Thanks for writing this. I completed a few installs using your guide. This is still definitely doable even in 2018. Lots of trial and error but the learning was indispensable. I’m patiently waiting for your Redstone v1803 update though!

I thought I’d just drop a few notes I took while following your walkthrough. Perhaps it could help others along the way. I omitted a few things because they didn’t apply to me (yet):

• I saw that Blackbird “broke things” on 1709. I went ahead with it anyway. It got so bad that it was hard to audit what was exactly causing breakage (e.g. sluggish UI, things taking way too long to load/respond), to the point where I needed to start over. I made it a rule to not use any scripts that haven’t been updated since 2016. Everything went fine after that. I stuck with Tron, ShutUp, WPD, and Ashampoo’s Antispy because those have been getting regular updates.
• ReclaimWindows10 is another powershell (last update Nov 2017) script for drastically reducing bloatware and telemetry. Easy to use because all the functions are clearly itemized with “enable/disable.” You can easily backtrack by commenting what you want or don’t want, and then rerunning the script.
• Tron can indeed take a long time. After doing my first run, I ran subsequent runs with the “shutdown” switch and let it do its thing at night.
• Some baselines will prevent you from writing to any removable drive if BitLocker isn’t enabled. You’ll be denied, but if you’re new to this, you won’t know why at first. Try: Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\BitLocker Drive Encryption\ and just know what the options do here.
• You might need to tweak screen saver time outs via Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Interactive logon: Machine inactivity limit if you think 15 minutes is too short.
• I just stuck with Windows Defender and its suite of tools.
• Sidenote: Looks like I’m a new fan of Algo VPN! I’m surprised with how quickly you can deploy this on AWS, Digital Ocean etc. This was pretty enlightening.

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