Win 10 Customization

[Rant]

"Here we go again..." famous words from President Regain, yup we went through this with Vista, then Windows 7, then 8, then 8.1 and now with Win 10. How nice, well I guess Microsoft customers have nothing better to do than search though layers upon layers of fluff to find their trusty cell phone app... [end of rant]

Win 10 Customization - What Can You Do?

The basic install of the desktop for Win 10 is the same as you would find on a tablet; I haven't seen one but I think you can get it on certain cell phones also. For someone that uses a computer daily for work this is not only annoying it is a waste of precious resources. By waste of resources I mean processor (CPU), memory, and graphics. Who needs a screen full of little boxes (nice word: tiles) with each application or program telling you what the program is? A nice XP or Windows 7 menu would display faster, use less resources, and allow you to find your program faster. Or maybe you like scrolling through layers of tiles to your "app"? If you don't then read on...

When I loaded Windows 8 on a VM (Virtual Machine) by VM Ware I was amazed at the amount of tiles MS though I would need, like, or use. Windows 8 lasted about thirty minutes then I turned it off, deleted the folder the data was in. I need that space on that hard drive for more pressing and valuable data. Then I load up Win 10, opps no change, instead of a nice little menu with four or five submenus of Operating System programs and features I get this 1800 x 800 screen full of tiles that the MS programmers think I need... This had to GO!

Win 10 Customization -Start and Programs menu

I did some searching around different forums looking for a solution to the power hungry tiles, I found some but only one actually did what I wanted: A old XP style menu at the "Windows" icon on the task bar.

This is not a review of the program I found (that may come later) but a link to it: Start10 menu

This Start 10 has some minor modifications, mainly the color, the aircraft is the image for my profile.

Programs menu

After working on Server 2008 R2 I decided to pin any program I had to run as an Administrator here, beats searching for them all the time (Hint: if you right click on an icon or text you get a small menu, you can easly selecct "Run as Administrator" to open the application).

Win 10 Customization -Desktop Background

My next problem for Win 10 Customization was the screen back ground, if you read this site you know that over the years I have gotten used to a plain dark green background. However in it's ultimate wisdom MS has deemed plain solid back grounds so "1980's" and in a way doesn't support it. First I had to find where to change the background, it is under "Personalize " when you right click on the desktop. Then in Background, I select "Solid Color", my color however isn't there of the four when checked they were either too bright or too dark... To get the color I wanted I had to experiment with the "Custom Color" selector. To make the color match the old XP dark green I started one of my XP VM's and moved it aside, then used the selector circle to get it close. Then used the slider at the bottom to get the correct color. If there was a color code box where you could test the color of something you wanted and get the code then insert it in the box this "try, test, try, test" method would take a few minutes instead of try, test, nope too bright; try, test, nope too dark; over and over. But I do have the color I like and eyes don't hurt by the end of the day.

Win 10 Customization - Lock Screen

One personalize section I find that is nice is the lock screen, you can have a solid color or an image. As a retired USAF aircraft technician I like aircraft, modern (such as the F-22 or F-16) or some of the older aircraft I worked on when I was younger, specifically the F-4E, all awesome aircraft. So I went in search of some aesthetically pleasing images, coolness... (I am and always will be a Corvette fan, I had an image of one from 2014 on the lock screen until my Wife said: What is with all the Corvettes? - I have a collection of them and a yearly calendar, so the lock screen Corvette turned into a F-16).

Win 10 Customization - Blowing it up?

One thing I decided to do after the second installation of Win 10 was to not reinstall it a third time. Because I was doing things to the OS maybe I shouldn't it would crash or not restart, a learning process... To keep the reinstall to a minimum I made an image of the  Win 10 install, recovery, and Win 7 installation, put them on my second hard drive, then restarted the computer with my trusty ERD. I wiped the partitions off the SSD and then put the recovery partition back and then split the 500 GB SSD into three partitions, one will be my Win 10 Experiment  drive, one will be my Games  drive, and the last will be my Work  drive. NO MORE INSTALLS! Well maybe...

Because there are four partitions on the SSD I could not put Win 7 on it, for those that don't know you still only get four primary partitions (a hold over from the days of DOS) and any other partitions you make are called Logical partitions or drives, the catch with the Logical  drives is an OS can not boot from one, an operating system has to be loaded before the logical drives are recognized, thus no boot from a logical  drives. So Win 7 needs to be on another drive.

I tested a few Win 10 Customization "modifications" from the old Win 7 days for folders on Win 10 Customization, they didn't work well for Win 7 and made a mess with my Win 10 Customization, Ghost was getting a workout putting the Experimental image back on the SSD. So far I have not found a work around for the "Libraries" style folders [sigh].

Instead of using "Windows Explorer" for my file work and Win 10 Customization I use a program called A43, I found this little jewel when I stared making my Custom ERD product. It is like the old NT File Manager but instead having two or three windows open to different drives you only get one so to do side by side work I open two of the programs, not as convenient as the old NT File manger but functional. Unfortunately the A43 file management web site is no longer available, you can however find it by search, as always when you download from somewhere scan it for viruses!

Note: As functional as this program is using the security attributes on a file does not work, that is you can open properties of the file, change the security on the file then save it, however when you use the windows explorer and check the attributes for the user you changed they will not be changed. The A43 program will indicate the attributes were changed but it doesn't get written. [It has this problem even when I use "run as Administrator"]

Win 10 Customization - RAM Drive

Having upgraded from the original 32 GB or ram to 64 GB of ram I have room for a larger ram drive! Install and configured a 35 GB ram drive using DATARam program, set the temp folder and pagefile.sys on the drive, using 32 GB  out of 35 for the pagefile.sys. Because the DATARam program will make an image of the drive then when the system loads the driver it will copy the image to the ram drive. The image has the temp folder and the pagefile.sys already loaded so no cleaning out the temp folder and the pagefile will always be empty. Now this is an optimization I can live with! Have to give if a few weeks to see if the system is faster, does take about 25 seconds or so to get to the desktop once I log on.

Win 10 Customization - GP [Group Policy]

I have three [Yes three!] Windows Ten installations on this machine so I have done little in the way of GPO work, the main GP I have changes is the lock screen focus, when you press a key at the lock screen the logon box pops up, the image blurs into the back ground. My tired old eyes hurt thinking about that! So I did some research and found that you can change the "focus" group policy here: "Show Clear logon background" I also changed a few others - thirty-four in total. When I revise my main e-book I will put in a table of "safe" to modify Group Policies. Those of you with the "Home" version will have to search for a resolution for the mmc plug in gpedit.msc - it is not installed on the Home version. Of the three Win 10 installations I have only one is in the business domain, when I changed these GPO's I thought the Domain GPO settings would change these but it didn't over write them which makes me happy!

Win 10 Customization - My Experience with Win 10 So Far...

I can say I like what I have at this time. Is it as good as the 'ol XP? Nope, in some respects it is faster, however the overhead of the OS it may be the same or a little slower, such as the file management system causes me some heartburn, the indexing system is a memory and time hog (you have to wait for the indexing system to index a drive when you open it, it is worse for a network share, one of my shared drives on a server is about 4 TB out of 5 TB full of "stuff". If I need a file or a copy of an app it takes the index system some time to index that drive - up to 3 minutes. I found a way to stop the index system from doing this but haven't tested it yet.

Other than that Win 10 is beginning to work for me not against me...

If you have any comments or suggestions fell free to post them on the soon to be operational Blog...