Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind

When you install a fresh, clean copy of Windows – say, if you're switching to the LTSC edition – Ninite is here to kickstart provisioning the new OS. Ninite is a very simple, but very clever, tool that automates the process of installing a user-configured suite of apps and runtimes onto Windows. Not only will it help you get …

[eszklar]

@ Liam:

This article and your earlier one on the Windows LTSC option has been a fabulous "how-to-deal" with the forthcoming Windows10-pocalypse so kudos for this and really all your articles. A pleasure to read your stuff on El Reg. Personally I've been using Linux since the mid-90s (I think starting with Slackware) and I've gone through all the Windows OSes throughout the years and also some neat OSes like BeOS and OS/2. Like you, I'm using macOS (and installing Asahi Linux where I can) and Linux. I'm tired of how Windows has devolved over the years, but appreciate your work in helping people carry on if they want to continue using Windows. Cheers.

[Liam Proven]

Thank you very much! :-)

[karlkarl]

In some ways, sharing the knowledge of the LTSC builds was unfortunate...

Because now that the mouth-breathing public know about it and like it, Microsoft is surely going to change things for the worse... ;)

[Andy Mac]

As a proud member of the oral respiration community, I am offended by your comment.

[Tron]

Don't be elitist.

You never know. There might be someone at MS who isn't a lawyer/sadist and understands that they could massively increase their popularity and bottom line by flogging LTSC retail to anyone who wants it. Heck, they could charge more for it, and people would still buy it. Advertise it as 'Less is more', Windows Pure or Windows Lite. A rare example of Tech giving the punter what they want. And they could continue to persecute the majority of their victims with W11 Clippy AI, despite the inevitable legal and financial risks of flogging baked in AI, Recall and update issues, which will only get worse. It is just a matter of time before this crapware bites those shovelling it on the arse.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: Don't be elitist.

Won't happen. MSFT are hell-bent on "you will run the latest" at all cost. Yours, mostly.

I do wonder how the hosters of the images and scripts have not been DMCA'd into a smoking hole in the ground.

[Sampler]

Great article, been using it for over a decade, probably from reading one of the earlier articles, have told every tech I've come across to use it and no complaints.

[Doctor Syntax]

An alternative use might be to set up one of those stripped down W10s in a VM for that one application which won't run in Wine and for which there's no FOSS alternative.

[Liam Proven]

Indeed. Only snag so far: they seem to be stuck in 1024*768, even with the VBox graphics drivers installed.

Still, it'll do...

[Ken Hagan]

I think you need to poke VBox harder. The VBoxSVGA graphics controller will happily run your VM full-screen on a 4K monitor.

[Liam Proven]

> The VBoxSVGA graphics controller will happily run your VM full-screen on a 4K monitor.

Try it with W10 LTSC and report back, do, please.

I use VBox almost every day. I am well aware. Not with this version, for reasons I do not currently care enough about to investigate.

[Ken Hagan]

Tried en-gb_windows_10_enterprise_ltsc_2021_x64_dvd_7fe51fe8.iso, which called itself Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC during setup. That works fine at any resolution. It does, however, call itself Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC in control panel, which feels wrong.

[Liam Proven]

> called itself Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC during setup

Sounds about right.

Latest update on this:

I downgraded from Virtualbox 7.1 to 7.0, switched 3D passthrough back on (which caused Windows to BSOD or segfault the VM under VB 7.1) and it now works and my Windows LTSC VM can be pretty big.

Seamless mode doesn't work, sadly, though. No Windows elements display, but you can switch back again.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Windows users are meant to upgrade to Windows 11, even if that means buying new hardware because a perfectly capable PC doesn't have a TPM 2.0 module. Since 11's launch, Microsoft has blocked loopholes, and it isn't backing down on the requirements. It even removed the documentation on bypassing them.

Oh dear. How many people are going to throw out perfectly good hardware in the next few months? What a criminal waste.

[Pascal Monett]

I honestly doubt that there will be a wave of new acquisitions purely to get Windows 11.

Prices are up, Trump is doing his damndest to make international trade a nightmare and people just don't have a spare $5000 lying around to "upgrade" a computer that does its job just fine, thank you very much.

Companies will bear the brunt of the upgrade wave because compliance, but I think Windows 1 0 is going to be around for a long while - maybe even longer than XP was.

Not everyone is a gamer.

[Richard Cranium]

Users on here tend to be those with more demanding apps but even so $5000?

I bought my wife a new PC (processor unit only, re-used monitor etc) $400 and it's overkill, not used for much more than Office suite, basic photo edits and browser (but a lot of disk, she never deletes anything). She could have stayed on W10 but the machine was getting flaky. Sure Linux can extend PC life but no way would I risk moving my wife to it, and in any case her W10 hardware was old, slow and had been exhibiting problems despite upgrade to SSD a few years ago. She doesn't like change so being the go-to authority I thought I'd be in for a difficult time and was prepared for all kinds of gripes about W11 being different but she took to it very quickly and acknowledged that the new box is much faster. I set her up with a KVM switch so she could switch back to the old box if needed. She tried it but after a couple of days found she had no further need for it.

I'll be spending a bit more sometime soon for myself but still a long way shy of $5000. My replacement cycle is usually 5 years and I understand that's around average for desktops, and quite high for

laptops (the old PCs are still fairly good spec so not trashed but go to a good home). When I had a proper job my employer's policy was 5 years life for desktops, 3 years for laptops (The implication for anyone who was not given a timely replacement was that they would be being made redundant soon so let's not waste money on a new PC!)

In my experience keen gamers like to upgrade quite frequently will have moved to TPM2 equipped PCs at some time since W11 was released (almost 10 years ago) although they may have stuck with W10 until the general consensus was that it was reasonably stable.

I'd not be surprised if a lot of non-tech W10 users have W11 capable PCs but are wary of upgrading the OS (or don't know how, or don't even know their hardware is good enough).

[The Dark Side Of The Mind (TDSOTM)]

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

While LTSC versions might "buy" some years of slack, it's generally better to upgrade your PC if you're not technically inclined (or interested) to use Linux or BSD... Just sell the old hardware to those interested after you backed-up your precious data (and eventually licenses for some wares), invest in a upgradeable system (minimum 2 slots for DIMMs), buy the most affordable license for your OS (Oberlicht System) that covers your needs and move on...

In this great article (and in the comments) a Windows user can find enough hints to do a painless upgrade (software wise).

The penguinistas, the home-lab afficionados, the tinkerers - they will be happy to take that perfectly working hardware at a perfectly reasonable price to give it many years of use.

Bear in mind, though, that old hardware is less energy efficient than the newer one.

As always, the truth is out there, usually in some middle place ;)

[tiggity]

Re: One man's trash is another man's treasure.

@The Dark Side Of The Mind (TDSOTM)

As I have said in other Win 11 articles...Not everyone can readily afford to buy a new PC. Lots of W10 instances on "old" (but perfectly performant hardware) will just end up not getting upgraded: There a world of difference between businesses who will have to upgrade for security compliance reasons and home user with undemanding needs (internet, mail, video streaming, music) as not that many home users are hard core gamers that need the latest & greatest kit, most will run a bit of kit until it dies (or performance falls so much it becomes unusable*).

So, welcome to a potential bot army due to MS greed & intransigence.

* Helped many a Windows using friend & relative over the years by removing / disabling non required stuff, freeing up space etc. and returning their kit to being performant instead of sluggish (though for those that have no need for Win specific software I do try & get them to let me install Linux instead as that has benefit of less "free PC support" from me!)

[pc-fluesterer.info]

"a criminal waste" -- or an opportunity to buy HW for all kinds of non-M$ uses cheap. :-)

[LeftyX]

Here's an easier alternative

I used to use Ninite but switched over to the PatchMyPC Home Updater (https://patchmypc.com/product/home-updater), which figures out what you have installed and updates as needed -- no need to tell it what you have. Highly recommended!

[Liam Proven]

Re: Here's an easier alternative

> switched over to the PatchMyPC Home Updater

I think this looks to be a tool with a different niche.

"I don't know what I have installed but I want it updated".

Ninite is more like:

"I have a new empty copy of Windows and no strong preferences. Can I please have a free browser, messenging client, email client, PDF viewer, text editor, music player, etc.? Offer me a choice but I don't want to pay and I want to be up and running in as few steps as possible."

Bonus: it updates them, too.

[MattAvan]

Re: Here's an easier alternative

Personally I eventually made a couple of batch files that call WinGet in a loop, ie:

winget install -e -h --accept-source-agreements --accept-package-agreements %%x

Ninite is definitely more user friendly, but the selection of apps available through WinGet is incomparably better.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Here's an easier alternative

> the selection of apps available through WinGet is incomparably better.

I can believe that. It sounds promising, but I do not do enough Windows stuff to have investigated it, TBH.

[ecofeco]

Ninite is still around?

Very cool!

Yeah, I hate M$, but there are a ton of third party tools that are very, very cool and helpful.

Them, I like.

[Misterlaneous]

You don't have to reinstall fresh

I just migrated all of my windows 10 installs to ltsc without wiping data so it's definitely possible. The instructions are on the MAS GitHub. Basically, you need to acquire the ltsc iso, mount it, run "reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion" /v EditionID /d IoTEnterpriseS /f" and then immediately start setup. It should give you the option to keep everything.

[Liam Proven]

Re: You don't have to reinstall fresh

> so it's definitely possible

Yes, I did find the instructions, but it looks a little worrying to me -- and I lack an old, heavily-used Windows install to test it on. (I _am_ the Linux guy.)

A clean install is always a good thing.

The subtext here is this:

1. LTSC versions don't get major upgrades.

2. Forcing an upgrade might break your computer.

3. Periodic wipes and reinstalls are a good thing. You will need them. Get used to it.

4. This tool makes wiping/reinstalling much easier.

5. Into the bargain, you may find these free tools are good enough to eliminate some paid apps.

[Misterlaneous]

Re: You don't have to reinstall fresh

I've done it on 3 heavily used laptops without any hiccups. Considering that windows 10 isn't getting any more feature updates, making the switch for family is seamless. I have 11 ltsc as a boot option on my new laptop, but that's mainly because some of the Linux drivers for it aren't quite there yet and I'm sure as hell not going to run the fully bloated sh*t show that is 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You don't have to reinstall fresh

If by "keep everything" you mean documents, sure. But the problem is applications and their settings, which are of course not kept. Successive upgrade cruft also had a tendency to cause odd issues.

[Anonie Moose]

+2 for Ninite.

-1 for the driver installation software - I'm not saying it's bad, but I'd still recommend getting the drivers from the manufacturers website (say, HP or Asus) and failing that from the chipset maker (NVidia, Realtek etc.) before turning your attention to 3rd party solutions (or even Microsoft's built-in "cleverness") as I've seen a few blue screens and non-functioning touchpads/keyboards too many.

[John Smith 19]

Impressive stuff

That pretty much covers it.

[Grunchy]

Ghost Spectre version

I’ve got a Win10 VM set up in Virt-Manager, but I set it up using the Ghost Spectre ultralight image. I wonder how LTSC compares?

The ghost spectre included an installer for several common apps, maybe not as many as ninite. Again, I wonder how it compares?

(I run Win10 without any updates or internet access or antivirus. If I get hacked, I can just recover the snapshot.)

[Kev99]

"It even removed the documentation on bypassing them."

The Internet Archive is your friend.

[martinusher]

Reminds me of something

These informative "How to install a clean copy of Windows" or "How to install Windows 10" type articles remind me of the early days of Linux where being able to configure and build a kernel and utilities along with the device drivers you needed was a matter of necessity. This gave Linux a bit of a reputation as being difficult to work with which despite modern versions being easy to install and configure and being extremely stable and reliable has proven difficult to dispel among Windows diehards.

Now we're in the rather Looking Glass situation where Linux is a bit of a no-brainer to install and Windows has become the custom crapshoot where you never know quite what you're getting or whether its going to work (but with enough knowledge and persistence you can get something to work satisfactorily -- at least until the next automatic update gets you!).

Funny old world, isn't it?