Windows 11 - Small install

[Theldron]

Hi all,

 

Hope you are well.

 

We have quite a few of the DFE Dell Latitude 3190 that were given out during COVID. These are Win 11 compatible except the hard drives are only 64GB. Which Windows 10 I can run them as long as they are restarted daily to remove user profiles, thanks to the GPO. Though Update buildup tends to cause issues.

 

What's the smallest size Win 11 OS anyone has got?

 

Thanks.

[TheRobins]

Sorry to say they were not fit for purpose when they were built 5 years ago. I used them as cashback against new HP devices, otherwise they are doorstops.

[Olliedawg]

As TheRobins said, they are not fit for purpose, especially not as shared devices.

We still have about 15 of them & I use them as exam laptops for word processing students

[sideone]

We've been putting ChromeOS Flex on our dinky COVID laptops which works well if (like us) you have spare education licences from recycled Chromebooks. Its £30 per unit if you want to licence them, but ChromeOS Flex works pretty well. We set ours up with Entra SSO so they can use their Windows / 365 accounts to log in.

[TheRobins]

Seems like one use for them, We dont run google here otherwise would have looked at it, but they made £150 each with the HP cashback, thought that was good.

[Theldron]

Hiya, yeah I thought as much. But was hoping. Nevermind. Thanks though.

[speakercon]

We have converted all ours to Chrome flex and they work brilliantly.

[Theldron]

Sadly we're a M365 school.

[speakercon]

Sadly we're a M365 school.

So are we, setup Entra SSO so users sign in with their O365 account and then use O365 for the web to work in.

 

Once you've deployed the devices you'll never see them again they'll be so reliable, updating themselves and just working. Its a whole new world honestly.

Edited February 6, 2025 by speakercon

[CHiLL]

We are also a Microsoft school with some of these 64GB laptops. The only solution we've come up with is to use the compact OS feature: https://www.elevenforum.com/t/enable-or-disable-compact-os-in-windows-10-and-windows-11.3556/. It may only save a handful of GB at most, which still renders the laptops useless as shared devices. However, they have been mostly manageable as one to one devices. We also only deploy the absolute bare minimum to these laptops, Windows, Office, security/management software and that's about it to keep size down. Windows updates tend to suck on them though, so we've kept storage sense enabled.

[maslamdurham]

Will look in to this when the time comes. Thanks

[mdrabble]

I’m 365 as well - how do you manage ChromeOS Flex?

 

Do you need a Google account to setup and configure them?

[3s-gtech]

Ideal ChromeOS spec. Godawful Windows spec. We're a Windows/M365 school but adding Chromebooks to our estate was easy and cheap.

[psydii]

Really fascinating, on paper those Dells are the same spec as some of our Lenovo 100w g2's and Acer B311's, yet for us the Dells were often unusable slow.

 

I seem to recall that many cheaper machines were HS200 (eMMC 5.1) and the ones that worked well were HS400 (eMMC 5.1a) (something I think we found out by tearing things down and googling part numbers!)

 

If you've got 4 cores, 4Gb RAM and HS400 speed emmc, and fully entra/intune managed, with shared user profile (with extremely aggressive storage sense settings applied) Windows 11 should be fine for basic web-app based work.

Important to note, this is just straight Windows. No OneDrive client, No Teams Client, No Chrome, No 365 apps installed. No vendor software. No SCCM client, No 3rd party spyware/antivirus either - Just rely on network level filters and Defender xdr for this class of machine.

[DavR]

The mind still boggles that someone ever approved the manufacture of these devices with 64GB storage. I can only imagine they couldn't get the parts and re-used Chromebook spec stuff instead. We have a few of these sat in their unopened boxes, I might put ChromeOS Flex on them one day.

 

We do have the variant of these with 128GB storage, and they work OK, just about, as standalone Windows 10 or 11 laptops, I have a stack of them which I loan out when teachers need to do work from home. But I wouldn't use them as domain joined devices.

 

ChromeOS Flex all the way for the 64GB model I'd say!

[speakercon]

I’m 365 as well - how do you manage ChromeOS Flex?

 

Do you need a Google account to setup and configure them?

 

You need to register for Google Workspace (free), sync your users from AD/AAD, setup Entra SSO, configure the devices policies, install Chrome Flex on the device, enterprise enroll them (each device needs a £30ish license) and off you go.

 

A bit of work to get setup but then your laughing. Helps if your users already make good use of O365 on the web.

[Sheridan]

We had a batch of these as well - we used a very basic Windows 11 image and 365 on them for exams only - they only upsides are that they're small and the battery is reasonable!

[erco]

Such doom & gloom here from a year ago! It's 2026 now and IMO there is still plenty of life in laptops with 64GB ssds. I have a fleet of Dell 3190s and HP Streams (N4000,4020 and 4120) all running clean, full installations of Windows 11 Home and Pro, all running very well. Yes it's true that Windows 11 takes up half of the SSD, and running CompactOS can reclaim a few GBs. So stick in a nano-sized thumbdrive for extra storage if required, not a big deal.  I use them for teaching coding in private classes and they work quite well. The Dell 3190s in particular are great, they are robust and have great keyboard feel & action. I also sell some on the side on FB marketplace for $90-100 and haven't had a complaint yet. I describe them as great second/travel/coffeeshop computers, which they are. I get many of them from school surplus, mostly Covid-era and  in fine working shape. I'm shocked that schools discarded these so quickly when they work so well. Then the schools complain that they have no money. The batteries in these 5-6 year old computers still last for 6-9 hours. The standout unit is the Acer Travelmate B311-31, which has a huge battery that last 11-12 hours, great for classrooms.

 

I add Office 2019 to many of them, licenses are cheap and the whole suite only takes about 3GB.

 

I'm all for keeping these older but serviceable machines out of the landfill and finding an environment where they can be useful. I started with a stack of Toshibas with 2GB RAM and 32GB storage, barely good enough for Windows 10. Now THOSE were dreadful, Win10 took up most of that storage and sometimes you had to add a thumbdrive to have enough space to install Windows updates. Having lived through that, Windows 11 on a 64GB machine is a piece of cake.

Edited February 14 by erco
added details of Office 2019

[gshaw]

Been setting the 64GB machines in InTune Kiosk mode for Primary School use, they'd be better off running Chrome OS Flex but the £30 management charge isn't worth it when support ends in 2 years. Similar story with a stack of Geobooks

[erco]

Thanks gshaw, that's a great tip on InTune Kiosk mode. Will look into that.

[gshaw]

1 hour ago, erco said:

Thanks gshaw, that's a great tip on InTune Kiosk mode. Will look into that.

The best tip I can give you especially if using Autopilot... don't log into the device! Wait for it to hit the login screen after deployment then push the Kiosk profile and wait for it to apply. Will save you a world of pain!

[erco]

Noted, thanks!

 

One other note about Dell 3190s (laptop, not 2-in-1), as I charge & update a stack of them today. Mine have come from a variety of sources. They look identical outside but they differ internally. Some use M.2 SATA SSDs, which can be upgraded for more storage (yay). Others have SSDs integral to the motherboard, and don't even have an empty socket for an M.2 SSD so these are stuck at 64GB storage (boo).

[koryo]

Anyone tried this to remove non-needed drivers and see if it gives some space back? Not tried on Windows 11 myself but did free up a whole bunch of space on Win10 for me one time.

 

https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/149630-old-devices-driver-cleanup-one-command.html

 

Rundll32.exe c:\windows\system32\pnpclean.dll,RunDLL_PnpClean /DEVICES /DRIVERS /FILES /MAXCLEAN
For pnpclean output see c:\windows\inf\setupapi.dev.log

 

Note - this didn't show any output, but could see it cleaning up in the background when watching the log file

Edited February 16 by koryo

[mikes]

Didn't know about it, on my workstation it only cleaned up about 100MB however. But on this machine I have manually removed a lot of files from Windows (against MS's official advice) because I needed the space, having Windows take up 80GB+ on a 128GB SSD just wasn't going to work.  Will try it on a few test standard build machines see what happens.  We are having machines with 256GB fill up now (though they are using autodesk and adobe CC)

[psydii]

On 14/02/2026 at 22:20, erco said:

The standout unit is the Acer Travelmate B311-31, which has a huge battery that last 11-12 hours, great for classrooms.

I got my hands on a couple of manufacturing sample B311-31's  early on in 2020. They blew me away*. Easily the best devices that could be had at the time, and most still going strong in 2026. It was while trying to figure out why they were so good I learning about emmc5.1a/HS400.
 

*The very moment I realised how good they were is etched in my mind,  I was outside in what felt like the first time in months, the sun was shining, London was silent and I'd just managed to defeat a "secure by design" door to retrieve my post, which included said laptops (long story).  The next thing i remember is pivoting to intune and turning that house I'd just 'broken into', into a laptop imaging production line.