Switch to Windows 10 LTSC! Here’s How I Set it Up

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Windows 10 LTSC is amazing and I can’t believe I didn’t install it sooner. There’s just no nonsense, no bloat. There’s no copilot, no cortana, no teams, no recall, no ai nonsense, etc.

In this video, I’ll show you how I set up Windows 10. For the interface, I use a combination of RetroBar and Open-Shell
github.com/dremin/RetroBar
github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
Here’s my dark theme pack for RetroBar: www.deviantart.com/madhale/art/RetroBar-Dark-Modes-Windows-95-2000-XP-Etc-1053142400

Download the photo viewer:
www.winhelponline.com/blog/windows-essentials-offline-installer-download-links/

I use Powershell (as an admin) to configure and install things. Here are my scripts. You can modify them or change them… The idea here is that you can take what you need and build your own script.

First, I install Chocolatey (hopefully winget will replace this one day) and I enable “yes to all” like this:

Install Chocolatey

# Install Chocolatey
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

#enable yes to all
choco feature enable -n allowGlobalConfirmation

Install programs with the latest versions using Chocolatey

choco install 7zip -y
choco install notepadplusplus -y
choco install firefox -y
choco install dotnet-6.0-desktopruntime -y

Install more programs using these commands… you can find them here: community.chocolatey.org/packages

Here are the tweaks I do to my UI:

# Enable Dark Mode
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize" -Name "AppsUseLightTheme" -Value 0 -PropertyType DWORD -Force
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize" -Name "SystemUsesLightTheme" -Value 0 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

# Move Start Menu to the left
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" -Name "TaskbarAl" -Value 0 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

# Change Explorer View Mode to Compact
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" -Name "UseCompactMode" -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

# Set Explorer to Open This PC First
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" -Name "LaunchTo" -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

# Show Hidden Files
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" -Name "Hidden" -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force
# Show File Extensions
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" -Name "HideFileExt" -Value 0 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

# Don't hide file types for known files
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" -Name "HideFileExt" -Value 0

# Do not show recent folders in Quick Access
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer" -Name "ShowRecent" -Value 0

# Do not show recent files
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer" -Name "ShowFrequent" -Value 0

# Hide Search Box
Set-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search -Name SearchBoxTaskbarMode -Value 0 -Type DWord -Force

# Remove Widgets/weather/news

$settings = [PSCustomObject]@{
    Path  = "SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Dsh"
    Value = 0
    Name  = "AllowNewsAndInterests"
} | group Path

foreach ($setting in $settings) {
    $registry = [Microsoft.Win32.Registry]::LocalMachine.OpenSubKey($setting.Name, $true)
    if ($null -eq $registry) {
        $registry = [Microsoft.Win32.Registry]::LocalMachine.CreateSubKey($setting.Name, $true)
    }
    $setting.Group | % {
        if (!$_.Type) {
            $registry.SetValue($_.name, $_.value)
        }
        else {
            $registry.SetValue($_.name, $_.value, $_.type)
        }
    }
    $registry.Dispose()
}

# Restart Explorer to apply changes
Stop-Process -Name explorer -Force
Start-Process explorer

Then, if you want to make Firefox your default browser, use this:

#set firefox default
$associations_xml = @"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DefaultAssociations>
  <Association Identifier=".htm" ProgId="FirefoxHTML" ApplicationName="Mozilla Firefox" />
  <Association Identifier=".html" ProgId="FirefoxHTML" ApplicationName="Mozilla Firefox" />
  <Association Identifier=".pdf" ProgId="AcroExch.Document.DC" ApplicationName="Mozilla Firefox" />
  <Association Identifier="http" ProgId="FirefoxURL" ApplicationName="Mozilla Firefox" />
  <Association Identifier="https" ProgId="FirefoxURL" ApplicationName="Mozilla Firefox" />
</DefaultAssociations>
"@

$provisioning = ni "$($env:ProgramData)\provisioning" -ItemType Directory -Force

$associations_xml | Out-File "$($provisioning.FullName)\associations.xml" -Encoding utf8

dism /online /Import-DefaultAppAssociations:"$($provisioning.FullName)\associations.xml"

TOC
01:36 – Unlock Windows 10 LTSC with this key
04:02 – Correction From the Last Video
04:48 – My Simple UI Tweaks
05:26 – Powershell Script to Install Programs
10:36 – Install a Photo Viewer
14:29 – The Microsoft Store

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