Users often criticize Windows 11 for continuing an alarming trend by Microsoft. The company has continued to market its products and services within Windows through intrusive means such as lock screen ads and pre-installed apps. The issue is even worse when you buy from an OEM other than Microsoft because each OEM usually installs its own pre-installed bloatware. It creates a subpar experience where a brand-new Windows 11 machine can feel heavy straight out of the box.

It's worth noting that Microsoft is far from the only tech company to do this. Apple does something similar by promoting other services in the Settings app of a brand-new device. The company also pre-installs its own apps on new devices, and the number of pre-installed Apple apps now takes up nearly two pages on an iPhone home screen. But even with this in mind, Microsoft is one of the worst offenders. Is there anything you can do to trim down Windows 11? To find out, we completely re-installed Windows on an HP Pavilion Plus 14 laptop and opted out of everything we could.

Setting up Windows 11

Here's everything I was able to disable after the fresh OS install

Windows 11 privacy settings.

To start, let's review what setting up Windows 11 was like while keeping a keen eye out for unnecessary services. For one, Windows 11 requires a Microsoft account to set up — at least somewhat. There are a few workarounds, and we have a guide on setting up Windows 11 without an account for your reference. But for the purposes of this article, I signed in to a Microsoft account. That's because I don't expect the average consumer to go through the extra hoops required to set up Windows without an account or even know it's possible.

So, from the beginning, installing Windows 11 requires agreeing to the end user license agreement and logging in to a Microsoft account. On my laptop, an optional page to register my device with HP appeared — but it was auto-filled with the personal details from my Microsoft account. HP makes it harder for people to opt out of device registration than to opt in, which isn't ideal.

Then, we get to the truly optional settings. Privacy settings, such as tailored experience and advertising IDs, can be toggled on or off. Anytime you see a phrase that has personalized, tailored, or advertising in it, a company is trying to track you and serve you ads. I turned off every toggle on the privacy settings page, and you should, too. After that and a bit of a delay, Windows 11 booted up for the first time.

What still remained

Pre-installed apps and ads can still be found in some places

After actively deactivating all I could, I was optimistic about the Windows 11 experience but ultimately disappointed. I first checked the Windows Start Menu to see if there were any ads or pre-installed apps inside. I found the typical suite of pre-installed apps from Microsoft, which is fine. But I was also met with third-party apps, like Spotify, Adobe Offers, Booking.com, and Dropbox. I opted out of personalized experiences, so I'm not sure why Microsoft thought installing random third-party apps was a good idea.

There was the usual bloatware from my OEM, HP, which I've come to expect from even the best Windows laptops at this point. Another prompt to register my device with HP appeared, and let me be clear: asking two times is one too many. However, the most frustrating part of the experience was seeing an ad for my 2023 "Xbox Year in Review" on the lock screen when I opened my laptop. Even after turning off all the optional preferences in the Windows 11 setup process, unwanted experiences kept popping up.

I will note that you can turn off the lock screen ads by going into the Settings app on Windows 11 after the setup process. It seems like an unnecessary extra hassle, probably by design.

The verdict

Turning off everything is better than not, but it's not a perfect solution

The Windows 11 Lock Screen with ads disabled.

After turning off all the optional privacy settings during the setup of Windows 11, plus turning off a few features in Settings, there were still intrusive parts of my brand-new operating system. My experiences throughout this article don't even include some other annoyances, like how Edge will try to stop you from installing the Google Chrome browser.

There are some tricks that savvy users can employ to make Windows 11 a little bit better. Installing the operating system without an internet connection, or via a USB stick, can be helpful. But the technical know-how required rules this out for casual users. Overall, I was pretty disappointed by how much bloat was still in Windows 11 after opting out of everything during the setup process.