We fixed Windows 10 - Microsoft will HATE this!

[pythonmegapixel]

1 hour ago, ntrsnkk said:

Since we dont have the Windows Store anymore, what are we going to do if we need an App out of it like iCloudDrive ? Cant find the .exe anywhere to download it manually. Is it even possible to install ?

If it's not available outside the store then no, you cannot install it. That's just a piece of functionality you sacrifice when you choose to do something like this.

[ilikeap]

This is a new GUI Debloat tool based on farag2 Sophia PowerShell scripts for Windows 10 versions 2004/2009.

 

[davidgamerthumbs]

The AME video was great in explaining what the guys had to do to stop most of the telemetry.

I am so surprised how much stuff was taken out in AME edition and what it broke.

 

 

[LazerSharkGaming]

On 9/5/2020 at 11:14 AM, GabenJr said:

Windows 10 is known to come with a lot of telemetry and other “features” that reduce privacy in order to work as “software as a service”. Thankfully, there’s an effort to ameliorate this…

 

 

Check out Windows 10 Ameliorated: https://ameliorated.info/

I had an awesome idea, a bootable thumb-drive version of ameliorated edition
(or you can use a usb disk)

[DickJohnston]

To me this seems like a perfect solution for Edit PC. Also another good reason to ditch Adobe. I mean, I believe Resolve, Photo Lab, Reaper etc. still work, right since I don't see them using Windows telemetry API's

[unsorted]

Having to use Telegram to download a privacy-conscious Windows should be an aversion to a great majority of the people who might be interested in this, surely?

 

 

[Morris_lee_9116]

no DirectX 12 is a big no for me, several of my games run on DX12 (Modern Warfare 2019/Monster Hunter World/Insurgency Sandstorm)

[Magmarock]

Hey Linus I bet you can't get Resident Evil to work on this version of Windows.

[Vishera]

On 11/21/2020 at 6:14 AM, Morris_lee_9116 said:

no DirectX 12 is a big no for me, several of my games run on DX12 (Modern Warfare 2019/Monster Hunter World/Insurgency Sandstorm)

Windows 7 to the rescue  

In Windows 7 DX12 works in some games,and in some it doesn't,

But all of these games work on 7,The developers made sure it works on 7,and it's included in the system requirements.

They all run well.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

On 9/6/2020 at 4:01 PM, Hawx said:

Your research clearly sucks then. Otherwise you would've quickly discovered that the triangle of "Microsoft's main revenue source", "Microsoft's product strategy", and "Microsoft's privacy policies" certainly doesn't equal some melodramatic grand conspiracy where Microsoft went out of their way to harvest your personal information. Microsoft is now a cloud services company, and Windows is nowhere near its main focus.

 

Microsoft actually goes to great lengths to scrub, anonymise and aggregate inbound data into non-identifiable sample points, and has internal teams dedicated to maintaining the privacy of its users. Again, it's not a magical black box where there's some bad actor at Microsoft going "yes please the data from Radium_Angel yum yum"

 

Legally you agreed when you installed the operating system.

 

Yeah sure mate, do you mind emailing me this data point: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-windows-diagnostic-data-events-and-fields-2004#microsoftwindowsinventorycoreinventorydevicepnpadd

It ensures that the windows update you're about to install doesn't brick your system due to an incompatible driver. Oh yeah, just email me this for every single update.

 

When the next feature update is available, be sure to email me the these checksums:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-windows-diagnostic-data-events-and-fields-2004#microsoftwindowsappraisergeneralchecksumtotalpicturecount

They make sure the update you're about to install isn't corrupted or malicious. 

 

What? You lied in the last telemetry email you sent us because you were lazy??? Now all of our data is useless! If only there were some way to make sure you weren't trying to send us garbage data:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-windows-diagnostic-data-events-and-fields-2004#telclientsyntheticheartbeat_5

 

Whilst that firing sucked, QA/QC staff have their limits, especially with the billions of different hardware and software combinations out in the wild. You might remember there was a feature update (1809) a few years ago that resulted in data loss for a tiny percent of people. Microsoft used its migration telemetry that's designed to track data loss scenarios:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-windows-diagnostic-data-events-and-fields-2004#microsoftwindowsmigrationcoremigobjectcountdlusr

and combined it with the other telemetry points to figure out it was a problem with the Known Folder Redirection feature being enabled and old versions of OneDrive. It's unlikely this scenario would've been covered by manual internal testing, and diagnosing the problem would've been incredibly difficult without the ability to correlate system data.

 

Okay, you're trying to portray all the privacy-concerned people as stupid conspiracy theorists. Let's read Microsoft Privacy Statement then:

 

https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement
 

So, let's read closer:

1) "Microsoft uses the data we collect to provide you with rich, interactive experiences. In particular, we use data to: [...]  Advertise and market to you, which includes sending promotional communications, targeting advertising, and presenting you with relevant offers".
2) "In carrying out these purposes, we combine data we collect from different contexts (for example, from your use of two Microsoft products) or obtain from third parties" (WTF???!!!) "to give you a more seamless, consistent, and personalized experience..."

3) "we manually review short snippets of voice data that we have taken steps to de-identify to improve our speech recognition technologies. This manual review may be conducted by Microsoft employees or vendors who are working on Microsoft’s behalf."

4) "Not all personal data processed by Microsoft can be accessed or controlled via the tools above. If you want to access or control personal data processed by Microsoft that is not available via the tools above or directly through the Microsoft products you use, you can always contact Microsoft at the address..."

 

In plain English:

1) Contrary to your claims, MS does collect your personally identifiable data to offer contextualized advertisement,

2) MS uses some "third-party data" for this contextualized advertisement (not sure who those "third parties" are, but I guess I rather not know this)

3) Yes. those... *** can record your voice and let actual people can listen to it, including people not working in Microsoft.

4) So, basically, this is a trick to make sure that you do not have an easy access to all your personal data stored by Microsoft or you cannot easily "unsubscribe" from all data collection. So, technically, the option is there (so the authorities are happy) but in fact it is not, for 99.999% of users.

 

So, in this respect, Microsoft is not any better than Facebook or Google. Actually, this is worse, as at least Facebook and Google services are free of charge, while Microsoft products cost money.

 

And these are the things which Microsoft can do LEGALLY, according to their legal documents. And, as we all know, Microsoft has never cared about the law in the first place, so, there is no certainty about whether the privacy toggles which exist in Windows actually do anything (OK, you can treat this paragraph as a conspiracy theory, I can give you that. NOT the rest of what I wrote, which is purely commenting on Microsoft Privacy Statement).

 

And please don't say anything how this diagnostics data helps to smooth the updates. It doesn't. I've been using Linux for a decade, and those guys somehow manage not to brick your system after an update without this clandestine data collection, while Windows updates cause problems every single freaking time. Somehow, if you don't treat people like idiots and rely on bug reports which people themselves filed, you still can ensure decent user experience.

[WhitetailAni]

1 hour ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

while Windows updates cause problems every single freaking time

No, it doesn't.

I updated from the base Windows 10 version to 2004 without a hitch.

Sure, it took about an hour, but nothing was screwed up.

2004 to 20H2 went fine.

All of my reinstall-Windows problems have come from me doing something dumb.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

14 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

No, it doesn't.

I updated from the base Windows 10 version to 2004 without a hitch.

Sure, it took about an hour, but nothing was screwed up.

2004 to 20H2 went fine.

All of my reinstall-Windows problems have come from me doing something dumb.

That was obviously an exaggeration. But not a big one, IMHO.

[Hawx]

On 1/25/2021 at 7:14 AM, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

Okay, you're trying to portray all the privacy-concerned people as stupid conspiracy theorists.

Please take your strawman elsewhere. I have no problem with privacy concerned people, I have a problem when that energy is misplaced into nonsense like this due to people being unable to read privacy documentation correctly. My post was specifically around windows telemetry and how it ties to Microsoft's goals as a company, you've managed to write a reply to an argument I wasn't making.

Quote

Let's read Microsoft Privacy Statement then:

Just an FYI that Microsoft's privacy statement is a global document that aggregates literally everything Microsoft does across all of its business units, from the Microsoft website, to Azure Cloud to Bing Ads. At its top level, it's designed to be a catch-all, so new Microsoft products and projects don't need to go to legal and ask for a new document to be drawn up. For example, all of Microsoft's open source projects on Github that collect debug and/or usage information are covered under the exact same privacy statement. 

 

When exact privacy information about a Microsoft product is provided, that information takes precedence over what's stated in the top level policy. For example, Windows is provided with an extensive section + documentation that covers all data collection & usage at a per-feature level, therefore it's far more relevant than the top level policy.

 

It's for the same reason that businesses using Azure Cloud or Office 365 to hold personal & financial data don't glance at the ultra generic top-level Microsoft Privacy Statement and proceed to freak out, because the information in Microsoft's trust center is specific to their use and therefore supersedes it.

 

Quote

1) "Microsoft uses the data we collect to provide you with rich, interactive experiences. In particular, we use data to: [...]  Advertise and market to you, which includes sending promotional communications, targeting advertising, and presenting you with relevant offers".
2) "In carrying out these purposes, we combine data we collect from different contexts (for example, from your use of two Microsoft products) or obtain from third parties" (WTF???!!!) "to give you a more seamless, consistent, and personalized experience..."

Instead of going "WTF???" I would recommend clicking on "Learn More", which provides proper context of the statements provided:

 

 

Advertising. Microsoft does not use what you say in email, chat, video calls, or voice mail, or your documents, photos, or other personal files to target ads to you. We use data we collect through our interactions with you, through some of our products, and on third-party web properties, for advertising in our products and on third-party properties. We may use automated processes to help make advertising more relevant to you. 

 

The "third parties" is explicitly "third-party web properties", which in this context would be, for example, you clicking on an advert on a website that integrates with Bing Ads (https://ads.microsoft.com/) and Microsoft tracking the conversion from that click + using the click for future ad personalization. 

 

The dedicated advertising section also expands on this:

 

The ads that you see may also be selected based on other information learned about you over time using demographic data, location data, search queries, interests and favorites, usage data from our products and sites, and the information we collect about you from the sites and apps of our advertisers and partners

 

Quote

 "we manually review short snippets of voice data that we have taken steps to de-identify to improve our speech recognition technologies. This manual review may be conducted by Microsoft employees or vendors who are working on Microsoft’s behalf."

I'm unsure how you can frame this as some kind of "gotcha". All of the major voice assistants and speech processors have a similar clause in the effort to improve speech recognition.

Quote

1) Contrary to your claims, MS does collect your personally identifiable data to offer contextualized advertisement,

2) MS uses some "third-party data" for this contextualized advertisement (not sure who those "third parties" are, but I guess I rather not know this)

3) Yes. those... *** can record your voice and let actual people can listen to it, including people not working in Microsoft.

4) So, basically, this is a trick to make sure that you do not have an easy access to all your personal data stored by Microsoft or you cannot easily "unsubscribe" from all data collection. So, technically, the option is there (so the authorities are happy) but in fact it is not, for 99.999% of users.

 

1) For starters, I never made that claim. My post is around Windows & Windows Telemetry specifically and the grand conspiracy that Microsoft is intentionally siphoning data from your system to show you adverts. Microsoft runs Bing Ads as well as its own adverts, so yes there's a small section of Microsoft that is responsible for traditional contextual advertising. The point I was attempting to make is that it makes up less than 10% of Microsoft's revenue and clearly isn't a company priority.

 

2) Covered.

 

3) Yes, if you use speech-recognition services or Cortana and have online speech recognition enabled, there is a chance that some random person will hear the response to validate the processing/reply. If you don't like that simply don't use those services.

 

4) There's a lot of different privacy dashboards that Microsoft offers across a lot of services, but it simply can't cover absolutely everything Microsoft does across hundreds of products and hundreds of thousands of potential data ingest points. They do offer the ability the contact them if you wish to control any additional data they have.

 

 

[Alexeygridnev1993]

6 hours ago, Hawx said:

Just an FYI that Microsoft's privacy statement is a global document that aggregates literally everything Microsoft does across all of its business units, from the Microsoft website, to Azure Cloud to Bing Ads. At its top level, it's designed to be a catch-all, so new Microsoft products and projects don't need to go to legal and ask for a new document to be drawn up. For example, all of Microsoft's open source projects on Github that collect debug and/or usage information are covered under the exact same privacy statement. 

 

When exact privacy information about a Microsoft product is provided, that information takes precedence over what's stated in the top level policy. For example, Windows is provided with an extensive section + documentation that covers all data collection & usage at a per-feature level, therefore it's far more relevant than the top level policy.

Windows 10 EULA states the following:
"Privacy; Consent to Use of Data. Your privacy is important to us. Some of the software features send or receive information when using those features. Many of these features can be switched off in the user interface, or you can choose not to use them. By accepting this agreement and using the software you agree that Microsoft may collect, use, and disclose the information as described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement (aka.ms/privacy), and as may be described in the user interface associated with the software features."

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Useterms/Retail/Windows/10/UseTerms_Retail_Windows_10_English.htm

 

So, legally, they can collect all the data described in this MS Privacy Statement (it is literally stated in EULA) with Windows. So, if they are caught red-handed collecting something more then what they describe, for example, here -  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-windows-diagnostic-data-events-and-fields-2004

 - or elsewhere, they are off the hook in legal terms (as this is just technical information, not a legally binding document). That does not look good.

6 hours ago, Hawx said:

There's a lot of different privacy dashboards that Microsoft offers across a lot of services, but it simply can't cover absolutely everything Microsoft does across hundreds of products and hundreds of thousands of potential data ingest points

Why not just offer a convenient way to chose the option of "no data collection at all, anywhere, ever"? It should not be my problem that it makes it harder for MS developers to troubleshoot software, I am not a Windows beta tester, I paid for this software either directly or by purchasing a device with an OEM Windows license (and it is not a cheap license, it costs $139 for a Home version and $200 for a Pro version).

(And that is the most offensive thing to be with regards to Microsoft telemetry. Google's telemetry is far more invasive than Microsoft's, but Google offers almost all its products services for free (= "If you don't pay for the product you are the product"). That's bad, but fair enough. Microsoft, on the other hand treats its customers as products in spite of the fact that they are paying, and paying a lot. This is not just telemetry, but also those obligatory updates in the most inconvenient moments possible, and other things. But this is perhaps a different discussion.)

 

[Maxb0tbeep]

On 9/5/2020 at 11:14 AM, GabenJr said:

Windows 10 is known to come with a lot of telemetry and other “features” that reduce privacy in order to work as “software as a service”. Thankfully, there’s an effort to ameliorate this…

 

 

Check out Windows 10 Ameliorated: https://ameliorated.info/

mac os but it runs games and somehow has even worse search functionality

[davidgamerthumbs]

the Sophia Script has been updated to Spring 2021 (21H1) edition which is nice. It looks to be updated.

 

There are like tons of options. It has a preset file which works really well to remove bloatware and has useful customization like tasks that are scheduled to remove junk.

 

Here is the link: https://github.com/farag2/Windows-10-Sophia-Script

 

There is going to be a full GUI version called SophiApp too.

 

[sonnyporn]

On 9/5/2020 at 8:14 PM, GabenJr said:

Windows 10 is known to come with a lot of telemetry and other “features” that reduce privacy in order to work as “software as a service”. Thankfully, there’s an effort to ameliorate this…

 

 

Check out Windows 10 Ameliorated: https://ameliorated.info/

I tested this "grreat" project its very stable, strong, secure all my old games runs very well and fast browsing windows explorer. Two questions:

1) I saw his website lookin' for donation for this great guy (I dont see any link to make it) its missing or isn't any?

2) I realized that I have to log as "user" with the pass to enter windows. Is there any method to change this "user" name to another and also changin the "user" folder name within users folder?

 

thanks!

 

[davidgamerthumbs]

The open-source “Sophia Script for Windows” for customizing Windows has been created for Windows 11 recently. There is still support for 10.

What this script does is change settings that are Microsoft documented so it does not break anything.

farag2, the author, is trying to create and support the best and biggest apps for tweaking Windows. His next project, SophiApp, will be a full GUI C# version of his script due maybe in November.
 

Take a look if you are interested in customizing Windows 11/10. He is very consistent with updates so check often for latest options.

 

LINK: https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows