Windows 10 tips

[mandru]

Thanks PZ, I looked into all that first thing after the upgrade before doing anything else.  It's probably because it knows I hate and despise it.  Perversity of the (semi) inanimate and all that. 

I just don't know if Uninstalling and App where it's allowed is in fact a silver bullet or if it's only hiding things.  And the same for Unpin from Start only Apps.

As Win10 was introducing itself to me I had to walk through all of those screens and select what processes I wanted my computer to share with Microsoft and I nixed them all.  Then the next morning I spent another hour of so burrowing through all of the preference tabs killing every other option in the OS that smelled like a mole in the system that  I could find.

I'm convinced it's the Apps and something in the background processes that wasn't there before upgrading that is dragging my system down.


I think someone could make a fair amount of money creating a utility program that would itemize (with descriptions of function) all the applications, programs, and background services and then through a check off boxes block disable and possibly eliminate useless and unwanted CPU gobblers.

Anything I can't straighten out now I'll have cleared up at the shop with some upgrades that I'm going to have done and if nothing else the Linux side of the dual boot I'm having set up won't suffer from WinDown's syndrome.  ::)

I know Steam OS is a free Linux distro (**shudders**) but I'm not wiling to go that far to thwart those power drunk villains at Microsot.  :)

[PZ]

You can freely uninstall anything from the start menu that will let you do so (the app is actually removed from your system, not just hidden) - there are some MS things that you can't uninstall without going through a few extra steps, but feel free to get rid of the junk.  Uninstalling also automatically removes the tiles.  By the way, if you have favorite apps, you can right click the title when in search mode and pin it to start, which appears as a tile that you can rearrange.  I like to use update, settings, event viewer, and services - all are pinned to the top of my start menu as tiles.

[mandru]

Thanks PZ.  :-X

[PZ]

I also have task manager in my task bar because I regularly monitor the processes sorted by CPU usage - if your OS is running efficiently, with no user programs running (computer idling) you should be near zero most of the time in CPU and disk access columns, and some memory % usage (depending on how much you have).  I used task manager process monitoring to nail down exactly which services were consuming CPU cycles, and when not needed, disabled and stopped them.  All of this greatly reduced the temperature of the Sufrace Pro (the fan formerly ran at times, partly because it sports an i7, but mostly because unnecessary services were running).

You can actually watch which services are running, do searches on the 'net, and disable them through the services manager if not needed.

Now at idle the fan never runs, and it sits on 0% CPU, 19% memory, and 0% disk access, and the machine boots to desktop in less than 20 seconds.

[PZ]

PS: there is a way to get rid of the login required from sleep but it is a registry hack - don't know if you want to go there.  As an alternative, you can setup a PIN (4 digits) and they can even be all the same so "logging" back in is almost effortless.

[PZ]

Here's another way to get rid of apps - the ones MS will not officially let you uninstall.  They w@&k, and the xbox one is of particular interest because the xbox app limits your frame rate to 60

https://thomas.vanhoutte.be/miniblog/delete-windows-10-apps/

Plus, it is nice not to see the offending apps installed any longer.

[mandru]

Thanks PZ.  Since I don't and won't be using Xbox I unpinned it and all the other uninstallable tiles.

Cortana?

"Ask me a question and I will refer you to a web search that you could have gone to in the first place without bothering me and saved yourself a step.  By the way I only direct you to non-system results.  It's called self defense."

::)

[PZ]

How to reclaim gigabytes of disk space by disabling hibernation in W10, and by getting rid of your old windows installation files

I never use hibernation, but W10 does not give you an obvious way to disable it entirely.  Here's how:

Open a command prompt with administrator privileges. Type: powercfg -h off then press the enter key.  It won't look like anything happened, but I had Explorer open to my root drive showing system files, and the hyberfile.sys file simply vanished. I regained nearly 4 gb worth of disk space in the root of my boot drive.

You can always turn it on again by using this command: powercfg -h on


Then, if you are sure you are sticking with this version of the OS, you can cut your disk space consumption to nearly half by deleting windows.old (using Disk cleanup) - the OS keeps a copy of your entire old system as a backup in case you want to go back. This is wasted space, and Windows will automatically delete the folder anyway after a month.

After using the disk cleanup utility to get rid of my old windows installation, the entire OS, all the extra files it uses, and MS Office 2013 takes up less less disk space that a single game like GTAV consumes.  The space consumed by everything on my PC (W10, downloads, documents, etc.) is a tad over 22 gb.

[PZ]

Want to enable God Mode in Windows?

Create a new folder on your desktop and rename the folder to this: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

[fragger]

What does God Mode do? Sorry if that's some sort of dumb question...

[OWGKID]

Gives you access to advanced Windows functions along with the standard ones ;)

[PZ]

Yes, a sort of one stop shopping for most of the functions you can tweak without having to go into the registry or other applets

[Art Blade]

 ???

[fragger]

OK, cheers

[mandru]

Any name you give the file in front of the "Period" then the file will carry that name on your desktop.

I named mine "Tweaker.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}" and it seems to have properly switched over to the function panel.

[PZ]

 :-X

[mandru]

On closer examination of the article I took the above information from the godmode tweak was actually implanted in Win7 but has remained active for the subsequent OS updates.

[PZ]

Funny how time changes things - now I am pleased that my OS consumes less than 22 gb, but when I first started with DOS-based PCs back in 1985 (on the original IBM PC which had 2 floppy drives and sported 256k RAM).  I recall 640k being a luxury, and my first "tweaks" consisted of one of the old 5.25 inch floppy drives loaded with DOS, a word processor, spreadsheet, and database - the PFS products.  When the machine started, the OS would load everything into a ram-drive with a simple batch file to make choice of what to use.

Today the error log files are larger - what a simple computing life it was back in the day

[Art Blade]

and what a long way for PCs to become gaming machines. :-D

[OWGKID]

Indeed  :-D

PC gaming is much better than console gaming due to the following:

• No additional online fees, PS+ or Xbox Live gold subscription required on consoles
• Cheaper games and larger library (Steam, GoG and Humble Bundle FTW)
• Higher frame rates and resolutions (60-144 fps or DIE!)
• Backwards compability (can play games released like 10+ years ago, not possible on current gen consoles  )
• Freedom to use any input device you want (controllers, joysticks and racing wheels)
• Upgrade your PC anytime you want (rather than waiting 5-8 years for the next console generation ::))

[Art Blade]

+ screenshots and
+ video capturing. :-D

[OWGKID]

Forgot those  8-X :-()

[PZ]

PS4 now makes it easy to capture screenshots and videos - even lets you capture what has already happened so you don't miss out on that great escape from those nasty villains.  :-()

[Art Blade]

well, good point, PZ. I wasn't aware of those features being generally added to the PS4.  :)

[PZ]

All I can say is that I'm glad it is Sony that makes the console, not MS or Ubi else we'd have a platform that deliberately prevents videos and screen captures  8-X