Why ‘debloating’ Windows is not a good idea (and what to do instead)

A decade or two ago, before solid state drives were standard and when system memory was expensive, this sort of fine-tuning could result in measurable improvements. On modern PCs with sufficient system resources, you will see marginal benefit at best from this sort of indiscriminate brush-clearing, and you run a significant risk of causing additional problems that will cost you far more troubleshooting time than you’ll save in an entire year. I went through the issues reported by users on one popular GitHub-hosted script and found a staggering range of complaints, ranging from “breaks sleep mode on my laptop” and “all my desktop icons turned black” to “most things on my pc are now broken.”  

Then, of course, there’s the risk that one of these scripts will add malicious software, as one popular script was discovered to be doing earlier this year.

Using a “debloated” installer created by some random guy with a YouTube channel is just not a good idea. As an alternative, you can use a utility like NTLite, which allows you to create custom installation images and (if you pay for a license) modify a currently installed Windows installation to remove features, apps, and services. It’s an extremely powerful tool, capable of rendering an otherwise functional PC completely useless if you disable the wrong feature. It’s appropriate for full-time administrators and hobbyists who aren’t afraid to break things. If you’re just trying to make your PC easier to use, it’s overkill.