FlashBoot: Install Privacy-Enabled Windows 10/11 to Internal Hard Drive

With FlashBoot Pro, you can prepare Windows 10/11 installation USB thumbdrive with two types of privacy improvements (enabled independently of each other):

1) Privacy tweaks in Windows Registry. These are officially documented by Microsoft and by vendors of third party tools. These registry options are supposed to make Windows 10/11 phone home less. In our traffic recording experiments, they reduced Windows 10/11 background connections, though they didn’t eliminate such connections entirely.

2) Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy. This lightweight service can block the following types of unwanted Windows 10/11 network activity, based on your preferences.

• Windows builtins: Telemetry, Windows Update, MS Defender and SmartScreen, Cloud Logon & MDM Enrollment, Windows Push Notifications, Windows Store, Parental Control and MS Licensing.
• Separate products: Cortana and Speech API, XBox, Zune and Groove, Cloud Graphics Apps, MS Edge, MS Wallet, Skype, OneDrive, MS Office 365.
• Miscellaneous: Remote Access / Remote Help, MS Cloud Search, MS Maps and Location Services, MS News, Weather and Ads

If you tick all checkboxes within this option, this will make Windows 10/11 stop phoning home completely. That is, you can make Windows 10/11 completely quiet on the Internet — if you want to. This was confirmed in our traffic recording experiments.

1) FlashBoot Pro, click Next:

2) Choose "OS installer -> USB" in the the Main Menu:

3) Choose "Windows Vista/7/8.x/10/11 installer (UEFI) + drivers & privacy improvements" or "Windows Vista/7/8.x/10/11 installer (BIOS) + drivers & privacy improvements" in this menu and click Next.
Modern computers are UEFI-compatible, but if you need to install Windows 10/11 with privacy improvements to older computer, then choose BIOS mode instead of UEFI mode.

4) Specify ISO image file (or DVD disc, or ESD image file) of Windows setup and click Next:

5) If you wish, choose which drivers should be integrated and click Next
This step is optional and can be skipped by leaving the form blank:

6) Choose privacy improvement options and click Next:

7) The following screen is displayed for Windows 11 setup only.
Here you can enable some options to bypass hardware checks during installation of Windows 11 (you can bypass checks for TPM chip, RAM and Secure Boot).
Also here you can enable option to allow Windows 11 installation without creation of online account (i.e., enable installation of Windows 11 with local account):

8) If necessary, change volume label, or leave it as is, and click Next:

9) Specify target USB storage device and click Next:

10) Check summary information and click Format Now:

11) Wait for process completion:

12) Bootable USB storage device is ready to use. Click OK to exit:

How to update privacy options after installing Windows 10/11

If you later change your mind about what types of Windows Internet activity should be blocked, e.g. you decide to install Skype, then you can update these settings through Control Panel using "Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy" applet: