Windows Home costs 99 USD and Professional costs 199 USD. These installs are tied to the manufacturer and model information in your computer’s firmware, and won’t be affected by changing the region. Some of this software may be useful software and device-specific feature drivers.

Microsoft will still install first-party bloatware such as the Office placeholder app, OneDrive, and Microsoft Solitaire Collection to upsell you on subscriptions to spreadsheets and card games.Īdditionally, your computer vendor may push bloatware to your system after the installation through the Microsoft Store. Just don’t leave it as World or European English, or you can expect some non-obvious software breakage from time to time. Preferably the country you’re in, but you can pick one on the other side of the planet if you prefer. Some first- and third-party apps, including the Microsoft Store app, don’t work unless you select a country as your region. If you intend to create multiple user accounts on your computer, then add those before changing the region setting. You can change your device region from the Windows Settings app: Time and Language: Language and Region: Region: Country or Region. You can gleefully ignore the message and click the Skip button to bypass installing any of the bundled bloatware.Īfter completing the installation, you should change to the correct region settings.

( Screenshot.) This error message indicates that OOBE doesn’t recognize your region setting. You should expect to get an error message saying OOBEREGION during the installation. As a result, many online and some offline services, including the Out of Box Experience ( OOBE) service, just don’t work. Neither the Windows Installer program nor Microsoft’s servers know what to do with it, even though the installer offers it as an option. World and European English are not a normal format (“locale”). That’s all it takes complete the rest of the installation process as usual. ( Screenshot.) All it takes to avoid all the bloatware is to set the region setting to English (World) or (Europe). The first three questions you’re asked during the installation are your preference for language, time and currency format (region), and your keyboard or input method. With two clicks during the installation, you can prevent them from being installed altogether. All you need to skip installing the bloatware is to, temporarily, choose an unrecognized region during the installation.ĭepending on your device region, you’re required to click 15–30 times to uninstall the bundled bloatware on a new installation Annoyingly, some of the bloatware even reinstalls itself if you’re unlucky with the timing of background updates. When you install Windows 11 (or 10), Microsoft will preinstall additional third-party bloatware such as Candy Crush, Netflix, Spotify, and others based on your region (“inbox apps”).

Windows 10 inbox apps download