Downloaded Win ISO from MAS, used Microwin to create a debloated Win image on a USB drive, but after installation, Win update center won’t work at all

[odoniset]

I’m a complete noob in tech, but decided to try this popular Christ Titus tool for creating a debloated windows image on usb drive, for fresh installation. I caught viruses so I nuked everything to start fresh. I followed his video guide, step by step. “Microwin” tool, Windows 11 pro ver. Successfully installed the image on USB, I used his own built-in option instead of Rufus.

In his guide, he claims it takes 5 min for this debloated windows installation. And it doesn’t ask for Microsoft account, skips many steps etc. But it took me 13 min instead of 5 (i have a new gaming laptop with very powerful CPU, also SSD ofc), and it still asked me for my MS account (so I had to turn the internet off to create local acc) and I also had to manually turn off all the telemetry during the installation stages. So something is definitely wrong.

After the installation complete, I checked that onedrive, copilot are not installed indeed, so it means it actually worked?

But the big problem is that Windows won’t update itself. It says ‘something went wrong’, even after restarting a few times. The internet is connected wired (I can use browser).

Can you tell me what can be wrong and how to fix?

’winver’ command says I have 25H2, 26200.6584, windows 11 pro. It’s not activated yet though, can this be the problem? I planned to use MAS for activation later. Or maybe the issue is that I have windows HOME licensed key written inside my BIOS (it came preinstalled and activated with my laptop), and now I reinstalled the Pro ver, maybe this causes the issue or something?

Btw, the windows ISO I downloaded was from September 2025 because it’s the ‘stable release’. I wanted this ISO because MAS (massgravel) site uses official Microsoft servers for downloading the stable ver. ISO, while the ‘latest release’ from March 2026 uses some third party server so I didn’t want to do that. Anyways, can this be the problem with my ‘something went wrong’ situation in windows update center? You see, I can’t download the latest release from Microsoft directly cause it’s geoblocked for my country, downloading via MAS website works though, but again, the older stable release only.

Also, for some reason the entire system is in my language, but only the Windows Security settings is fully in english, lol. My language is listed first in the language and region settings, I don't get what's wrong then.

I need to reinstall windows again, can you give me tips, where did I screw up?

[ghost]

did you use rufus?

[odoniset]

Microwin dosen't exist inside of winutil anymore

sorry I don't understand what you mean, here's the screenshot. I launched WinUtil via powershell command, stable branch (recommended): irm "https://christitus.com/win" | iex

[ghost]

Microwin dosen't exist inside of winutil anymore

sorry I don't understand what you mean, here's the screenshot. I launched WinUtil via powershell command, stable branch (recommended): irm "https://christitus.com/win" | iex

Yeah it's not called microwin, microwin is something else

[ghost]

Also i can't really help you since Win11 Creator works just fine for me updates work and oobe goes by normaly

[odoniset]

Yeah it's not called microwin, microwin is something else
ok my bad, I guess he renamed it or it's a new version, but the common idea remains the same, WinUtil has the tool to create a debloated (?) windows ISO? Because, well, it's still Chris Titus, and as I said, I used this and after clean install, I had no copilot, no onedrive, no other junk, so it's similar to Microwin I guess. But my problem is that I have error in the windows update center, it won't let me update windows, I'm trying to figure out why

[ghost]

Yeah it's not called microwin, microwin is something else
ok my bad, I guess he renamed it or it's a new version, but the common idea remains the same, WinUtil has the tool to create a debloated (?) windows ISO? Because, well, it's still Chris Titus, and as I said, I used this and after clean install, I had no copilot, no onedrive, no other junk, so it's similar to Microwin I guess. But my problem is that I have error in the windows update center, it won't let me update windows, I'm trying to figure out why

Win11 Creator disables updates before OOBE, so updates won’t run during setup. After OOBE is complete, it re-enables updates. There may have been an issue, so to fix it, run WinUtil, go to the Updates tab, and click Default Settings, which should restore updates after a restart.