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Comment by vini | Hacker News Reader

Tried this on a Lenovo notebook and it will reinstall the Lenovo bloatware anyways. I think this restore the initial windows image state, but the image that came in the notebook is customized by Lenovo.

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Yes, the 'refresh Windows' feature actually reinstalls from the image OEM provided, which contains all the bloatware. You need to create a fresh install media from Microsoft (their media creation tool) and reinstall from DVD and delete the OEM recovery partitions to finally be rid of them.

I believe it's even more sinister than that. I recall reading about a feature of Windows 10 where it will automatically install OEM bloatware from separate storage on the board, even if you install from a generic Window disk/USB. I'm trying to find a source.

Edit: I cannot find a source, so take this with a grain of salt, however I do clearly remember reading it.

I believe the one you're referring to is the "Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT)" feature, which has a slot in UEFI where an exe can be put, which is run by Windows during an install.

Couple of refs for anyone interested:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29544745#p2954...

It actually runs on every boot, even worse. This is how overbroad nanny software like Computrace works, you can remove it but Windows will just reinstall it at boot.

Kind of a glaring security issue.

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