Freebook N100 - a clean and minimal installation of Windows 11

Laptops Freebook i3/i5/N100/150
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After I unpacked the new freebook, the windows installation had a few issues - some drivers were missing and the windows license could not be activated.

Because of this I did not trust the windows installation, so I decided to install windows again.As I did not trust the chuwi windows version, I did not download it from the chuwi website, but using the software provided by Microsoft.

Normally Windows comes along with a lot of software I don’t use [bloatware] and there is a lot of telemetry [spying] that Microsoft put in its software.

For this reason I decided to install windows with a so called unattended answer file. What it will do is to remove the bloatware and telemetry based on scripts available on the internet.

This github project provides a few answer files. I picked the minimal version, however including security e.g. Defender.

You can read in the README section of that project how to include the answer file into the Windows iso file.

Then I prepared using ventoy the following software onto a usb drive:

  1. the windows iso file with the answer file included
  2. a directory with the drivers, that I have downloaded from support.chuwi.com. I have decompressed the rar file.

For ventoy not to see the driver directory as an iso, you have to create an empty file called .ventoyignore in that directory.

Also prepare a usb mouse, as during/after installation the trackpad will not work due to a missing driver.

Then boot with the ventoy usb and install the windows iso. I already installed other partitions of Linux and ChromeOS on the same disk. As I wanted to keep this, I decided to install windows into the existing windows partition, and not overwriting the full disk.

The process of installation takes some time to execute the answer file scripts.
After a few reboots it finished. Then I started device manager and installed the missing drivers. I had to install at least 10 devices with missing drivers. After rebooting, I still had no sound. Then I installed this driver to correct it.

Finally I have a minimal clean installation, no bloatware and no telemetry, with around 27GB used, after recent updates applied. The number of background processes was less than 100. But still the cpu overhead is more than in Linux, between 5-7%.

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Interesting and thanks for sharing. My Freebook N100 Windows 11 works fine except sometimes random switching tablet/desktop mode after which I have to reboot.

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your issue can be related to a faulty installed sensor driver or a faulty sensor. Try to delete and reinstall the Memsic sensor driver.

The correct driver can be downloaded from the chuwi support site.

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Most of the windows 11 should have “reformat reset” option, which able to have clean version as factory reset. Mouse Click start → power button → hold shift key and click the Restart option *hold shift button till the screen showing the Menu option for reset windows system.

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A reset PC does not have the same effect as a clean install.

There may be software installed by the OEM [Chuwi] that is not removed by a reset. Also a reset does not debloat and disable telemetry.

So if you don’t trust a windows installation by an oem like Chuwi, always do a clean install.

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fax.