How To Install Windows 10/11 + Best Tips & Steps To Make Windows Usable (Privacy Edition)

The first step is creating your installation media. That means you need a USB stick that’s at least 8GB, ideally 16GB or bigger though. You also need the disc image for the Windows version you want to install – I’d recommend Windows 10 IoT LTSC personally, but if you must install 11, I highly recommend installing the IoT LTSC version as it removes a lot of bloat automatically. You can find the ISO files you’ll need on Massgrave’s website, which will be linked below. To put the disc image on the USB stick you need a bit of software. On Windows the best tool for that is called Rufus. You select your USB stick, select the ISO file, then click start. Rufus will then ask you if you want to create a local account automatically (yes), set the region to the same as your current system, and disable data collection (yes). If you are installing 11 instead you’ll also get the options to remove the requirement for an online Microsoft account (1000% yes), remove the RAM/Secure Boot/TPM requirement and disable auto bitlocker. Then you just sit back and wait for it to set up the drive.

Next, plug the stick into the system you want to install Windows on and boot from it. If the system doesn’t have any other boot media (i.e. you aren’t reinstalling Windows or using an old drive that already has an OS on it) then it will almost always boot from the USB stick on its own, but if you do have an OS or other bootable media installed, you’ll need to press a key on your keyboard when you power the system up to load the boot menu – often F8 – so you can select the drive.

Once the installer boots, click “I don’t have a product key”, “Custom Install”, then if it’s a new drive click the drive, then “New”, and next. If the drive has been used before I like to remove all existing partitions to not make a mess of things, then “New” and next. It’ll then install and reboot – if you used Rufus’s setup options you’ve saved yourself a lot of hassle as it’ll load straight into Windows. If not you’ve got a lot of “No don’t spy on me” menus to click through. I HIGHLY recommend you use Rufus’s features. Finally you’ll need to activate Windows. If you have a key tied to your Microsoft account and don’t mind them having a worrying amount of control and data collection over you, that’s an option. Or you can use the Microsoft Activation Scripts. Just copy this (admin) powershell command (right click on powershell and click “run as admin”, let the window open, press one, then give it a minute and that’s it – you’re activated! For life!

Now that is Windows installed and activated, but if you’ll stick around for another minute or two I have a few great tips and tricks for how to make Windows more usable, and to get your system up and running faster and easier. The first is to use a Windows Debloat tool – Chris Titus’s one is pretty great especially as it doubles as an easy program installation tool too. From here you can install web browsers, game platforms, development tools and so much more all with one click. You will want to head to the “Tweaks” tab though as this is where the magic happens. You can set dark theme, set This PC to be the default thing you see in Explorer, show hidden files and extensions, and then stuff like remove all the Windows bloat. You can also click “AppX Removal” to remove all the stupid stuff Microsoft often includes – however if you’ve used the LTSC IoT Enterprise version of Windows, basically none of this is installed anyway saving you a step of removing it! 

The other tip I have is to use Ninite, which is an installer you can create and keep handy (even on your USB stick after writing Windows to it) to let you instantly install all the programs you could need. Just check the boxes for the programs you want – web browsers, utilities, 7zip, messaging, media, documents, games, dev tools – then click “Get your Ninite”. It’ll download one file, and you just need to run that one file and (assuming you have internet access) it will find the most recent version and install it without any further input from you. 

There’s plenty more we could talk about in stripping out the worst parts of Windows and how I set things up, but I want to keep this as concise as possible so I’m going to leave it there. I hope this was helpful, if you want to see more videos from me hit the subscribe button and check out more videos on the end cards, and thanks for watching!

::Links::

Windows 10/11 LTSC ISOs: https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links

Rufus: https://rufus.ie/en/

Microsoft Activation Scripts: https://massgrave.dev

Windows Debloat Tool: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

Ninite: https://ninite.com/