I created this to be a place where people can post their Windows 10 life hacks. Not a place to troubleshoot problems, but rather a place to put ways to customize and tame the beast.
I will start with a little program I just found that can restore the old style start menu from Windows 7 or XP. https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu is a free program that allows you to customize the Windows 10 Start Menu. As I said, it allows you to recreate the format of the older Windows editions.
You can also create folders on the start menu, and move shortcuts back and forth on the menu however you want. Things you cannot do in Windows 10. (You can do that with the tiles, but not with the list of programs on the start menu just left of the tiles). It also brings back the Recent Items list.
It also still leaves you a single icon on the new menu that you can click to bring up the original Windows 10 style start menu.
https://i.imgur.com/7DfTkaZ.jpg There are a lot of ways you can customize it however. So this is not the only way it could look.
Ever have your PC randomly wake up from sleep mode overnight? Here's how to find out why and stop it.
https://uk.pcmag.com/windows-xp-2/127291/how-to-stop-your-computer-from-randomly-waking-up-from-sleep-mode
Mine does this ALL the time, so I thought I'd pass it along.
Well I finally decided to update my Windows 7 box to Windows 10. It was still free https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10?ranMID=24542&ranEAID=0JlRymcP1YU&ranSiteID=0JlRymcP1YU-VjcX87eJPY3M4MNHkpIt1w&epi=0JlRymcP1YU-VjcX87eJPY3M4MNHkpIt1w&irgwc=1&OCID=AID2000142_aff_7593_1243925&tduid=%28ir__3npiwpxsk9kfqi2vkk0sohzgc32xst9zc1pl222b00%29%287593%29%281243925%29%280JlRymcP1YU-VjcX87eJPY3M4MNHkpIt1w%29%28%29&irclickid=_3npiwpxsk9kfqi2vkk0sohzgc32xst9zc1pl222b00
Now I am customizing, and the black start button and other system icons were driving me crazy, as it was hard for me to see with my green taskbar. So I found out how to change them to white.
Go to Personalization -> Colors
Under Choose Your Color, set to Custom, then:
Choose your default Windows mode = Dark
Choose your default app mode = Light
Transparency Effects = On
Pick your accent color below
Show accent color on the following surfaces
Start, taskbar, and action center = On
Title bars and windows borders = On
Note, the Start, taskbar, and action center box will be grayed out unless you set Color to Dark or Custom.
If you like the Dark option, you don't need to set your Color ot Custom, just go Dark.
https://msfn.org/board/topic/170375-oldnewexplorer-119/ will get your old style Explorer back, including the preview and details pane on the bottom of the window, instead of on the side.
Here is how to remove the arrows on desktop shortcuts:
Open Registry Editor
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
Create a new Key and name it Shell Icons
Within its folder, create a new String Value and name it 29
Double-click it to open it up, and in the Value Data box add: %windir%\System32\shell32.dll,-50
Restart Windows
I found how to remove the blue and yellow UAC shield that Windows puts on icons when you set them to run in Administrator mode.
Open Registry Editor
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
Create a new Key and name it Shell Icons
Within its folder, create a new String Value and name it 77
Double-click it to open it up, and in the Value Data box add: %systemroot%\system32\imageres.dll,197
Restart Windows
Edit: I have noticed a side effect that can sometimes happen if you do either this or the previous icon hack. Sometimes your desktop icons might turn solid black. I did some research, and what is happening is that your icon cache is having issues. I have had it happen twice now since doing both, so I am not sure which is responsible.
The first time it happened I rebooted, and the icons were back to normal again. Basically the icon cache rebuilt itself. The second time I was busy writing and did not want to reboot. So I just kept on working, and when I looked back later the icons had fixed themselves.
No tip, trick or improvement here. Just reporting that, in a reversal of my long-held practice of not installing a 'major' Win10 'update' until Windows tell me to, often as much as a year after that update is first available, I went ahead and voluntarily updated to Win10 20H2. Didn't even both to research it first! After that, I updated to the latest Nvidia graphics driver. (Via an Nvidia download. I don't and won't do it through Windows driver update.) No idea what this will do to/for me. To the plus, I notice no cosmetic difference on the desktop. Or do I? Hmmm...
I just checked, and that is the version of windows that I have.
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