I noticed you've enabled LastOS Startmenu sorting. Are you using a special MenuDefaults.ini? Or you're not too concerned about the remaining "unsorted" ...?
I am not concerned about unsorted links at the moment, I've opened this box of springs before - so I am being careful not to have to put more time than I should, at least until I get some holiday time to do so.
I've captured the (standard Desktop) Startmenu defaults for the 4 flavors of Windows 10 (Home & Pro, x86 & x64) -- and it looks like these shortcuts are pretty much identical to Win10's predecessors. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture those weird shortcuts that link to Metro apps. I haven't been able to figure out how to read them much less (re)create them. Short of just storing physical copies of those Metro shortcuts and sorting those copies, I'm not sure how else to deal with them. I wonder how Classic Shell-Startmenu deals (or dealt) with them? So I started thinking that with Windows 8/8.1 the default Startmenu shortcuts were all but invisible anyway (unless one installed Classic Shell's Startmenu of course) and sorted alphabetically with Windows 10: how important is it that the default Startmenu shortcuts get sorted. Classically they had their own folders (Accessories, System Tools, etc.) which most folks had no trouble finding. So instead I've added an option (ssControlPanel) that disables sorting of default Startmenu item (to an Advanced one, of course). It automatically defaults to disabled for Windows 8 and above -- users can still toggle it back on as desired. I'll keep working on updating the "MenuDefaults.ini" file, of course; but that new option makes it a lower priority. That and I still haven't figured out a way to deal with Metro app shortcuts in the Startmenu (and Metro apps now work just fine with Desktop which is something never worried about before). I've also updated the SetupS suite to recognize Windows10 (it used to see it as "Win8") and utilize the new binary OS flags with the exception that "0" remains "Any" as it was before (and maintains its backward-compatibility). It just didn't make any sense having it represent "none" -- as no app would get installed, especially any app that doesn't have the OS value set (which is the majority of them). So in the new scheme, 0 is effectively the same as 15 ("All"). And fixed one annoying bug related to some more of the changes made to the new 7-Zip: ssEditor's "screen scrape" for reading the progress percentage had quit working. (It used to be at the end of 7-Zip's stdoutread; now it's at the beginning ). -- Edit -- And here's the announce post for this release.
Freezer, when using Win10 Enterprise LTSB N x64 and I sort the start menu with SetupS 16.1.20.0, a "Windows System" folder remains. I'm adding 2 screenshots, one with default Win10 menu and one with Classic Shell menu, for clarity: And this folder remains whether I select "Ignore startmenu defaults" or not.
Haha, it's always a strange beast when I try it again.. I did make a Win10 lite that's sort of stripped but then I thought who would purely run Win10 as desktop OS? The strength of Win10 would also be the ability to use it on touch devices, etc. So then I thought make a build with touch and stuff enabled, but with modern apps removed. But then I thought maybe that's weird. So now I'm not sure how to approach the Win10 beast as far as lite or custom builds. Any ideas?
Yeah, the best way to think of it is who the audience is for, once you have that you'll know what you can removed. Then you need to think about what removing it will actually give you or problems it may cause - sometimes if your only saving a few MB is it really worth removing the feature? As for the modern apps side of things if we can find a way to make that optional instead of integrated by default it would be worth while as a SFX .exe that extracts the extra files and adds the registry info etc etc, I do NOT use modern apps at all, but know people who do so the option would be nice post install (much like we did with MCE back in the XP modding days). The worse things about win 10 are it's Defender as any MS update will put the damn thing back and re-enable it then the action center bugs you until you end up leaving it enabled by default and just suffer it hogging resources and asking stupid questions about "if you meant to run this app" or just accidentally slipped and double clicked on it. The way Win 10 only runs services while they are being used is reason enough that you do not need to disable them, so modding win 10 really is a hard nut to crack, that is the other reason I just gave up and just switched to using sysprep, because the benefits were not enough to make the actual OS better than the vanilla, when the post install tweaks were enough.
The Win10 Enterprise LTSB build is by default a bit smaller already than, say, Win10 Pro; when I only sealed the installed updates and removed cache files and then converted it into an .esd it was only around 1.87gb. So one option would be to just remove the above mentioned things plus Action Center, Defender and some other annoyances. It would not be that much of a lite build but more a custom build with fewer annoyances. I was thinking of using Win10 Pro instead of Enterprise. I think the thing about removing those modern apps is that the Store won't offer them once you hard-remove them with NTLite, so any built-in modern app you remove you can't get back otherwise (I believe). I personally don't use modern apps either. I just checked and even though I removed the modern apps I can still sign in with an online account (or create one) so at least that will keep working when removing store apps and access.
I think I might have a way to install them post install if we want to attempt to reduce the OS and have them as an addon pack (either through ssWPI or a SFX - if it works), I know one you can just remove, Calculator, it sucks and you can include Win 8's Calculator (like the ssApp one I have in the repo).
We need to mention SetupS in every post so that Freezer won't feel forced to have to move our Win10 discussion to another thread. I just did So I wonder if a good approach would be to leave the "Store" appx in, or if you say it can be put back in, to remove the Store app also (along with all others) so that no Store/Modern stuff shows up in Start Menu etc and so no one would be tempted to even use modern apps/store unless they consciously put it in via that installer you're talking about. Sound good?
I'll have a play around with adding them back post install first, no need to get ahead of ourselves, I may even use SetupS to install it
LOL Actually, I'm surprised SetupS sorted the Startmenu as much as it did. For example, "Accessories" I would've thought that remained behind as well. So that option might be a little buggy still (and maybe ignoring the defaults regardless if you're on Win8/10). Also, I've not much looked into dealing with those weird Modern shortcuts yet; but it looks like there's a mix of Modern & Desktop shortcuts in that folder as well. Interesting.
Glenn, I'm gonna try that script out, but I realized I had already stripped most of the apps out of the Win10 Ent base image I was using. I was trying out a Win10 Pro (updating it via sysprep) so I can test it on that better. Freezer, yeah the sorting is pretty good already, and since I was trying out Win10 Pro I'll test it there too because the Win10 Ent LTSB image is different than Win10 Pro. The LTSB version is meant for stability and so it will not get new features introduced (just security type updates). So I'm thinking some things will be different (for example it has no Edge browser).
SetupS is quite good at not putting shortcuts to dead items, so the fact Edge is missing isn't a problem for it.
Huh. At the time, I had only gotten my hands on W10 Home & Pro (x86 & x64). Never knew Ent even existed. Still, would be curious if that makes any difference -- I'm thinking the sorting will get worse with Home/Pro -- LOL
Yeah, the regular Enterprise images are CB (current branch) releases which receive feature updates plus critical/security updates and are kind of an expanded version of Pro; and then they also have Win10 Enterprise LTSB (long time service branch) which does not get feature updates and only gets updated in the feature-set semi-anually. This current LTSB version will stay on build 10240 until a newer version comes out in maybe a year or longer. LTSB does get security updates of course and the images of this branch are meant more for mission critical systems (meaning it's more stable because features don't get updated and such). The LTSB versions also don't have all those Store apps preinstalled (just a few) and they don't have Edge browser, Cortana, and all that mess. So for a desktop OS (or running it on a tablet you don't want to run store apps on) LTSB would seem the better option. With Win10 Pro you'd have to keep downloading newer images if you want to use sysprep, because if they get an upgrade type update, you can't use upgrade in audit mode and use sysprep, so that's an annoying limitation from which LTSB image don't suffer. I've been keeping updated a LTSB N image (without WMP). Enterprise LTSB is the easiest one to work with of all Win10 releases; since it's Enterprise you don't have to put in a key in the unattend file, plus being LTSB you can update it in a VM in audit mode and use sysprep to generalize. The way I understand it, every year or two, a particular CB (current branch) release will be picked to be the new LTSB version, which will then stay on that main build number until the next LTSB is chosen from another (then current) CB branch release, and so on. If you think about it, that's kind of the way it used to be with Win7 and such with regards to service packs and platform updates... so no wonder I like it best Yes, almost certainly that will be the case! It's just so annoying what default behavior MS chooses for their images. You install Win10 Pro and it's just annoyance after annoyance and you have to wrestle it into submission just for it to act in an acceptable way. Still no "Computer" on desktop by default (so people open Recycle Bin to get to their drives), then the modern Settings app (which MS tries to force you to use) can't change much without the OS being activated first, then they don't allow upgrades in VM when in audit mode for sysprep. So they won't let you customize many settings through Settings before activation, but the News and Weather appx's load crap into the start menu "relevant to you" without you having activated or confirmed who you are! MS' defaults are all about goading people into their versions of apps and their cloud storage and their apps store, etc. It's not because it works better or even well.
False Report (ssWPI Tools folder was out of date ) sorry remove post if you want to, left it here so you knew what happened.
Nah. If SetupS or one of the external tools it uses (even 7-zip) had been updated, I'd say yes; but the only changes made were to ssEditor. Although I do use (an automated) ssEditor to create the ssXFormer package.
No, I wasn't aware he'd updated it so soon. Actually, it's been updated yet again today... v16.02 (2016-05-21)
Sounds dangerous... In fact, when I save a dual-arch ppApp with internal folders _x64 and _x86, the .app file removes the _ character from _x64 in the shortcut section and so the shortcut won't install. It doesn't affect the _x86 shortcut for some reason. You can test it with CCleaner ppApp. Just take the existing one, save the .app file with new SetupS and check "Target=_x64\CCleaner64.exe" and it will have become "Target=x64\CCleaner64.exe" instead. It also changes the "StartIn" line.
