local machine. Now you can just exit out of O&O ShutUp10 again. 

Now as you can see here, some of these settings may possibly revert after Windows updates, so you can just go ahead and run O&O ShutUp10 again with the settings that you selected, and then you'll have all of those privacy settings applied again.

You'll also see that I'm prompted to restart Windows to apply all of these changes, and we're going to be doing that at the end of this video. So for now, I'm just going to close this window, but what I wanted to mention to you as well is you can use the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility as well after every Windows update. 

Because Windows update has a way of re-enabling a lot of stuff again that you might not know about, running these utilities again after each Windows update is always a good idea. But moving on with the utility here, you can see you also have some preferences here where you can easily enable or disable some settings in Windows.

So for example, if I click on the slider for the Dark theme, it'll then enable the Dark theme in Windows. So you'll see the Start menu is dark, but the taskbar isn't. But after we restart Windows, the taskbar will be dark as well.

So you have a lot of these preferences here that you can go through and enable or disable to your liking. For example, the Bing search in Start menu, I'm going to disable that because I don't want search results from Bing in the Start menu. You can switch on the NumLock on Startup, you can show file extensions by default.

You also have these Snap windows and Assist flyouts and mouse acceleration, which I'll definitely disable. You can enable the taskbar search, you can enable widgets, task view button, and sticky keys. 

Then lastly, you can also add and activate the ultimate performance plan. So if you go ahead and click on that and you come over to the Config tab up here and you go to Legacy Windows panels and you click on Power panel, it'll take you to this screen where you'll have the additional plans where you can then activate the ultimate performance plan on your computer, which can obviously give you better performance because it uses more power and then in turn provides ultimate performance on higher-end PCs.

But going back to the tweaks here, you can also create a WinUtil shortcut, and I guess you can just select the save locations. So for example, if I save it on the desktop, then you'll have a shortcut to the Windows utility on your desktop.

But going over to the Config tab here, you can also install some of these features here, like NET Framework, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Windows Sandbox, and then you can enable that Legacy F8 Boot Recovery screen that you used to have in Windows 7 for example.

Then you also have some fixes here, like setting up Auto Login, you can reset Windows Update, you can reset the network, you can do a system corruption scan, which basically runs SFC scan now and dim repair. So if you're having some issues on your computer, you can use this to try and fix that.

You can reinstall Winget, and then you can remove the Adobe Creative Cloud from your computer. Then, like I showed you earlier, you can get access to the legacy Control Panel Windows panels, so for example, the network connections, you can get to that easily from here.

You can get to the user accounts screen easily from inside of the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility. Then, if you go over to the updates tab here, this is where you can set settings for Windows update. 

So you have the default settings, which is what every normal install of Windows will have; then you have the security recommended settings, which is basically the same way that I have it set up in my answer files.

But one thing I want to mention here is it says it'll delay feature updates by 2 years, and it'll install security updates 4 days after release. From the info that I got, you can only delay feature updates by one year, so I think this tooltip might be incorrect.

But anyway, this is where you can only apply security updates, so you can set those update settings here, or you can disable all of the updates. As you can see, it's not recommended because then you won't get security updates, but some people just don't care about it and they'll just disable all of the updates.

But for this video, I'm just going to select the security setting here, so if I click on that, the recommended update settings have been loaded, so I'm just going to click on okay.

And then lastly, Microwin is another project inside of the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility where you can basically upload an ISO file, a Windows 11 ISO file.

You'll see all of the instructions here. You can basically remove these things from the Windows image, so you can remove the telemetry and tracking, and you can add the ability to use local accounts. You can remove the Wi-Fi requirement to finish the install, you have the ability to remove Edge, you have the ability to remove Defender, you have the ability to remove Teams.

It also debloats, which is basically the same type of thing that my answer files do, but the process is just a bit different because you actually mount the ISO file and then the scripts run on the Windows image.

Then the Windows image gets put back into the target ISO file, and then you can use that ISO file to install Windows. Basically, you can create a custom ISO file with Microwin.

It's basically the same way that Tiny 11 Boulder works, where you provide a Windows ISO file, then all of the scripts run on the Windows image because it's mounted in DISM, then it repacks that Windows image into the ISO file, which is usually also a lot smaller than the official Windows ISO file.

Another great thing that Chris Titus and the developers have added here is you have the ability to add drivers to that Windows ISO file. For a lot of you working in the tech industry, this might be a good project to keep an eye on because it will also help you create custom Windows ISO files that you can use to prep a lot of different computers.

Now I might make a different video in the future looking specifically at Microwin, so you can keep an eye out on the channel for that, but this is all that I wanted to show you in the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility, so I'm just going to exit out of it and then close the terminal as well.

Once again, you can see I still have this Microsoft Edge icon here that if I double-click on it, it's not going to launch because it doesn't work anymore. So I'm just going to delete it and then empty the recycle bin as well, and then I also still have this preset file that I showed you earlier.

But let's go ahead and restart the computer, so once we get back, we can just have a look at some of the settings that we've changed. 

After the restart, you can see that dark mode is completely enabled now. If I open the Start menu, it's still populated with a lot of these apps, so it doesn't get rid of everything like my answer file does, but you can also just go ahead and right-click on these apps and click on uninstall, which will also uninstall it from the computer.

And you can do the same thing with these apps here, but I guess you don't want to go through all of the trouble of going through these things one by one and uninstalling them from the computer.

But if we have a look at the settings here and we have a look at the privacy and security, I'm interested to see what these settings look like. So these are all turned off.

If we have a look at speech, it's turned off; typing personalization is turned off. Diagnostics and feedback, these are all turned off, which is good to see. The activity history should be turned off, so I think a lot of these settings were set by O&O ShutUp10.

So also using that in the Chris Titus Windows utility is a good thing. And if we go to system and we have a look at the notifications, that is also disabled, and that's also good to see because that's one of the settings we selected.

The Windows update will also still work normally, and because I selected the recommended settings, which is only to install security updates, that's the only updates that will be installed.

But like I said, after installing Windows updates, it's a good idea always just to run the Windows utility again and select those tweaks again and then run them on your system.

Now, if you right-click on the Start button and you go to installed apps, you can actually uninstall these apps as well, like the calculator and the camera app, for example, as well as Cortana.

So you have the option of uninstalling these apps on your computer without the Chris Titus Windows utility. As you can see, Microsoft Edge and Edge update are still here, but it doesn't work; like I said, there will always be some remnants left on the system.

But if you want to get rid of these other apps that you're not using, like Quick Assist for example, you can also uninstall that. You can uninstall the Sticky Notes. You have the option of uninstalling these apps inside of Windows as well.

But that's the whole point of the answer files that I created and why I created that unattended Winstall GitHub repo because I set up a lot of different computers, and going through this process on each computer that you set up is very annoying and takes a lot of time.

So the whole point of those unattended Winstall answer files is to automate a lot of the processes that I would normally have to do manually. And as you can see, the process count is also down compared to the stock Windows install that we saw earlier.

Like I said, a lower process count might not necessarily make your computer faster, but why would I want a whole bunch of processes running in the background when they don't need to be running when I'm not using them, so that's my thought process behind it.

And like I said, this is one of the ways that you can use to basically get the same type of experience that I have in my unattended Winstall answer files on an existing Windows installation.

I know my standard file also removes the Microsoft Store, and you can see that you can't uninstall it here, but you can actually uninstall it using the terminal or PowerShell as admin, and you can do that by just running this command here.

If you run that, it's going to uninstall the Microsoft Store from your system. So this is only for the people who don't use it. But the rest of these apps, you can go ahead and right-click on them and then just uninstall, same with the Xbox app and all of these other apps you can install in the same way.

But like I said, that's why I have the answer files, so this process is already automated for you, and you don't have to go through this if you're installing Windows on a bunch of different computers.

But I really like the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility; it helps you a lot on computers that already have a stable running Windows where people have already installed their apps and files and they can't necessarily afford to reinstall Windows and go through the entire setup process again because they have specific software that they use with license keys and all of that.

Then running the tweaks in the Windows utility is a very good choice for getting a more bloated experience in Windows. Imagine you do a clean install of Windows using the official Windows 10 or 11 ISO file from Microsoft, and once you get to the desktop, it looks like this: there’s no Microsoft Edge or OneDrive, no pre-installed bloatware apps like the widgets or Co-pilot for example, and the Start menu is clean.

On top of that, if you open the task manager and look at the process count, it's also way lower than a stock Windows install. And then when you look at the privacy settings, it's all disabled, and Windows is just fast, smooth, and really responsive without you even having to do anything to get it to that point.

You might be wondering how that's even possible. Well, listen up and don't skip through this video because I'll show you exactly how you can do it too. Microsoft allows you to add answer files or unattended files to Windows images, also called Windows ISO files. 

Now these answer files can be used to modify various Windows settings in the Windows image, and they are executed during different phases in the Windows setup process. So if you've ever used Rufus to create Windows installation media and you saw this screen with these options, like remove the Windows 11 hardware requirements and disable privacy questions, they achieve that by including an answer file in the installation media that executes those commands during the Windows setup.

In my opinion, the best thing about an answer file is that it's very safe. First of all, you can see every single change it’s going to make to the Windows image by inspecting the answer file. There's also no need to download custom ISO files from unofficial sources because you insert it onto the official Windows 10 or 11 ISO file that you downloaded directly from Microsoft.

Lastly, it’s also not dependent on any third-party tools, and it's an official Microsoft feature that's normally used to make mass Windows deployments easier, like in corporate environments for example. Now you can create your own answer file with the customized Windows settings you want, and this is one of the best places you can do it at. 

You can use this website here to generate an unattended answer file, and as you can see, there are a lot of settings and tweaks to choose from. Once you've selected your preferred tweaks and settings, you can just download the XML file and then add it to your Windows installation media, and I'll show you exactly how you can do that later on in the video.

Now I've created my own answer file that I've started using to automate and streamline my Windows installs, and that's what I want to share here with you. It basically automates a lot of the tweaks and scripts created by projects like the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility and Tiny 11 for example.

The answer file works on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, and I've tested it on the Pro version of Windows 10 22 H2 and Windows 11 23 H2 without any issues. My motivation for this project is to get an LTSC-like or even better experience on the Pro and Home versions of Windows 10 and 11 without having to worry about getting an LTSC license.

I also have to start looking at making Windows 11 better since Microsoft announced that they won't be supporting Windows 10 anymore starting late 2025, and I hate the stock Windows 11 now. The answer file automates many parts of the Windows setup and saves me a ton of time, because I don't have to run a bunch of programs and scripts every time I do a fresh install of Windows; it's already debloated and customized with my preferred settings as soon as I get to the desktop.

Now look, it would be impossible for me to create a single answer file that will please everyone, so instead, I'm supplying you with one that basically removes everything except Windows Security and is over-tweaked, if you will. So you can just edit the file and remove the tweaks you don't want. Additionally, you can also add more tweaks or customizations if you have the know-how, but please note that I’ll not provide any form of support for any changes you make to the file.

So you're probably wondering how to get it and how to use it, so let me show you. You need to go to the unattended Winstall GitHub page, and I'll leave a link to that in the description of the video. Now once you're here, you need to find this auto unattend.xml file and then click on it. 

It'll open this page here where you can inspect the file, but you need to download it, and you can do that by clicking on this little arrow over here, that’s the download button. It’ll download the file and save it on your computer. 

Next, you need to include this auto unattended answer file on your Windows installation media so it can be read and executed during the Windows setup. Now I'm going to show you a few ways to do it. If you need any help with something I mention in this next section of the video, I'll leave some of my guides on these topics in the description of this video so you can go ahead and check out those videos if you're unsure on how to do any of these things that I mention here.

Now the first method is to create a bootable Windows installation USB first and then just copy the answer file to the USB drive. So you'll need to create a Windows 10 or 11 bootable installation USB drive, and you can do that with the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft or Rufus for example. But please note, when you're using Rufus, don't select any of these checkboxes in the Customize Your Windows Experience window you see here, as it creates another answer file, and we don't want that.

Once you've created the Windows installation USB, you can just copy the auto unattend.xml answer file to the root of the USB drive. Next, just boot from the USB drive, do a clean install of Windows as normal, and the scripts will run automatically.

Now for method two, you can create a custom Windows ISO file with the answer file embedded into it. To do that, download the Windows 10 or Windows 11 ISO file, depending on the version you want. Then, download and install AnyBurn. 

Once that's done, in AnyBurn, select the Edit Image File option and then navigate to and select the official Windows ISO file you downloaded earlier. Click on the Add button up here and then select the answer file you downloaded earlier, or alternatively, you can just click and drag the answer file into the Any window.

You should then see it included as part of the files on the Windows ISO file. Now just click on Next and then click on Create Now. You should be prompted to overwrite the ISO file, just click on Yes. 

Once that's complete, you can just close AnyBurn. Now you can use this ISO file to install Windows on a virtual machine, or you can use a program like Ventoy to create a bootable USB flash drive and then just copy the edited Windows ISO file onto it. 

Then you can boot from the Windows installation USB, do a clean install of Windows as normal, and the scripts will run automatically. Now as an example, I'll be installing Windows 11 23 H2 on a virtual machine and take you through each part of the script as it executes, so once you boot from the Windows installation media, before you get to the first setup screen, you should notice some command prompt windows flashing briefly and then closing.

This part of the installation is called the Windows Pre-installed Environment, and the commands that were executed there are these commands, which remove the Windows 11 system requirements. From here, you can go through all of the normal installation prompts like you always do, select the drive where you want to install Windows, and then just start the installation. 

Once the initial part of the Windows installation is complete, your computer will restart, and then it enters into the specialized phase. Now you'll see a bunch of PowerShell and command prompt windows appear and disappear, and you just need to leave the computer to finish executing these scripts.

Now the specialized phase is this part of the script, and this is where most of the changes and tweaks are executed in my version of the answer file. These tweaks include a bunch of registry entries being created and PowerShell scripts being run, including some of the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility scripts that debloat Windows and remove a lot of these apps and also lowers the process count in Windows.

Now you can read through the answer file to see exactly what's being executed, but basically, these run synchronous commands that you see here reference scripts that are located further down in the answer file. Now after this phase, your computer will restart again, and then you'll be taken to the onboarding experience, also called the Out-of-Box Experience or OOBE.

It's this part of the script here. Now this is also straightforward, and you need to go through all of the usual prompts and select your preferred settings, but you will be prompted to create a local account. You won't be able to log in with the Microsoft account here, and I don't recommend that you use a Microsoft account anyway.

But once you get to the desktop, it should take a few seconds, and then you should see another window appear running a bunch of tweaks, and then your computer will restart again. Those are the last commands that will run from the file, and it just modifies the registry for the current user profile to ensure that all the values are properly set.

I had to include this as some of the registry values that are created for the default user profile during the specialized phase are changed or reset when loading into a new user profile, so this just ensures that all of the registry values for the current user are correctly set. This part of the script will also run once every time you create a new user account on the computer.

Now, finally, you'll be able to use this custom version of Windows. So as you can see, this answer file basically strips out everything from Windows, and a lot of the Windows settings are disabled by default. I understand how this can be a bit too much for some people, but the way I see it is that you have two options.

You can treat this installation like a blank canvas and just download and install what you need back into Windows, even the Windows apps, or you can download a code editor like VS Code, Notepad++, or my favorite, Cursor, to edit the answer file before including it in your install media.

The reason I like using Cursor is because it has AI built in, and I found it really helpful during the creation of this file since I really don't have a lot of experience with scripts and programming. So if you want to edit the answer file, I suggest using Cursor, and then you can press Control and F to search for a specific term.

Let's say you wanted to add Notepad back into Windows, for example. Then you can just search for Notepad and remove any entries related to Notepad and save the file again.

Alternatively, you can press Control and L or click on this icon up here to open the AI chat. Change it to GPT-4.0 or whatever is the latest GPT version and then just ask it a question. For example, you can ask it something like, "Show me all of the entries related to Notepad" or "Help me add Notepad back into the Windows installation," and the AI will help you figure it out and show you how to get it done, and in that way, you can customize the file to your liking.

Then once you're happy, you can just save it and include it in your Windows installation media like I explained earlier. If you've been following this channel for the past month or so, you might already be familiar with my unattended Winstall GitHub repo where I shared some of my pre-made unattended answer files with you, and I've gotten a lot of requests from you guys to create a guide on how you can create your own unattended answer file for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

So in this video, I want to take you through a step-by-step process on how you can use the Schneegans website to generate your own unattended answer file for Windows 10 or Windows 11. So to get to this webpage, you can just do a Google search for the Schneegans unattended generator, and then you can open this webpage here.

Or if you go to my unattended Winstall GitHub repo, if you scroll down on this page, you'll also see that you can just click on this unattended generator link here, and then it's going to take you to the webpage. 

So you can use this website to create your own answer files to perform unattended Windows installations, and this works on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. Now let's go through the settings that you can choose here so you can automate your Windows installs.

So you can automate this part of the Windows setup if you want to choose your region and language settings here. For the sake of this video, I'm going to do that, so I'm going to leave the default language on English, but I'm going to change the date and time format to English South Africa because that's where I live.

So you would obviously just choose these settings according to where you live in the world. You can select your default keyboard layout here; mine is US, so that's fine. I'm just going to leave that, and then the country or region is also correct because I already set it up there. 

So it just changed this value as well. Now you can also add secondary keyboard layouts here if you want; I'm not going to be doing that. Or if you don't want to automate this part of the setup, you can just click on this button here so you can select your language settings interactively during the Windows setup. 

So that just means this part of the Windows setup won't be automated, but like I said, for this video, I'm going to be using this setting here. For the CPU settings here, most people will be using Intel or AMD 64-bit, so if you don't know what this setting means, most probably you should just leave it on 64-bit. 

As you can see here, when you select multiple of these processor settings, then a single Auto Unattend XML file will be created that's applicable to all of these architectures. So what you can do here is you can hold down control on your keyboard and then you can select all of these settings here. 

So that just means the answer file will work on whatever hardware you have because you've selected all of these settings, so I'm going to leave all of that selected. Next, for the setup settings, you can bypass the Windows 11 requirements if you want.

You'll obviously want to check this setting if your computer doesn't support Windows 11, but if your PC supports Windows 11, then you don't have to check this. I'm going to select it for this video, and then also, do you want to allow Windows 11 to be installed without an internet connection? 

I'm going to check this box as well because it just makes the Windows 11 setup process so much easier. Next, in the computer name settings, you can either let Windows generate a random computer name, which is the default setting, or you can choose a computer name for yourself.

So once again, if you're planning on installing this on a whole bunch of different computers for different people, maybe it's going to be best if it just generates a random computer name, but you have the option to choose a computer name for yourself. So I'm just going to call mine Memory PC just for the sake of this video.

And then for the time zone, you can either let Windows determine your time zone based on the language and region settings, which is most probably the default Windows setting, or you can set your time zone explicitly. I'm just going to leave it on the default Windows setting, so it can determine based on my language and region settings.

For the partition and formatting, you can partition your disks interactively during the Windows setup, which is what I'm going to be doing in this video, where you basically select a drive during the Windows installation. But you also have the option of automating this, where you can let the Windows setup wipe, partition, and format your hard drive or more specifically, dis zero using these settings. 

So most probably, using this setting would be best if you only had one physical disk in your computer, one hard drive or SSD, then you can select these settings to either choose a GPT or MBR layout.

You also have some settings with regard to the Windows recovery partition, where you can either install it on a recovery partition or you can install the recovery partition on the Windows partition, or you can remove the Windows recovery partition altogether. 

But as you can see here, it seems that in Windows 24 H2, this setting is ignored, and it'll always create a recovery partition with a minimum size of 600 MB, so that's at the time of recording this video. 

But you also have the option to use a custom Dispart script to configure your disk, and you also have some settings down here if you choose to use that. For most people, I would just recommend leaving this on partition the disk interactively during the Windows setup.

Moving on to the next section for the Windows Edition, you can either use a generic product key. So basically, what this means is you can already select the Windows edition that you want to install. 

So for example, you can choose Home or Pro or any of these other versions; I'm going to select Pro in this video. So as you can see, it uses a generic product key to install Windows, but Windows will not activate with this key. It's not a key to activate Windows; it’s just a key to determine which version of Windows you want to install.

Then you can obviously enter your own product key later so you can activate Windows. Then you also have the option of entering your own product key here. So if you select this option, you'll have to manually edit the Auto Unattend XML file and then you need to find this key section here and then replace these numbers with your Windows product key.

So it'll install Windows using your product key that you have for this guide. I'm just going to use a generic product key and install the Pro edition of Windows now. When it gets to user accounts, you can let Windows setup create the following local or offline accounts.

It seems you can create up to five users here, and then you can also say to which group it must belong, so for example, Administrators or normal users. For the sake of this video, I'm just going to remove one user account, and we'll only create one account, which is going to be an admin account, meaning it'll have full rights, and I'm going to call this Memory and the password.

I'm just going to remove that and leave it blank because that's going to be my user profile. Then you have some other settings here where you can choose how you want to log on for the first time.

So you can either log on with the first administrator account that you created here, which is going to be this account, or you can activate the built-in administrator account that's included in every version of Windows 10 and 11, or you can choose not to log on at all, and then the installation will just end with the sign-in screen being shown for this video.

I'm just going to log on to the first admin account created above, which is this one, and that's going to be the user account that I'll be using in any case. Then you also have the option to obscure all account passwords with base 64.

Basically, this could just add another layer of security to your password, but I don't even have a password created here, so I'm not going to select this, but you can select that if you want to, or you have the option to add user accounts interactively during the Windows setup.

So you usually choose this if you want to use a Microsoft or online account. Then we have some password settings, so we can set passwords to not expire, or we can use the Windows default, which is 42 days, or you can use a custom password expiration value. 

Now these settings only apply to local accounts, and the password for the built-in administrator account never expires, so for this video, I'm just going to set it to passwords do not expire.

I'm not going to be using a password in this installation in any case, but you need to set these settings to whatever you want to have it set to. Then you can also have some settings with regards to account lockout policy. You can use the default policy, which will lock you out of an account after 10 failed attempts.

You can disable this policy, but that might leave your computer vulnerable to brute force attacks, so I wouldn't recommend doing this, or you can use a custom policy. I'm just going to use the default policy here, and then we have some optimizations and tweaks that we can do.

So for one example, you can disable Windows Defender here. I'm not going to be selecting that in this video, but it is an option that you can use. Obviously, I don't really recommend doing this because you don't have any built-in security into Windows then.

But as you can see, this also disables certain services, and they're all listed here, so you can have a look at that to see what each of them does. Then you also have the option, if you select this, to disable the Windows Defender services early. 

This is most probably if you're going to be using Windows 11 24 H2 because if you don't do this, then you won't be able to disable the services during the later stages of the setup. But like I said, I'm not going to be using that in this video example, but just know that this is an option.

You can also disable system protection or system restore, and you'd probably want to do this if you want to use less disk space, but I recommend leaving system protection turned on. You can enable long file paths, which I think is a really good setting to have selected, so I'll select that.

You can enable remote desktop services, and you can select that if you're going to be using that. Then you have this Harden ACL setting, so this basically removes the right permissions on the C drive for the authenticated users group. 

As you can see, this just prevents some users from creating folders on your C drive, such as C:\Windows, for example. You don't want that to happen, so you can use this setting if you basically want to stop people from breaking the computer, and in this example, I'm not going to be selecting this.

And then you also have the option of allowing execution of PowerShell scripts, and this allows you to run unsigned PowerShell script files. Now this could be a bad idea; you should never run PowerShell scripts from any sources that you don't know where they come from, but leaving this setting disabled could provide you some more protection on your computer, especially if you're not that tech-savvy.

But in this example, I'm going to select that because I will be running PowerShell scripts on my computer. Then next, you have this option to do not update the last access timestamp, and this can have some effect on your file system performance, so I'm going to select that for this video.

You can check this option to not reboot with any user signed in; I'm just going to leave that unchecked. You can turn off system sounds, you can disable app suggestions, and I'm definitely going to check that because this is going to prevent the silent download and installation of any suggested apps by Microsoft.

Basically, this is a lot of the bloatware that Microsoft puts into Windows these days. You have the option to disable the widgets, which is that Bing news and weather widget that you have in Windows. 

You can prevent the automatic BitLocker encryption on Windows 11, and I would definitely suggest checking this box here. You can use the classic right-click menu in Windows 11, and I'm definitely going to be selecting that. 

Then you also have this option to audit process creation events, so each time a new process is created, Windows writes an event to the security log, and this is a very powerful tool for troubleshooting. 

You can also include command line in log events if you want to use this setting; I'm not going to be selecting that in this video, but that is an option. Then if you're planning on using this on virtual machines, you can pre-install these GU editions and tools for the virtual machine software that you're going to use; I'm not going to be using that in this video.

So we'll go on to the next section, which is the wireless LAN or Wi-Fi setup. This setting is basically that screen where you have to connect to your Wi-Fi network during the Windows setup.

So here you also have the option to automate this; you can already enter your network name or SSID and then also the password and the authentication type. For this video, I'm just going to skip the Wi-Fi configuration because I'm not going to be connecting using Wi-Fi anyway.

And then you also have some other options here with regards to the Wi-Fi where you can configure it using an XML file; we're not going to be looking at that in this video, so we'll continue with the express settings here, and that's the privacy settings where it asks you if you want to send diagnostic data and personalized input and your location history to Microsoft. 

So you have the option to disable all of this, which I definitely suggest you leave selected. You can enable it all, or you can choose the settings during the Windows setup. I really recommend just disabling this. 

Then you have the option to remove bloatware, and this basically removes all of the apps that come pre-installed in Windows. So what you can do here is you can click on select all and then you can just deselect the apps that you actually want to have installed on Windows.

So from my experience, most people want to have Calculator installed as well as Notepad, so you can leave the modern Notepad selected and the classic Notepad. They also want Paint, they want the Snipping Tool, and some people want the Terminal. 

I'm not going to be selecting that in this video, but basically, you have the option of choosing which apps you want to get pre-installed in Windows 10 or 11. 

As you can see here, the developer says that the bloatware removal works best with the original Windows 10 and 11 ISO file; you didn't perform any tests with custom images, so I also recommend just using the original Windows 10 or 11 ISO images.

Don't use any custom Windows images; it's a huge security risk. Also, if you select one or more of these apps to remove, the shortcuts and tiles and pinned icons will all be removed from the Start menu as well.

So this basically cleans up the Start menu in Windows 10 and 11 as well. Now, we get to the section where we can run custom scripts. Here, you have a lot of options. You can run scripts in the system context before user accounts are created.

Then if you scroll down, you can also run scripts that modify the default user's registry hive. In my experience with creating these pre-made answer files, there is an issue that some of the registry entries that you create on this default user's registry hive don't actually get applied when you create a new user in Windows.

So for this section here, I would just recommend don't even bother entering anything here; you can rather just use this part of the script where you can run a script whenever a user logs on for the first time.

So what this looks like is if we scroll all the way back and we have a look at the scripts to run in the system context before user accounts are created, if we go to my answer files that I created and we have a look at the standard file, if you have a look at the code here you're going to see that I have a local machine file, and that is this file here, which is the local machine.cmd file.

So there's a lot of registry entries that I added here, so what you can do is go through the list of registry entries that I created and then you can select whatever you want to have applied to your local machine to the whole computer because that's what HKLM means; it's going to be applied to the local machine, the entire computer. 

So you can run whatever scripts you want here, but if we go all the way down to the other section where you can write a script to run whenever a user logs on for the first time, and you go back to my unattended answer files, you'll also see that I have a current user file. 

So here you'll see I have a current user.cmd file, and this will basically run once each time a new user logs on for the first time, and these all apply to the current user. 

So what you can do in this case is in my example, I'm just going to copy this entire script that I wrote for the current user; I'm just going to copy that, and then I'm going to put it into this CMD box here, so that means all of these settings are going to apply to the current user as soon as it logs on for the first time.

Now below here, you can see how these scripts will be run if you're interested in that, and once again you don't have to just use my settings; you can do your own research and add whatever entries or whatever command prompt scripts, PowerShell scripts, registry files, whatever you want to add to your Windows installation, you can add that. 

I'm just using the stuff I already created as an example for creating or customizing your own unattended answer file. Now moving on, you have the Windows Defender application control, so you can configure a policy here if you want, and you can configure it using these settings. 

I'm not going to be using that in this video; I'm just not going to configure that policy. Then you also have some placeholders for more components, so you can generate some more templates for all available components, and you can have a look at all of these components here that you can use to automate your Windows installs.

I'm not going to be using that in this video; it's a bit more advanced, but you can do your own research on this if you want to add even more components to your Windows installation here.

So once you fill out all of those settings, now you can download your XML unattended answer file, or you can download an ISO file with the XML file. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to download the XML file; that's going to be saved on my desktop.

If I minimize my browser, I now have this Auto Unattend XML file here, and if I open that, it's going to open with Cursor, which is my code editor. Then you can see all of the settings exactly like you selected it, and you can now even make more changes to this file and add even more settings if there's something you forgot.

But as you can see here is the CMD scripts that I copy and pasted, and like I said, you can run your own command prompt scripts, own PowerShell scripts; you can do whatever you want by using this Auto Unattend generator that's created by Schneegans, and you can just automate a whole bunch of the Windows installation process.

Now I've already made a step-by-step video showing you exactly how you can include this Auto Unattend answer file on your Windows installation media and then install Windows with that, so I'm not going to be showing you how to do that in this video, but I will link that video at the end of this video and in the description of this video.

But as you can see on screen now, while I'm installing Windows, a lot of the stuff that you would normally have to select manually is already automated for me, which saves a lot of time. As you can see, after the installation, it also loaded into my user profile automatically and ran that current user script that I copy and pasted.

As you can see now, dark mode is enabled, and if we have a look at all of the apps here, only the apps that I selected to be installed on my computer are installed, like Paint, Notepad, the Snipping Tool, and then if you go to settings and we have a look at the privacy settings here and we go to the activity history, you'll see that this is all turned off because remember that's one of the parts of the script that I copy and pasted to run on the local machine, which affects the entire computer.

So that's how you can generate your own answer file, and I hope this video was useful to you. If it was, please give it a like, and I'll talk to you guys soon.

To install a cool-looking custom mouse cursor on Windows 10 and Windows 11, you can visit this website called deviantart.com, and first, you'll just need to create a free account and sign into that account. 

Once you've done that, you can come over and then do a search for mouse cursor, and then you'll get all of these results for mouse cursors that you can download. Now some of these might be paid, but a lot of them are free, and you can choose whatever you want here. 

The one that I normally use is this Windows 11 cursor by Jeet Recreations, so I'm going to show you how to download and install that, but the process for installing these cursors is all exactly the same. 

This specific cursor pack is a paid cursor pack, as you can see. I need to pay for it to download it, but if you scroll down here, you can also get a free version by clicking on this link, and I'm going to download the free version by going to the web page and then I'll click on this download button right here. 

That's going to download the zip file, so I'll just open that in my downloads folder, and then I'm going to right-click on this and just extract it to my downloads folder. Once the files have been extracted, you'll see these files. Now, you can also read this document to see how to install it, but this cursor comes in a light and a dark cursor.

I'm going to be installing the dark cursor, so I'll select the dark folder, and then I'm going to go to cursor. Inside of this folder, you'll find an install file, and the type is setup information. You can just right-click on that and then click on install; then click on open and click yes to any prompts, and it'll install the cursor.

You can just make sure that the cursor is selected in this drop-down menu, the one that you just installed, and then you can click on apply, and then okay. This prompt says it's already in use, but it's not, so I'll just click on yes.

Now you can see that my cursor has changed to the cursor that I just downloaded. Inside of this folder, you'll see there's also a lot of other cursors, and the cursor will change as you use different functions in Windows and on your computer.

For instance, if I go to this folder, you'll see the cursor has changed, and if I try and resize this, the cursor has also changed. Today, we're going to be taking a look at ProtonVPN, and more specifically, we're going to be having a look at the new ProtonVPN browser extension, and this works on both Chrome and Firefox-based browsers.

Now before you download this, I do recommend that you go ahead and click the first link in the video's description; it's going to take you to this page where you can get ProtonVPN free, and it's going to allow you to sign up with a free account from this page. 

So you're going to click on Get ProtonVPN free, and then if you want, you can pay for this, but we obviously want to use the free version, so you'll just click on Get ProtonVPN free. It’s going to load a new page, and then you can create your account. 

So I'm just going to enter one of my email addresses here; then I'm going to click on Start using ProtonVPN. It's creating our account. ProtonVPN is automatically going to generate a password for you that's going to be secure, and you can continue with this password if you want, but for this video, I'm just going to create my own password. 

So if you don't want to use the default password, just go ahead and enter a new password here. Once that's done, just click on Set New Password, and then you'll be prompted to download ProtonVPN.

Now, you'll only need to do this if you want to install the VPN onto your computer, and I basically show you how to do this in the other video I mentioned before, which you can also find on my website. But specifically for this video here, I'm going to close that; then we're going to go to the ProtonVPN browser extension page, and I'll also have links to both the Chrome browser extension and the Firefox browser extension in the article that I'm going to have on my website, and you can find a link to that in the description of this video.

So once you've created your free account, just go ahead and click on Add to Chrome, then click on Add Extension. Now you should see that it's been added as an extension, and depending on your browser, you're just going to have to go to the extensions and then manage your extensions, and you should see ProtonVPN here, and it should be enabled. 

Just go ahead and click on Details, and what I recommend you do here is pin it to the toolbar, and that you also allow it to run in private windows or incognito tabs to use it. You can basically just click on the Proton VPN icon up there, and then you're going to need to sign in.

You'll enter the details that you just used to create your free account, so I'm going to enter the email address and the password, and then I'm also going to choose to stay signed in, and then you should see this message that says you're signed in, and you can open the browser extension to continue.

So if we click on the browser extension now, right now I'm not connected to any server at the moment, so if I go ahead and click on Connect, it's automatically going to connect to a free server that's available.

So using the free version, you are going to have some limitations. You can't select any country and just connect to any server that you want; you'll have to upgrade if you want to do that. 

Just having a VPN enabled in your browser is already going to give you a little bit more privacy than you had before if you weren't using a VPN at all, and one of the best things about ProtonVPN, if we go back here, is there's no data or speed limits, so you don’t have a cap to how much data you can use, there are no ads, and it also doesn't log any of your online activity.

So I really like ProtonVPN; this video isn't sponsored at all. This is just the VPN that I use on a daily basis, and the fact that the browser extension is free makes it so much better now because it just makes it so much easier for us to protect our privacy while browsing the internet.

So you do also have some other features here that you can select by clicking on this icon here. Some of these features are only going to be available when you upgrade to a paid plan, so you'll see it has this icon here, and if I click on that, I'll have to upgrade to get access to these features.

So if you want these advanced features, you'll have to upgrade. But just for a basic VPN connection to a random server, using the method I explained in this video is already going to help you just have a little bit more privacy while browsing the web.

We can also do a search on Google for "What's my IP," and I can already see that Google thinks I'm browsing from the Netherlands, and if we go to WhatsMyIP.com, we can see the IP location is detected as Netherlands, meaning the VPN is working properly.

So usually, if you wanted to change servers, you can just disconnect and then connect once again. In some cases, it might connect to a different server, but like I explained before, in the free version, you won't be able to select any country that you want to connect to; you'll have to upgrade for that. 

If you want to upgrade, you can go ahead and do that; you can see the prices here. Obviously, there are a lot of VPNs available these days, but I just think Proton VPN is one of the best. They just had an audit recently, and the audit found that they actually do adhere to the no-logs policy, and they do protect your browsing data.

In this video, I'm going to be showing you a paid software that you can use, which I think is overall the best shell replacement that you can get for Windows 11. Although it is a paid app, it's not expensive at all, and I'm going to be taking you through an entire walkthrough in this video.

The program I'm referring to is called StartAllBack, and it's what I use on both of my computers that are running Windows 11 since I've switched to Windows 11 because I just couldn't use the stock Windows 11 taskbar and start menu.

So let's start by downloading StartAllBack, and you can get it from this web page. Then just click on Download, and then you can click on Open File, so you can run the setup. You'll have to go through the setup wizard, so you can either install it for the current user that you're logged into or you can install it for all users on the computer.

I'm just going to install it for all of the users on the computer and then accept this user account control prompt. You’ll have to go through the StartAllBack configuration. 

Let’s go through each of these. If we select Proper 11, which is the default, you'll have this rounded Start menu here, and if you click on these flyouts here in the system tray, you're going to have the Windows 11 menus. 

Also, if you open the File Explorer, you'll still have the Windows 11 command ribbon up here. If you select Kind of 10, then it changes the taskbar to the Windows 10 version. Again, if you click on these flyouts here, it's going to open the Windows 10 menus.

For some of these items here, you can see the notifications didn't change, but the others have changed. Then if we click on the Start button, we have a classic start menu but with sharp edges. It's not rounded like the Proper 11 version is.

If we use the Remastered 7, you can see that you have the Windows 7 Start button with a start menu that resembles the look of Windows 7. 

Then if you click on these flyouts here, you'll have the Windows 7 flyouts for these items here in the system tray. Now, the way I have it set up on my computer is to use the Proper 11 version but then to go and set some of these settings manually to my preference. 

First off, you can go to the Start menu tab here, and then you can choose if you want to use this classic start menu. If I switch that off, you'll see it's going to open the Windows 11 start menu. I don't like this start menu at all, so I'll use the classic start menu, and this is basically the Classic Shell or Open Shell start menu.

But the StartAllBack developer made his own themes and changes to these start menus here; you can change the visual style to the default. You can change it to Plane 8, which is that menu, or to Windows 7, which is the other one I showed you earlier.

I'll just leave that on the default. Then you can change the icon size to small icons, medium icons, or large icons. I change this to small icons. 

Then for the all programs list, you can use large icons; you can display it as a flyout menu like in Windows XP. So if you click on All Programs, it’s going to open this menu here. 

If you deselect that checkbox there, then it’s going to open the All Programs list there. I like to have it set that way.

For the rest of these settings here, you can see all of the stuff that you can change, and you can see how you can change the Start menu and customize it so you can build a Start menu that you like.

Now if we go to Taskbar, this is probably the main reason why I like using StartAllBack because the free programs that I've had a look at on this channel in the past few videos didn't give me exactly what I wanted regarding the taskbar.

So what I like to do is to have it as small as possible like that, and I also set the icon margins to the smallest as possible. Now I know this might not be for everyone, but I'm showing you what I normally do.

Then you have the option of changing the Start button icon. I like the normal Windows 11 icon, so I leave that selected. 

So one of the reasons I like StartAllBack is to make the taskbar small. The second thing is you can change the location of the taskbar, which I like to have at the top. 

The reason I like to have it at the top is because most of the time in Windows we spend time in the browser and we're navigating tabs here at the top of the screen, so it's just much easier to navigate to the top of the screen here and get to icons and the Start menu that I want to access, as well as the system tray icons here, compared to having the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and then moving the mouse all across the screen.

That's just my personal preference, and you can leave a comment down below telling me how wrong I am and how bad that actually is. I don't care; that's the way I like to use my computer, and you can use your computer the way that you like.

Now another thing that I like with regards to the taskbar styling here is to turn on dynamic transparency, and that makes the entire taskbar completely transparent. Now you also have some other options here like combining the taskbar buttons; you can always combine them and hide the labels as well, only when the taskbar is full or never.

If you set it to never, then you'll have these labels on the taskbar icons; I always hide the labels. I don’t like to have it centered in the screen here, so I leave that off as well.

Then you have the option of segmenting these taskbars here; I don't like that either, so I just leave that turned off as well. Now if we have a look at the tray icons here, which are the system tray icons here, you can choose the flyout style, so you can have the Windows 11 flyouts or the Windows 10 flyouts or the Windows 7 flyouts where it's possible.

I like to have the Windows 10 flyouts selected where I have the Soundbar and that Network icon there, but you also have the option of changing this to Windows 7 and it’ll use the Windows 7 flyouts for these icons where it’s possible. I’m going to leave that on Windows 10.

But now you have some more options here where you can turn the system icons on or off. So first off for the taskbar, if you wanted to enable the search icon, if I click on that icon there and I enable the search box, you’ll see that I have the search icon here. I always have that hidden, but I just wanted to show you that you can change that here.

It’s the same with the task view button, and it’s also the same with the widgets; I don’t use any of that, so I just leave that unselected. Then you have some other options here, so for example, you've got the language switcher; if I click on that and set it to off, you can see that the language switcher has now disappeared, and it’s the same if I go ahead and disable the action center or the notification pane, then the notification icon is also hidden.

Now you can do that with all of these other options here as well, if you wanted to hide these icons here, you can turn off the other system tray icons and you won't see those as well, but I just leave that set to on. 

If you want, you can just select this setting here, which will always show all of the app icons without hiding it with this arrow here, so I’m going to leave that selected. Then if we go over to the Explorer section, you can use the Windows 11 command bar, the Windows 10 ribbon, or the Windows 7 command bar.

Now that is the File Explorer here, so if I set this to the Windows 10 ribbon UI and we reopen it, you'll see that is the Windows 10 ribbon, which is what I like using, but you can also use the Windows 7 command bar, which is just this file, edit, view, and tools option here.

So I like to have this set to Windows 10. Then you can have this M effect on top; you can use the classic search box, new icons, and the new icons is basically what’s added with StartAllBack.

If I disable that and then open the File Explorer again, this is like the classic Windows 10 icons, but I think the new icons look pretty good. So I always leave that enabled.

Now you can use the classic context menus, which is referring to this right-click menu here. You can restore the control panel applets, which is basically if you go to control panel and you for example choose system, it’s going to take you to the old system page and it won’t redirect you to the Windows 11 settings.

Then you have this option to colorize everything with the accent color in Windows, which is what I like to have selected as well. Now, you might see that although the taskbar is transparent, as soon as I click on the Start button, it uses the accent color of the light theme of Windows.

So if I go and I enable the Dark theme in Windows, I change this to dark, then you can see it’s transparent until I click on the Start menu, and then it changes it to the accent color or the background color that I have selected here.

If we go to the advanced section, if you wanted to, you can also use a custom Start menu color and custom taskbar color, and if you select these options, you can also choose between clear, blur, and acrylic.

So one of the things you can do here is to select both of these items and then change the set to clear, for example, which will basically give you this see-through type of Start menu here.

For this video, I'm just going to deselect that and then use the previous version that I had here. Then you also have some other settings here where you can store and display recently opened programs and display recently opened items, which are these settings in the Start menu here.

Now if you go to the About page here, this is where you can enter a license key, and as you can see, you get a 100 days where you can use StartAllBack for free. So 100 days is plenty of time for you to test out this program and see if it will work for you. 

Like I said, I've been using it for a month now and I haven't had any issues with it yet. So if you want to use StartAllBack as a shell replacement on Windows 11, you can go ahead and try it out for yourself.

If you're wondering how to get back to the StartAllBack settings, you can right-click on the taskbar and then select properties, which will take you back to this configuration, or you can go to the control panel and then you'll have this StartAllBack entry here that you can select, and then you can also get back to the settings that way. 

I don't know if you knew about this, but you can actually customize the context menu in Windows or the right-click menu, as it's more commonly referred to. You can add custom items to it and change the way that it looks, and it's actually quite easy too. 

Now, you probably already know this, but the context menu in Windows 11 isn't exactly user-friendly and it's one of the many things people hate about the stock Windows 11 experience. I mean, as you can see here, Microsoft replaced some of these options with icons, and to get access to the old context menu, you need to click on the show more options button here, and that just annoys me.

But that's why we have Shell, a powerful, highly customizable free and open-source context menu manager for Windows. The best part is that it works on older versions of Windows too.

So if you're still using Windows 10, you can use Shell to create your own custom context menu too, and that's exactly what I'm going to be showing you in this video. 

So let's start by downloading and installing Shell. To do that, you can visit nof.red and hit the download button here, and you'll be taken to the downloads page. Now you'll have a few different options; you can either click on the download button here to download the installer, or you can use one of these package managers to install it.

Now I would suggest that you take a look at these commands because this website seems to go down from time to time, so you won't be able to download the installer in that case. You can run PowerShell as an administrator on your PC and then just use one of these commands to install Shell. 

For example, you can execute this Winget command, and that’ll automatically download and install Shell to your computer. But if you choose to download the installer like I'm doing here, you can just run it, go through the normal installation prompt, and then once it's finished, you'll have Shell installed with the default theme, which is what you see here.

So right now it doesn't look any good though, does it? I mean, you can see from the taskbar that I have dark mode enabled, but the context menu is still white for some reason. But don’t worry; I’ll show you how to fix that soon. 

For now, let's just see what's changed. So you'll probably notice that Show More Options is now gone, and I have access to all of the normal context menu functions, but there are a few other ones added too. For example, I have this Terminal menu here where I can launch PowerShell or CMD. 

I have this File Manager menu with a few very handy shortcuts like