hello all and thanks for any help you may be able to provide.
I am returning to Windows after a long break and have a new HP OmniBook 7 arriving on January 7. I plan to use both JAWS and NVDA, but I want to make sure I set this machine up cleanly from the start.
Iām looking for your Golden Path or best practices for a fresh Windows 11 setup.
I have three specific questions for the Windows users on here.
1. The Silent Gap, Does anyone have experience with recent HP laptops? Does Ctrl + Win + Enter reliably start Narrator at the initial OOBE (Out of Box Experience) screen, or should I have sighted assistance on standby for BIOS/Driver checks?
2. removing HP Software, HP installs a lot of utilities. Which ones are critical to keep for driver updates (e.g., HP Support Assistant), and which ones are safe to uninstall to free up resources for JAWS/NVDA?
3. Audio Drivers, Has anyone faced issues with audio drivers dropping out when installing screen readers on the new Windows 11 builds?
Any tips for the first 24 hours of setup would be greatly appreciated. I want to get this machine running as efficiently as possible. I have not done this in like 5 years.
By Diego Garibay, 1 January, 2026
Forum
Windows
Comments
Re: HP
Hi,
I currently use a 2023 HP laptop, running Windows 11 build 26H2. First, control plus Windows key plus enter does indeed toggle Narrator. Second, you should not have any issues with audio out of the box, provided that you are installing/updating the preinstalled build of Windows 11 on your machine. If you decide to install a stock build of windows, typically downloaded from Microsoft, then your mileage may vary. However, it takes no effort to plug in a pair of headphones/earbuds into a laptop these days.
Next, you can pretty much get away with uninstalling all of the HP bloatware, but I would personally recommend keeping a few items:
ā¢ HP system event utility. On certain models, this controls things like the Function (FN) Lock capability.
ā¢ HP audio manager. I may have butchered the name of this utility, but nevertheless it is useful for managing your audio output. Especially if you use external sound, which I do on my laptop. It controls things like an audio equalizer, which I find extremely useful, when switching between laptop speakers and desktop speakers. Think 'hardware-based audio profiles'.
ā¢ HP system tray utility. This little utility is essential if you do a lot of things with Microsoft Teams and/or Zoom. It gives you universal controls for your microphone and camera while interacting with these types of applications, regardless of whether or not the application is focused on screen at the time. I relied on this utility a lot, back in 2024, while I was studying networking through Cisco's networking Academy. Cisco has their own version of Zoom, and being able to mute my microphone on the fly was extremely useful.
Optionally, I would recommend you look over the following GitHub link. It has some really powerful scripts for removing bloatware off of your windows machine.
https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
Final note, I have personally never had experience with losing sound and/or audio driver corruption while installing any screen reader on Windows.
Hope this answers some of your questions.
Edited for typos