Here are some other tweaks I am liking…
Add this to your hosts file and all the Windows 10 call-home gather your data in the background stuff is over…
#BLOCK Microsoft Telemetry and data sending
#-----------------------------------------------------------
0.0.0.0 vortex.data.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 vortex-win.data.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 oca.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 watson.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 watson.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 redir.metaservices.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 choice.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 choice.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 df.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 reports.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 services.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 sqm.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 watson.ppe.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 telemetry.appex.bing.net
0.0.0.0 telemetry.urs.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 telemetry.appex.bing.net:443
0.0.0.0 settings-sandbox.data.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 vortex-sandbox.data.microsoft.com
(hint: always block things with 0.0.0.0 in your hosts file instead of 127.0.0.1, with 0.0.0.0 it will timeout immediately)
Remove built-in apps…
–Run Powershell as admin
–Run this command (without quotes) “get-appxpackage | select PackageFullName”
–Now you get a list of all the universal apps built into WIndows 10
–You can remove the ones you don’t want, here using Bing Health and Fitness as an example…
–remove-appxpackage Microsoft.BingHealthAndFitness3.0.4.322_x64_8wekyb3d8bbwe
–This is especially helpful for apps that will call out for data in the background
If you’re like me and don’t do stupid things on the Internet with your DAW, you don’t really need antivirus but Win10 will force Defender on you. Kill it for good with this registry setting…
-----[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender]
-----“DisableAntiSpyware”=dword:00000001
By default, MMCSS will leave 20% of your CPU power for other things besides your multimedia task. You can put the squeeze on it by modifying this registry key…
-----[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile]
-----“SystemResponsiveness”=dword:0000000a
This setting reduces it to 10%, but you can play around with the values, just remember to translate the percentage to hex. The default of 20 is hex 00000014.
Again, these are all try at your own risk. Every Windows computer is different.