HACKER Q&A
📣 sema4hacker

Is there a list of vendors selling unbloated Windows?


I recently had to buy some Windows laptops for employees. I found a cheap Dell machine but hated that you had to have an internet connection to first log in, the login had to be a Microsoft account before you could change it to a local account, there was various bloatware, you had to find your way out of S mode, and similar irritants.

Then I stumbled upon a half-the-price-of-Dell ECOHERO laptop on Amazon. The first power-on weirdly goes to the BIOS settings, but after that it's a pleasant surprise: no internet connection required, no bloatware, no S mode, the Control Panel is already conveniently on the desktop, and so on. It's like going back in time to early Windows, yet all of Windows 11 is there. Oddly, the vendor appears to have no web site or presence other than on Amazon.

Does anyone keep a list of vendors like ECOHERO that sell machines with unbloated "minimal" Windows?

  👤 LinuxBender Accepted Answer ✓
Does anyone keep a list of vendors like ECOHERO that sell machines with unbloated "minimal" Windows?

I do not know the answer to your question but I would be highly skeptical and leery of a random name site with no website and no credentials doing custom installs. This is akin to the days of pirating Windows on Usenet with slip-streamed patches and other customization tweaks by some random person.

That said, I like the idea of a stripped down install. There are some powershell scripts to do this but they often break things. I believe a much better solution would be a well documented site that shows how to network install a windows ISO and strip out garbage during the installation in a reproducible manor. Such things do exist, I just do not spend much time in windows and do not have such links handy. Perhaps the Microsoft admins here could add to this?

👤 simonblack
It's called VirtualBox with a copy of Windows on CD from before Windows XT.

In other words, you won't find what you're looking for in today's world.

Or .... You might be able to extract a copy of a real ( = on a running hard disk from a real computer) Windows 7 or earlier installation and convert that to a VirtualBox disk-image.

Which is what I use for 95% of my Windows work and that is the occasional use of my HP scanner's scanning software when I specifically want to use its multi-sheet feeder.

👤 controversial97
A related thing to watch out for is that a new Dell laptop may have the harddrive encrypted with bitlocker, it you don't attach it to a microsoft account then you may later find you have no way of retrieving the bitlocker key so if it won't boot or you can't log in you can't get any files off the storage by other means.
👤 gregjor
Microsoft sells Windows licenses directly.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-home/dg7gmgf0kr...

Microsoft also sells their Surface laptops free of bloatware. Also available directly from them.