De-Enshittify Windows 11: Start Fresh with a New Install of Windows 11 ⭐

Note: This is an early peek at a chapter from my next book, De-Enshittify Windows 11. This book will be available for purchase soon, hopefully by the end of February.  --Paul

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When you buy a new PC or reset an existing PC, Windows 11 initially boots into Windows Setup and displays its Out of Box Experience (OOBE), a multi-step process through which you configure the system for use.

This process is called a clean install, which is ironic as there's nothing particularly clean about it: Microsoft uses the Windows Setup OOBE to force and coerce customers to configure Windows 11 in ways that benefit the company more than its users. And a "clean" install of Windows 11 will be enshittified with Microsoft's forced telemetry, preinstalled crapware, forced Microsoft account sign-in, and forced Microsoft Edge usage whether you use the browser or not.

Fortunately, there is a better way to clean install Windows 11. Or, I should say, there are a few other ways in which to install Windows 11 in a cleaner configuration than Microsoft would prefer. Which you choose will depend on your needs and wants. Your choices include:

Clean install Windows 11 using a Microsoft software image that was lightly modified by a third-party utility. You can use a tool called Rufus to modify the stock Microsoft software image to bypass the Windows 11 hardware requirements and the forced Microsoft account sign-in. Afterward, you can clean the Windows 11 installation manually or, using a third-party tool, semi-automatically.
Clean install Windows 11 using a heavily modified software image that eliminates all the problematic behavior. In addition to Rufus, you can use a tool called Tiny11 Builder to create a clean, de-enshittified installation of Windows 11 with none of the problematic behaviors we see in the stock installation. This install is so clean that you may need to install some Windows 11 in-box apps from the Microsoft Store afterward. But I think it's worth it.

This chapter describes both methods for creating a cleaner or truly clean Windows 11 installation.
⚠️ Warning: Please note that a clean install is destructive, meaning that any existing Windows installation on the PC will be erased and overwritten, as will any of your installed apps and personal data. Unless you're doing this on a new PC or a newly reset PC, you will need to back up anything important first.
➡️ Learn more: If this approach is undesirable, jump ahead to the De-enshittify an existing install of Windows 11, where you can learn how to de-enshittify Windows 11 without performing a clean install and losing everything.

? The problems with the Windows Setup OOBE
The Windows Setup OOBE is the first thing you see when you start a new PC for the first time or have just reset Windows 11 to bring it back to its initial as-new state. So it is perhaps not surprising that Microsoft has evolved this experience over the years to introduce some bad behaviors.  Among them:

Enforced...