@F22 Simpilot

You all the way through, are right about it all in your above post. but you dip a bunch rant'y-conspiracy'esque at the end there. lets not give readers reason to think we are a bunch of paranoid jaded users afraid of change. WE ARE, but they use it to discredit us. I think it best if we just stick to reporting our software related findings, tweaks, fixes, so those who want to preserve or alter their experiences can do so succinctly without manditory enlightenment to the jade and scars we long term users have endured to get here.

Yes the corporate paradigm should be resisted, protested, and changed. But people who are already learned in such strife are those who come here. Preaching to the choir just slows down any good they could be doing with that time. A little bit is okay to remind viewers and enlighten, but, you kinda made it half your post. X_X; Yes Microsoft and Chrome are 100% diabolical in their efforts to control the cyberscape it is true but if anything, try to stick to what we can DO about it, more then re-illustrating what even modern people living under a rock are on their own being forced to realize. I was a bit too rant-y in some of my earlier posts in this thread myself. Lets focus on how we the pioneers will fix it for other pilgrims coming to explore this path in their futures.

Im super excited to hear that Atlas OS is in fact the right path to take! I have -not yet- followed its scripts to modify win10 or 11, that info you provided about the no-telemetry, was GREAT NEWS! thank you for that tidbit! and good warnings about the update situation too. I have "heard" that it disables restore points, because core elements of system restore request access to programs that are effected by the script labotomy of win10/11.

This was in fact true for my Original "Windows10 AME" install i did back in i think 2021, on a pc i needed to remote into from across country to maintain. That is what Atlas OS was based off of. its basically the prior version of Atlas OS. and i had to system-file-checker to get programs from the win10 restore disk, onto the system so systemRestore could do its magic. But having restored those files i did not actively 'see' any of the telemetry or anything more then the mtf and system volume information folders get written to more often.

1:1 backups, with robocopy, or folder sync, or disk imaging, or raid. is really the best way.

The "Magic" of system restore is just a copy of the registry, and changes registered with your installed programs lists. and maybe a few EXE's and DLL's in key folders like c:/windows or c:/users/ other places you specify beyond that. It can be useful exactly as you say, but is no protection from drive corruption, and a virulent virus (Who even gets these any more? be more sus of what you DL and open!) will ruin your other softwares on disk or even attack the mainboard of the pc or disk itself. you'll want those full backups in such a case! If you love it, Back It Up! System Restore, is a bandaid, it only works on the surface, and not even on all surfaces. compared to a whole clone body when something goes wrong inside.. Grab an offline duplicator dock. I had to buy this one. Amazon.com (±32$usd External Hard Drive Bay, USB 3.0 to SATA IDE Dual Bay, Dock Offline Clone Support 20TB 6Gbps for 2.5in 3.5in HDD SSD IDE US Plug) as my old star-tech version was only able to handle 10tb drives. To some its costly to clone, and learning to use raid can be cheaper. But it costs SOO much more to drive-recover with some place you have to mail your drives to.... Once i used a company called "300 dollar data recovery" and they did actually recover my data, but the total cost was like 530$ ish, because i had to buy a new drive anyway, and pay shipping back and forth. So if your data is precious... it better be on more then 1 drive! Compressed or imaged or just raw copied!

Anyway, If you learn more useful key points fiddling around with Atlas OS, or how to preserve the use of Steam on win7 rigs, we will be waiting to hear it! ⋆^-^⋆ <3 We are here for each other, and everyone new who comes in to aid the cause of stability with our ageing OS(s)!

Speaking of that, here is the robocopy batch script i use for backing up my ram-drive, I've a different one for actual Shutdown, but its -mostly- the same. my ram-drive is used mostly for a cash of all the things that Constantly write to disk, like chrome portable temp files, 7zip temp files, firefox portable temp files, some of my game and chat browser temp files, my windows swap file, and just basically everything that would wear out SSD ink, or slow down the system from constant HDD arm writes. As well as the occasional steam game of choice so i get the fastest load times. Don't use this straight as is, just get good ideas for your own from it! I Share from my experiences! ⋆^-^⋆

Code:
 @echo off

SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion


set src=Z:


set dst=C:\Zb


set log=E:\Za


set ttl=Z-2-Zb


set ymd=%DATE:/=-%


set tim=%TIME::=;%


cd /D "!src!"

for /F %%^" in ("""") do (


  echo %%~" %~nx0 run from %%~" %0, Starting...


)


REM to Escape Echos special chars:  %%  ^^  ^&  ^<  ^>  ^|  ^'  ^`  ^, ^;  ^=  ^(  ^)  [for  !  its  ^^! ]


echo RoboCopy /Mir "!src!"  -^>  "!dst!"  Log@  "!log!\RoboCopy_!ttl!_%ymd%@%tim%.log"





REM skip temp fldrs: ROBOCOPY "!src!" "!dst!" /MIR /A-:SH /TBD /R:5 /W:5 /NP /V /XD "!src!\$RECYCLE.BIN" "!src!\.Trash-1000" "!src!\Temp" "!src!\Tmp" "!src!\System Volume Information" /XF "!src!\swapfile.sys" "!src!\pagefile.sys" >"!log!\RoboCopy_!ttl!_%ymd%@%tim%.log"



ROBOCOPY "!src!" "!dst!" /MIR /A-:SH /TBD /R:5 /W:5 /NP /V /XD "!src!\$RECYCLE.BIN" "!src!\.Trash-1000" "!src!\System Volume Information" /XF "!src!\swapfile.sys" "!src!\pagefile.sys" >"!log!\RoboCopy_!ttl!_%ymd%@%tim%.log"





echo Dir "!dst!" Log@ "!dst!\FolDIR_%ymd%@%tim%.txt"


dir "!dst!" /d /x /s >"!dst!\FolDIR_%ymd%@%tim%.txt"




timeout /T 2 >NUL


echo attrib will be skipped at this time, due to my recurring errors with select files damaged parts of the destination disk.


echo .


echo .


echo .


REM echo attrib  C:\Zb  inprogress...


REM attrib -r -s -h C:\Zb /s /d


REM echo attrib  C:\Zb  Complete.


for /F %%^" in ("""") do (


  echo %%~" %~nx0 run from %%~" %0, Complete.  Exiting in 10 seconds...


)


echo .


echo .


echo .


echo see C:\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\Shutdown\@ShutdownZ2c-Zb.bat for the robocopy batch backup process that occurs during shutdown.


timeout /T 10 >NUL


exit