Imagine you do a clean install of Windows using the official Windows 10 or 11 ISO file from Microsoft and once you get to the desktop it looks like this. There’s no Microsoft Edge or OneDrive, no pre-installed bloatware apps like the widgets or Copilot for example, and the start menu is clean. On top of that, if you open the Task Manager and look at the process count, it’s also way lower than a stock Windows install. And then, when you look at the privacy settings, it’s all disabled and Windows is just fast, smooth and really responsive without you even having to do anything to get it to that point. So you might be wondering how that’s even possible. Well, listen up and don’t skip through this video because I’ll show you exactly how you can do it too.
Microsoft allows you to add answer files or unattended files to Windows images or also called Windows ISO files. Now these answer files can be used to modify various Windows settings in the Windows image and they are executed during different phases in the Windows setup process. So if you’ve ever used Rufus to create Windows installation media and you saw this screen with these options like remove the Windows 11 hardware requirements and disable privacy questions and so on, they achieve that by including an answer file in the installation media that executes those commands during the Windows setup. In my opinion, the best thing about an answer file is that it’s very safe. First of all, you can see every single change it’s going to make to the Windows image by inspecting the answer file. There’s also no need to download custom ISO files from unofficial sources because you insert it on the official Windows 10 or 11 ISO file that you download directly from Microsoft. And then lastly, it’s also not dependent on any third party tools and it’s an official Microsoft feature that’s normally used to make mass Windows deployments easier, like in corporate environments for example. Now you can create your own answer file with the customized Windows settings you want and this is one of the best places you can do it at. You can use this website here to generate an unattended answer file and as you can see there are a lot of settings and tweaks to choose from. Once you’ve selected your preferred tweaks and settings, you can just download the XML file and then add it to your Windows installation media and I’ll show you exactly how you can do that later on in the video. Now I’ve created my own answer file that I’ve started using to automate and streamline my Windows installs and that’s what I want to share here with you. It basically automates a lot of the tweaks and scripts created by projects like the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility and Tiny 11 for example.
The answer file works on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 and I’ve tested it on the Pro version of Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 23H2 without any issues. My motivation for this project is to get an LTSC-like or even better experience on the Pro and Home versions of Windows 10 and 11 without having to worry about getting an LTSC license. Also, I have to start looking at making Windows 11 better since Microsoft announced that they won’t be supporting Windows 10 anymore starting late 2025 and I hate the stock Windows 11. Now the answer file automates many parts of the Windows setup and saves me a ton of time because I don’t have to run a bunch of programs and scripts every time I do a fresh install of Windows. It’s already de-bloated and customized with my preferred settings as soon as I get to the desktop. Now look, it would be impossible for me to create a single answer file that’ll please everyone, so instead I’m supplying you with one that basically removes everything except Windows security and is over tweaked if you will, so you can just edit the file and remove the tweaks you don’t want. Additionally, you can also add more tweaks or customizations if you have the know-how, but please note that I’ll not provide any form of support for any changes you make to the file. So, you’re probably wondering how to get it and how to use it, so let me show you. You need to go to the UnattendedWinstall GitHub page(link is here) and I’ll leave a link to that in the description of the video. Now once you’re here, you need to find this autounattend.xml file and then click on it. It’ll open this page here where you can inspect the file, but you need to download it and you can do that by clicking on this little arrow over here. That’s the download button. It’ll download the file and save it on your computer. Next, you need to include this auto unattended answer file on your Windows installation media so it can be read and executed during the Windows setup.
Now I’m going to show you a few ways to do it and if you need any help with something I mention in this next section of the video, I’ll leave some of my guides on these topics in the description of this video so you can go ahead and check out those videos if you’re unsure on how to do any of these things that I mention here. Now the first method is to create a bootable Windows installation USB first and then just copy the answer file to the USB drive. So you’ll need to create a Windows 10 or 11 bootable installation USB drive and you can do that with the media creation tool from Microsoft or Rufus for example. But please note, when you’re using Rufus, don’t select any of these checkboxes in the customize your Windows experience window you see here as it creates another answer file and we don’t want that because we already have an answer file. Now once you’ve created the Windows installation USB, you can just copy the autounattend XML answer file to the root of the USB drive. Next, just boot from the USB drive, do a clean install of Windows as normal and the scripts will run automatically. Now for method two, you can create a custom Windows ISO file with the answer file embedded into it. So to do that, download the Windows 10 or Windows 11 ISO file depending on the version you want. Then next, download and install AnyBurn. Once that’s done, in AnyBurn, select the edit image file option and then navigate to and select the official Windows ISO file you downloaded earlier. Click on the add button up here and then select the answer file you downloaded earlier or Alternatively, you can just click and drag the answer file into the AnyBurn window. You should then see it included as part of the files on the Windows ISO file. Now just click on next and then click on create now and then you should be prompted to overwrite the ISO file. Just click on yes and then once that’s complete, you can just close AnyBurn. Now you can use this ISO file to install Windows on a virtual machine or you can use a program like a Ventoy to create a bootable USB flash drive and then just copy the edited Windows ISO file onto it. Then you can boot from the Windows installation USB, do a clean install of Windows as normal and the scripts will run automatically.
Now as an example, I’ll be installing Windows 11 23H2 on a virtual machine and take you through each part of the script as it executes. So once you boot from the Windows installation media, before you get to the first setup screen, you should notice some command prompt Windows flashing briefly and then closing. This part of the installation is called the Windows pre-installed environment and the commands that were executed there are these commands which removes the Windows 11 system requirements. From here, you can go through all of the normal installation prompts like you always do, select the drive where you want to install Windows and then just start the installation.
Once the initial part of the Windows installation is complete, your computer will restart and then it enters into the specialized phase. Now you’ll see a bunch of PowerShell and command prompt Windows appear and disappear and you just need to leave the computer to finish executing these scripts. Now the specialized phase is this part of the script and this is where most of the changes and tweaks are executed in my version of the answer file. These tweaks include a bunch of registry entries being created and PowerShell scripts being run including some of the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility scripts that de-bloats Windows and removes a lot of these apps and also lowers the process count in Windows. Now you can read through the answer file to see exactly what’s being executed, but basically these run synchronous commands that you see here, they reference scripts that are located further down in the answer file. After this phase, your computer will restart again and then you’ll be taken to the onboarding experience. This is also called the out of box experience or OOBE and it’s this part of the script here. Now this is also straightforward and you need to go through all of the usual prompts and select your preferred settings, but you will be prompted to create a local account. You won’t be able to log in with a Microsoft account here and I don’t recommend that you use a Microsoft account anyway, but once you get to the desktop, it should take a few seconds and then you should see another window appear running a bunch of tweaks and then your computer will restart again. Those are the last commands that will run from the answer file and it just modifies the registry for the current user profile to ensure that all the values are properly set. I had to include this as some of the registry values that are created for the default user profile during the specialized phase are changed or reset when loading into a new user profile. So this just ensures that all of the registry values for the current user are correctly set. And this part of the script will also run once every time you create a new user account on the computer.
Now finally, you’ll be able to use this custom version of Windows. So as you can see, this answer file basically strips out everything from Windows and a lot of the Windows settings are disabled by default. I understand how this can be a bit too much for some people, but the way I see it is that you have two options. You can treat this installation like a blank canvas and just download and install what you need back into Windows. Or you can download a code editor like VS code, notepad plus plus or my favorite Cursor to edit the answer file before including it in your installation media. So the reason I like using cursor is because it has AI built in and I found it really helpful during the creation of this file, as I really don’t have a lot of experience with scripts and programming. So if you want to edit the answer file, I suggest using cursor and then you can press Ctrl and F to search for a specific term. Like let’s say you wanted to add notepad back into Windows, for example, then you can just search for notepad and remove any entries related to notepad and save the file again. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl and L or click on this icon up here to open the AI chat, change it to GPT-4o or whatever is the latest GPT version, and then just ask it a question. For example, you can ask it something like, show me all of the entries related to notepad or help me add notepad back into the Windows installation and the AI will help you figure it out and show you how to get it done. And in that way, you can customize the file to your liking. Then once you’re happy, you can just save it and include it in your Windows installation media like I explained earlier. Now back to the Windows installation. Due to the fact that there is no browser installed, you’ll have some trouble browsing the Internet. So first, make sure you’re connected to the Internet. Then right click on this file on the desktop called Launch-CTT-WinUtil.ps1 and then click on run with PowerShell. This will automatically launch the Chris Titus Tech Windows utility and then you can use it to download your browser of choice, even Edge if you want that and any other program that you might need for that matter. Now once you’re done with the utility, you have the option to delete this file from the desktop or you can just keep it there for easy access. That’s up to you. Now this answer file is not perfect by any means, but it does what I needed to do and saves me a lot of time during my Windows installs. I’m also planning on adding more tweaks to it as time goes on and if you have any feedback or suggestions for me, please feel free to leave them in the comments down below.
