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07 Jul 2019 - Podcast #650 - (26:30)
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Does Windows 10 frustrate you? The safe assumption is that your answer will be in the affirmative and certainly Windows has no shortage of frustrations. There are two approaches to dealing with these frustrations: Allow them to continue to annoy you or fix them. I learned long ago that the better approach for me is to find a way to fix the problem.
There's even a two-step approach within that two-step approach. When something frustrates me but I know that it's a frustration that I'm unlikely to encounter again, I consider it to be a random frustration. If I encounter the frustration a second time, I grumble about it and probably refer to the computer with a series of uncomplimentary and highly descriptive adjectives. Third time? Then it's time to find a way to fix the problem or an acceptable workaround. If I've encountered the same problem three times, it's virtually certain that I'll continue to run into it.
So I can either become one of those grumpy people who profess nothing but hatred for Windows, Microsoft, and Bill Gates or I can fix the problem, lower my blood pressure, and get on with life. If being annoyed frustrates you and being frustrated annoys you, let's break out of that cycle and take a look at some of the problems I've found and eliminated over the years. Yes, some of these problems and solutions predate Windows 10.
This tip isn't for everyone and, so far, it isn't even for me but it probably should be. Linux users have had virtual desktops for years, but I don't use the feature there, either. It's enticing, though. Multiple monitors and virtual desktops seems like such a great idea, particularly for those who use the computer for different kinds of tasks that require specific arrangements of applications. Create a new virtual desktop for each scenario: Press WinKey (the Windows key) and Tab to open the Task view, then click the Plus (+) button to create a new desktop. You can have as many as you want and they persist even if you log out or reboot, but they're also easy to delete.
God Mode has been around for a while. If you consider that to be blasphemous, you can name it anything you want. God|Developer|Guru|Master of the Universe — whatever you want to call it — will give you access to a vast array of settings. Most of these can be accessed in other ways, but this puts them all in the same place.
Right-click the desktop and choose New > Folder. Name the folder Whatever You Want.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}. Spaces are OK in the text before the period, but everything after the period must be exactly as shown. When you double-click the new icon on your desktop, you'll be presented with dozens of options. Be careful, though, because making bad choices here will not have a good outcome. As a friend once told me: A collision at sea can ruin your entire day.
I love the Task bar. It needs some modifications to suit the way I work, but it's command central for me. There are more than 100 icons on my Task bar. This requires small icons (not the default), two levels (not the default), removing some items that appear by default, and adding some items that don't appear by default.
No "best way" exists to set up the Task bar, but a best way does exist for your arrangement of the Task bar. You just have to figure out what that best way is.
Right-click in a blank area of the Task bar and you'll see a lot of options: Tool-bars (expandable), Search (expandable), Show or Hide Cortana|Task View|People|Ink|Touch Keyboard, cascade|stack|show side by side windows, show the Desktop, Lock Task bars, and Task bar settings.
The tool bars you'll see will depend on applications you've installed. I turn off Addresses, Links, MediaMonkey Player, and Desktop tool bars because I don't use them. I also hide the Search tool bar because it takes up too much valuable screen real estate. I also hide Cortana, People, Ink, and Touch Keyboard, but retain the Task View option even though I usually use a keyboard shortcut.
Once you have the various task bars set the way you like them, using the Lock function is a good idea.
The icon at the bottom of the menu (Task bar settings) is where the real power resides. This is where you can lock the Task bar, automatically hide the Task bar in tablet mode, use small buttons, enable or disable Peek, replace the Command Prompt with PowerShell, choose the location of the Task bar (bottom, right, left, or top), choose to display the task bar on all displays (and which icons will display on secondary monitors) and select icons that will appear in the Notifications area.
Sometime when you're between tasks, take half an hour or so and investigate the settings here.
By default, Windows wants to tell you when a calendar event is due, when an application wants to contact you, and when the cat walks into the room. Shouting "Shut up!" at the computer is ineffective, so it's time to use Focus Assist to fix the problem.
Start in Settings and navigate to System > Focus Assist. I want Windows to STFU most of the time, so I've set the "quiet hours" to start at 12:00am (midnight) and continue until 11:59pm and I've turned on all of the limitations.
There are some applications that I want to hear from, so these can be selected in the Priority List section.
Doubtless you already know that Ctrl-C copies whatever you've selected (and Ctrl-X cuts it) and that Ctrl-V pastes anything that's been copied or cut. That works only on a single computer. But if you open Controls, navigate to System > Clipboard, and turn on Clipboard history and Sync across devices, you'll have a lot more flexibility.
You'll still use Ctrl-C to copy selections and Ctrl-X to cut them, but now WinKey + V will display a list of all copied or cut selections so that you can paste them at the current location of the cursor and (if sync across devices is enabled) to paste where the cursor is on another device. To do this, you'll need to be logged into both computers with the same user name and password.
Some people keep nothing on the desktop. Others use the desktop as the Start Menu. If you're in the latter group and you keep a lot of application links on the desktop, maybe you'd like to be able to single-click those icons to open the application instead of having to click the icons twice. You won't find this option in mouse settings, though.
Instead, start with the file explorer and (1) select the View tab, (2) click Options, and (3) specify the single-click option.
While you're here, take a look at (4) the Privacy section. By default, both recently used files and frequently used folders appear in Quick Access. I prefer to explicitly add the files and folders I want to Quick Access, so I turn both of these options off. For me, it's not a question of privacy, but one of unwanted clutter.
Simplify access to common controls: The Windows key (that's the one with the Window on it) opens the Start Menu. Probably everyone knows that, but the Windows key plus another key gives quick access to areas with powerful tools.
Where I've used a vertical bar, consider it to stand for "or". In other words, "WinKey + RightArrow|LeftArrow" means press the Windows key in conjunction with either the left arrow key or the right arrow key.
This is another feature that's not exactly new, but it's one that many people are unaware of. It's not uncommon for people to have several windows open simultaneously. If you're like me, that might be a lot of windows on multiple monitors.
If you're using one window for reference and a second window for work, it might be essential to scroll the reference window occasionally.
Here's an example: If I'm writing about a technical topic (something that happens more than occasionally) and I want to use Wikipedia or some other reference source to ensure that I'm not spreading fake news, I'll have Wikipedia open on one screen and an application such as UltraEdit open on the other screen.
If I need to scroll the Wikipedia article up or down, what do I do? Maybe you think I should click in the browser window and then use the mouse button to scroll the reference article. That works, but it means that I lose focus from UltraEdit and the cursor position inside the application. For years I wished that I could just hover the mouse over the browser and scroll up or down.
Open Settings > Devices > Mouse and make sure that Scroll inactive windows when I hover over them is selected; then you'll be able to scroll without stealing focus from your primary application.
Yes, editing the Registry can be dangerous. However, if you're willing to proceed with caution and precisely follow directions, Registry edits can make your computer do what you want it to do.
The Registry holds all the customization settings. It is here that you can change settings to disable functions that Microsoft mistakenly thought would delight you. If you edit the Registry, be sure that you have a backup copy and proceed with caution.
You'll need to open the Registry Editor by pressing WinKey+R, typing regedit, and pressing Enter. After accepting the User Access Control warning, you'll see the Registry Editor screen. Most of the changes you'll make will be in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE section (also known as HKLM) or HKEY_CURRENT_USER (also known as HKCU).
By default, Windows boots without displaying a lot of information. You can turn on Verbose Mode so that Windows tells you what it's doing during the startup process. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Wow6432Node > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Policies > System and create a new DWORD (32-Bit) key called "VerboseStatus". Set the value to "1". Now when Windows starts or shuts down, you'll see a lot of useful information.
That's just one of hundreds (maybe thousands) of changes you can make by editing the Registry. Whether you're willing to edit the Registry or not, it's possible to make Windows 10 be the operating system you want it to be. As you make changes, keep notes that describe how you navigated to the location where you made a change, what you changed, and how. Do that and you can reverse the modifications if you decide that they aren't exactly what you want.
Just about every tech writer in the world has written about improving Windows. Use your favorite search engine and use a term such as windows 10 tips tweaks. You'll have links to dozens of articles. There will be a lot of repetition, but individual authors have favorites that others may not have considered. Read through the suggestions, pick the ones that look promising, and Bob's your uncle.
Starting later this week Google Photos and Google Drive will no longer automatically sync with each other. Google says the change is being made so that people can "easily choose where photos and videos are stored across products."
For most people this will be a welcome, if somewhat confusing, change. Uploading or deleting photos in Google Drive or Google Photos won't be reflected in the other service, but you will be able to copy photos and videos from Drive to Photos. All existing photos will remain on both services and items copied to Google Drive from Google Photos at original quality will count toward your storage limit.
If you want to continue to sync images between Photos and Drive, open Google Photos settings. If Google Drive is toggled on, photos and videos are currently syncing. After 10 July, changes you make in Drive will apply only to Drive and changes you make in Photos will apply only to Photos. All drives and folders that exist in either location will remain unchanged.
Also check the Google Drive settings to see if you use the Google Photos folder. Open Google Drive, click the gear icon in the top right corner, click Settings, and scroll down to Create a Google Photos Folder. If this setting is not enabled, Google recommends that you leave it that way. After 10 July, you will be able to delete images from Google Drive without having the sync process also delete the files in Google Photos.
Google has detailed instructions in its on-line help section.
Bleeping Computer started the week with a surprising report: Microsoft has turned off Registry backups in Windows 10 computers and considers it a feature, not a bug. The backup was eliminated starting with version 1803. In other words, this isn't a new change and Microsoft hasn't exactly been forthcoming with announcements about the change, although there is a post on the support site.
First, the reasoning. The Bleeping Computer article points to a Microsoft support post that explains the change is "intended to help reduce the overall disk footprint size of Windows." To recover a system with a corrupt registry hive, Microsoft recommends that you use a system restore point. Microsoft even helpfully provides a screen shot that shows the contents of C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack with the useless 0-byte files.
The trouble is, though, that on my computer the directory is empty. There are no files of any size. Not that it makes a difference. A directory with no files is functionally equivalent to a directory with several empty files.
But let's consider the logic here. Eliminating the Registry backups will save space (Microsoft: "reduce the overall disk footprint size of Windows"), which seems about as reasonable as omitting the spare tire from your car to save space in the trunk. (Yes, I know some manufacturers are doing just that and claiming it's for "your convenience" and not their profits.)
OK, the Registry isn't small. On my primary computer it's 610 MB (more than half a gigabyte). Saving space has become an issue as more new computers come with solid-state drives that are usually smaller than traditional mechanical drives. So instead of a 3TB standard drive, maybe a new computer has just a half- or quarter-terabyte drive. Seriously, though, any manufacturer that doesn't provide at least a 1TB drive is doing the user a disservice.
Now let's say you have a 1TB hard drive. Windows consumes 35 to 40GB. In my case, the Program Files and Program Files (x86) directories consume 63GB (I have a lot of installed programs). The C drive is just half a terabyte (475GB) and about 174GB is shown as free space. So a Registry backup would consume about 3 tenths of 1% of the available space. That seems like a reasonable trade-off, but wait.
I keep no data on the C drive. The D drive contains more than 10 years of digital photos, data, design graphics, and website development (790GB); the E drive has more graphics, websites, technical documents, and scanned images (162GB); drive F has music files, the Lightroom catalog, some miscellaneous sound files, and any audio files that are awaiting processing (335MB); the G drive has software downloads, some family videos, and Audition scratch files (506GB); drive H has client videos, some training and educational files, and some specialized photo databases (45GB); and finally the I drive has a backup of documents, photos, and email from my wife's computer, a bunch of historical documents, and local copies of what's on my Google Drive and OneDrive (2.4TB). Clearly I'd never be able to put all of this data on a single disk drive and that explains Microsoft's decision. And also clearly this is an example so over-the-top that it borders on being absurd.
A lot of people still have just the disk drive that came with the computer and even a 1TB drive can begin to been a bit too cozy as digital images pile up. Still, the more logical step, in my mind, would be to add disk space to the computer, not remove the spare tire.
Registry corruption is rare but, when it happens, it's a serious event. It may be that Bleeping Computer went just a tiny bit overboard in sounding the alarm because Registry corruption can usually be resolved by using a system restore point. Still, if you're uneasy about not having a Registry backup, Microsoft explains how to create one manually or how to re-enable automatic backups.
Turning automatic Registry backups on involves (yep!) a Registry edit. It's also important to know that turning Registry backups back on by adding a new key in the Local Machine hive might not be a permanent fix. Microsoft says "the default Windows 10 behavior of having the automatic registry backups disabled could be toggled on again after applying a new feature update." So you'd need to remember to check a couple of times a year.
If you want to turn Registry backups on using the Registry, start in the Local Machine hive and drill down to System > CurrentControlSet > Control > Session Manager > Configuration Manager. The easiest way to get there, after opening the Registry Editor, is to copy this and paste it into the address field:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager\
Then create a new REG_DWORD entry called EnablePeriodicBackup and set the value to 1.
When you next restart the computer, Windows will create a Registry backup and will also generate a scheduled task to monitor the backups.
A better option might be simply to set a calendar entry as a reminder to manually back up the Registry once per week and to remember to back up the Registry after installing any new software or hardware. The process is easy and takes only about a minute.
You may wonder why I use the YYYY-MM-DD date format. This format ensures that files can be sorted properly and it's the format most commonly used internally by programs because 2019-07-02 will always appear before 2019-12-02 while December 2 2019 would appear before July 2 2019 for dates in standard US form.