Asus VivoBook E200H Boot

Boot options for the Asus VivoBook E200H:

• On startup, as soon as you see the Asus logo, press F2 to access the BIOS menu.
• If you just want to select which device to boot, press ESC to launch the boot menu.

Shrinking Windows 10

After a clean install of Windows 10 LTSC, I get about 11 GB of free space on a 32GB eMMC. Given that there are no crapware that comes with LTSC, there is not too many options on reducing the footprint of the operating system.

I started off by turning on NTFS disk compression a.k.a. "Compress this drive to save disk space". Windows started compressing each and every file on the drive. After an hour of processing, it's still at it. Strangely enough, I didn't see the progress bar updating, so I clicked on the Cancel button. The compress option is still checked/enabled, so I'm guessing the system will continue compressing files in the background. (I hope.) I did recover about 1 GB of space, so not too shabby.

Next option is Compact OS. This basically compresses the system files of a running Windows installation.

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17763.1158]
(c) 2018 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>compact.exe /compactos:query
The system is not in the Compact state but may become compact as needed.

C:\Windows\system32>compact.exe /compactos:always
Completed Compressing OS binaries.

45819 files within 23290 directories were compressed.
10,110,547,923 total bytes of data are stored in 5,648,116,616 bytes.
The compression ratio is 1.8 to 1.

C:\Windows\system32>

From 11 GB of free space to 16 GB - pretty good.

Turned off the hibernation feature, which effectively deletes the hiberfil.sys file, for another GB of free space.
C:\Windows\system32>powercfg /h off

Another option to try is turning off System Protection under System Properties, which disables the creation of regular restore points. Looks like this is the default option in LTSC.

Windows 10 LTSC

Tired of Windows Updates popping up evey week and reducing your productivity? Switch from the normal Windows 10 Home or Pro to Enterprise LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel)?

What's so good about the LTSC edition? Well, no feature updates, no Windows Store, no Cortana, no Edge. Updated every two to three years with guaranteed critical updates for 10 years. Turns your laptop into a lean, mean Windows machine.

Tried it on my Asus VivoBook E200H notebook PC. Setup didn't even deteck my trackpad, so I have to do the clean install using only the keyboard. After first boot, make sure you run Windows Update, so the required drivers for network, audio, trackpad, display, etc. can be detected and installed, plus some security and cumulative updates.

After all that, trackpad is working again, but no audio. From Device Manager, I can definitely see the Conexant audio driver under "Sound, video, and sound controllers", so no idea why I'm getting a "No Audio Output Device is installed" error. I did notice an Intel SST Audio Device (WDM) under "Other Devices". Must be conflicting with the Conexant driver. Uninstalled the Conexant audio driver. Restarted a couple of times, and audio is back using the Intel SST (Smart Sound Technology) audio driver.

Next issue I noticed is that Windows 10 LTSC is not able to access shared network drives. I entered \\server\share into File Explorer, and got "Windows cannot access \\server". Apparently, this is because:

• Windows now has 'guest' turned off by default and/or
• Network Discovery (SMBv1) is not installed by default

To fix, I had to set the following registry key to 1:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters\AllowInsecureGuestAuth


I understand some people have to go further and enable two system services:

1. Function Discovery Provider Host
2. Function Discovery Resource Publication

Which are required for network sharing/browsing.