You don't trust Microsoft--who wrote the kernel and many of the drivers you're using--but trust some random .exe from a forum?

It's a readable .bat file, and all the executable dependencies are either from microsoft (dism, etc) or offer source code and/or hashing.

At some point you have to trust something, whether it be your software or your hardware.

Besides the telemetry stuff, it's not a trust issue. I just don't have a need for any of the packages I remove. I don't need cortana and search, I don't need Windows Defender and it's cloud features, I don't need onedrive, xbox, modern apps, etc. It's my choice, so I remove them.

> You don't trust Microsoft ... but trust some random .exe from a forum?

Perhaps the level of run-this-binary trust is about the same for both sources, but he trusts the motivation of the random-forumer more than those of Microsoft?

So many throwaway accounts. Anyway. You can probably achieve the same effect with the Remove-AppxPackage Powershell commandlet if you really want. I will also note that this "toolkit" is not just a bat file and also includes lots of cab files and other things as well.

These kinds of toolkits have existed since Windows 7 at least (NLite and friends). Some are the equivalent of putting go-faster stripes on your car, some actually work, some do things like https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/75879678600154726...

1 its bat not exe

2 its open source, as in you open bat file and read its source

Nice username. Have you checked if there's any impact on Windows Update?

Seems to be just fine (for my use). I wouldn't recommend it to everyone of course. If things break down the road I'll just reinstall. I've been running since initial W10 release without issue however. YMMV.

There are issues such as no more start menu search because of removing cortana. It's all about what you personally need.

Thanks, but it's just a throwaway user name I won't use after this post.