By Martin Stut, 2016-04-27

If you want to get a quick start on O&O Shutup to stop your Windows 10 computer from telling Microsoft everything you do, without spending time to understand how the O&O developers meant things to work, here are the points:

Get the Current Version

  1. Download the current version from https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 , saving the downloaded OOSU10.zip file e.g. to your Downloads folder. Don't skip this step, because a three month old version is not checking for new settings of the newest update of Windows 10.
  2. Unpack (extract) OOSU10.ZIP, e.g. by right clicking in an explorer windows and executing "Extract all", checking the box "Show Files after Extracting". This will open an explorer window.
    OOShutup-Explorer

Run it

  1. Log in as a user with administrative rights.
  2. Double click on OOSU10.exe.
  3. Accept the UAC request for administrative rights.
  4. Click on the "Actions" button near the top, second from left.
  5. Select "Apply all recommended settings"
    OOShutup-ActionsApply
  6. Say "yes" to "Do you want to create a system restore point". Depending on your computer's setup, restore points may not be enabled at all. In that case, follow the prompts to enable system restore points.

If you are not technically inclined, you can stop now. All changes recommended by O&O for every computer have been made.

Optional: Check advanced settings

Scroll through the lines with red switches and think whether or not you want to flip them. If you want to know what a certain line would do, click on the line's name to open a short description. The good readability of these descriptions is one of the reasons why I'm recommending O&O Shutup.
Lines to consider to flip (set to green) might be:

Close it

  1. click on File / Exit.
  2. If asked, reboot your computer.

That's it. In my opinion, this is as easy as it can get. Thanks to O&O, especially for the "Apply all recommended settings" option.