Engineering

Today I Hacked: Stripping Windows 10 to its WSL Essentials

Today I Hacked: Turning Windows 10 into a "Thin Wrapper" for WSL

Lately, I’ve been feeling the "bloat" of Windows 10. I use an HP Spectre, a beautiful piece of hardware, but out of the box, it’s crawling with HP-specific analytics, telemetry, and consumer-facing services I simply never touch.

My goal was simple: I want my laptop to be a thin, high-performance wrapper. I need exactly two things to work perfectly: a web browser and WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Everything else is just noise stealing my CPU cycles and RAM.

So, I built a script to strip it down safely.

Why I Built This

When I first reimaged this PC with a fresh copy of Windows 10, I immediately reached for the Chris Titus Tech WinUtil script ¹. It is an incredible tool for bulk cleanup and setting up a baseline optimized environment.

Most "Windows Debloater" scripts are black boxes—they disable hundreds of things, and you have no idea what might break. I needed something surgical. I wanted to:

Kill the HP "Insights" and Analytics: Manufacturer telemetry is often more resource-heavy than Windows telemetry itself.
Silence the "Consumer" Noise: I don't need my laptop trying to sync with a Samsung phone, routing SMS messages, or running Xbox Game Services.
Protect the Virtualization Layer: I needed a script smart enough to know that if it touches hns or vmcompute, my WSL environment dies.

Who is this for?

Developers who live in the terminal and treat Windows merely as a bootloader for Linux.
Minimalists who hate background processes and "telemetry" on principle.
Laptop Users on high-end thin-and-lights (like the Spectre or Dell XPS) looking to squeeze out every drop of battery life and thermal headroom.

My recomended workflow.

Step 1: Safety First

Before touching services, I created a full Windows System Restore point. This is your "get out of jail free" card if the OS becomes unstable.

Checkpoint-Computer -Description "Before Slimming" -RestorePointType "MODIFY_SETTINGS"

Step 2: Dump the "Running" List

I needed to know exactly what was alive on my specific machine. I ran this to get a clean list of active services:

Get-Service | Where-Object {$_.Status -eq "Running"} | Select-Object Name, DisplayName | ft -AutoSize

Step 3: Consult your AI sidekick or whoever you trust with Windows geekdom

I fed that list into Gemini with a specific prompt:

"I want a thin wrapper for WSL and browsing on an HP Spectre. Based on this list of running services, give me a string array of service names that are absolutely safe to disable (HP bloat, telemetry, consumer features) without breaking virtualization or basic networking."

Step 4: Surgically Neuter

Once I had my string array, I plugged it into my wiresurfer-win10-slimmer script. This script doesn't just kill services; it creates a service-state YAML file so I can see exactly what was enabled initially and toggle them back if a specific hardware feature (like the webcam or a sensor) stops working.

powershell script : `wiresurfer-win10-slimmer.ps1`

This PowerShell utility doesn't just "nuke" services. It follows a professional workflow: Checkpoint → Disable → Evaluate → Restore.

# Save as wiresurfer-win10-slimmer.ps1
param (
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=0)]
    [ValidateSet("service")]
    $Action,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=1)]
    [ValidateSet("checkpoint", "disable", "restore")]
    $Command,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
    [Alias("f")]
    $File
)

# The "Thin Wrapper" Target List: HP Bloat, Telemetry, and Consumer Services
$BloatServices = @(
    "HPAppHelperCap", "HPDiagsCap", "HPNetworkCap", "hp-one-agent-service", 
    "HPSysInfoCap", "HpTouchpointAnalyticsService", "SamsungAccountService",
    "DPS", "WdiServiceHost", "WdiSystemHost", "DusmSvc", "DiagTrack", "PcaSvc",
    "PhoneSvc", "SmsRouter", "TabletInputService", "Stisvc", "CDPSvc", 
    "ClickToRunSvc", "GamingServices", "GamingServicesNet", "MapsBroker"
)

function Get-Timestamp { Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMdd-HHmmss" }

switch ($Command) {
    "checkpoint" {
        $timestamp = Get-Timestamp
        $filename = "wiresurfer-service-status-$timestamp.yaml"
        $report = @()
        Write-Host "Creating safety checkpoint..." -ForegroundColor Cyan
        foreach ($svcName in $BloatServices) {
            if (Get-Service $svcName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) {
                $s = Get-Service $svcName
                $report += "  - name: $($s.Name)`n    state: $($s.Status)`n    startuptype: $($s.StartType)"
            }
        }
        "services:`n$($report -join "`n")" | Out-File $filename
        Write-Host "Checkpoint saved: $filename" -ForegroundColor Green
    }

    "disable" {
        $confirm = Read-Host "Ready to slim down Windows? (y/n)"
        if ($confirm -eq 'y') {
            foreach ($svcName in $BloatServices) {
                if (Get-Service $svcName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) {
                    Write-Host "Disabling: $svcName" -ForegroundColor Yellow
                    Set-Service $svcName -StartupType Disabled -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
                    Stop-Service $svcName -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
                }
            }
            Write-Host "🚀 Windows is now a thin wrapper. Enjoy the speed." -ForegroundColor Green
        }
    }

    "restore" {
        if (-not $File) { Write-Error "Provide a checkpoint file!"; break }
        Write-Host "Restoring from $File..." -ForegroundColor Cyan
        $content = Get-Content $File
        $currentSvc = ""
        foreach ($line in $content) {
            if ($line -match "name: (.*)") { $currentSvc = $matches[1].Trim() }
            if ($line -match "startuptype: (.*)") {
                Set-Service $currentSvc -StartupType $matches[1].Trim() -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
            }
            if ($line -match "state: Running") { Start-Service $currentSvc -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue }
        }
        Write-Host "Restore complete." -ForegroundColor Green
    }
}

The Pros and Cons

The Benefits

Reduced RAM & CPU Overhead: By killing the "Insight" analytics and diagnostic hosts, you stop random CPU spikes that usually occur during idle time.
Privacy: Fewer "phone home" packets being sent to HP and Microsoft.
Simplicity: No more "Phone Link" or "Xbox" popups when you're just trying to compile code.

The Drawbacks

Vendor Features: If you use HP's specialized "Smart Sense" or custom battery health capping software, disabling all HP services might break those features.
Manual Troubleshooting: If you run into a network issue, the "Diagnostic Policy Service" won't be there to "Auto-fix" it for you. You're back to the manual way.
No Windows Update "Orchestration": Disabling things like UsoSvc (if added to the list) means you have to be disciplined about manually checking for security patches.

The Verdict

For me, it’s worth it. My HP Spectre now feels like a specialized workstation rather than a consumer gadget. It boots faster, stays cooler, and most importantly, stays out of my way while I work in WSL.

If you try this, always run the checkpoint command first. Your future self will thank you.

Footnotes

WinUtil (Chris Titus Tech): The "Swiss Army Knife" of Windows optimization. This was my first step for initial OS setup. ↩