Is there an equivalent tool for Windows 11? I've used MSMG Toolkit and NTLite in the past to slim down the ISO, but it was a very manual and tedious process, and I still have to babysit the installation itself. I would like a tool that takes a predefined config file of what to remove, and then creates a fully unassisted installer. Obviously bypassing the online account shenanigans.
I stumbled upon this tool [1] recently that does not slim down the image like you might want to but gives you a lot of options what to remove via an .xml file
[1] https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
From my understanding, as someone whose job was Windows deployment for a few years, is... kind of? Admittedly my experience is with deploying to a lot of machines at the same time rather than to several machines more frequently.
You can use audit mode from the OOBE of a fresh install, install your apps and changes, then run sysprep /generalize to clear the GUIDs and return to the OOBE - capture the image after the generalize but before reboot into the OOBE and the image will be a generalized install. All you need to do is restore the image (using a disk cloning software, dd from *nix, or a network server like FoG) create a ESP to boot from, and you have an image that can copy to any device at the speed of the disk or network.
Microsoft has a Deployment Toolkit (MDT) which can take a Windows install image (a WIM) and copy it to a machine then run other tasks as part of a Task Sequence. This is handy for small to medium sized businesses: a WIM can be a sysprepped image like mentioned a paragraph up, so you can include big changes like removing features or installing apps and updates. But then it can be configured, using a Task Sequence and/or an XML file, to do things after the Windows install like join a domain, create a local account, install certain apps, run Windows Update, etc. It also supports driver detection and installation. MDT can be accessed using a USB boot drive or a PXE network boot (Windows Deployment Services, WDS) and then you just choose the Task Sequence you want then walk away for an hour. But there is a learning curve: people have whole careers specializing in this stuff. There is a more expensive and powerful MS solution called SCCM that can do much the same stuff (and a lot lot more) but the concepts are the same.
What Microsoft are pushing toward now is what I'll call the "smartphone model" - IT departments don't reimage a machine as soon as it shows up, but instead register the device with a MDM like Intune. When the end-user receives the device, they are forced to use a corporate Microsoft account and then the desired configuration is pushed from the cloud. Without a MDM configuration ("Windows Autopilot") you can use a tool called WICD to create a configuration and save it as a "Provisioning package" which, when on the root of a USB drive that's inserted during the OOBE, will do the same configuration steps. I call this the smartphone model because according to MS, the Windows "factory reset" feature is all you would ever need rather than a traditional wipe-and-reinstall.
What I would advise for a home poweruser is to build a Windows image 2-3x a year in a virtual machine: do all your updates and tweaks and app installs in a VM, then capture the image using your disk cloning tool of choice (I do a bootable Linux session plus dd piped into gzip), preferably to a network share. Then use that tool on your target devices to restore the image: it will write at about 112MB/s over gigabit Ethernet and after the reboot will install your drivers and make the install unique.
I believe MDT as a whole has been deprecated too. You can't use the Windows 11 ADK for the WinPE image and they're very much pushing toward the Provisioning Package / Intune method.
Is there an equivalent tool for Windows 11? I've used MSMG Toolkit and NTLite in the past to slim down the ISO, but it was a very manual and tedious process, and I still have to babysit the installation itself. I would like a tool that takes a predefined config file of what to remove, and then creates a fully unassisted installer. Obviously bypassing the online account shenanigans.