Recently I upgraded my computer to Windows 10. Microsoft, for whatever reason, with every release of Windows completely changes things. For no good reason they move stuff around and change things that weren't broken. So here is a guide on how to make Windows 10 more like Windows 7, which makes Windows 10 usable.
- When installing Windows 10, if you have the choice select Windows 10 Enterprise. Enterprise is nice because it does not come pre-loaded with all the Windows Store Apps that Home and Professional do. So out of the box it's closer to Windows 7.
- Download and install Open-Shell (formerly known as Classic Shell). Windows 10 does include a "start menu" which was removed in Windows 8, but it's no where near as good as the start menu in Windows 7. Open-Shell restores that start menu in all its glory. In fact, Open-Shell is even better than the Windows 7 start menu and works on Windows 7 too! Spend a few minutes exploring all the settings in Open-Shell, you can customize it exactly how you want it.
- Download and run OldNewExplorer. This extension fixes Windows File Explorer to the look and feel more like Windows 7. When you run OldNewExplorer, click "Install" and then select the options you want. Here are my settings:
- Download and install Explorer++. Even though OldNewExplorer fixes much of the Windows File Explorer, it's still not as good as the Windows File Explorer in older versions of Windows. That's where Explorer++ comes in. This open-source program is a very good file manager.
- Download and install FileLocator Lite. This program is free for personal use and it's a very good Windows file search program. The file search in Windows 7/10 is horrible compared to Windows XP. FileLocator Lite restores that Windows XP style search.
- Download and install Process Hacker. Although Task Manager in Windows 10 isn't that bad, they did still change it from Windows 7 and I preferred the simple process view. Process Hacker is a great open source tool that is very configurable. It even has an option to replace the built-in Task Manager for keyboard and mouse shortcuts. If neither the Windows 10 Task Manager nor Process Hacker work for you, give Process Explorer (also from Microsoft) a try.
- Windows 10, more than any previous version of Windows, sends a lot of data back to Microsoft. Data like which apps you use, how long you use them, what websites you visit. It even downloads data from Microsoft such as ads to display in Windows. A program called ShutUp10 allows you to turn all this off if you want. You can turn some things off and leave other things on. I always run this on new Windows 10 machines. I personally don't turn off all settings, some things like Windows Update I leave enabled. But ShutUp10 does a great job of explaining each setting and even gives their recommendations as to enabled or disabled.
- If you want a "pure" desktop environment, remove as many of the Windows Store applications (formerly called Metro-apps) as you can. This can easily be done using the following PowerShell script. This script will remove all packages except A) those packages deemed by Microsoft to be required and thus cannot be uninstalled using any technique and B) the "Windows Store" package. Strangely the Windows Store package is not marked "required" but if you remove this package you cannot install Windows Apps in the future if you want to. Best to play it safe and leave this one package installed. Save the following script as "RemoveApps.ps1" then run PowerShell as an administrator. Then run the script. If this is the first time you've run a PowerShell script on your system you might get an error. If so, run this command "Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned" to allow the script to run. Note, after you run this script there may still exist some Windows apps in the start menu, annoying things like "Candy Crush." That's because these apps aren't actually installed, the Windows start menu puts them there as advertisements. If you click on them the app is downloaded and installed. You can right click and uninstall these annoying advertised apps.
# RemoveApps.ps1
$storepkg = (Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.WindowsStore).PackageFullName
$pkgs = (Get-AppxPackage *).PackageFullName
foreach($pkg in $pkgs)
{
if($pkg -ne $storepkg)
{
Remove-AppxPackage $pkg
}
}
$pkgs = (Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers *).PackageFullName
foreach($pkg in $pkgs)
{
if($pkg -ne $storepkg)
{
Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers $pkg
}
}
- Right click on the start menu and remove Task View and Windows Store.
- Right click on the start menu and select Search | Hidden to hide the Cortana search bar.
- Select Settings | Personalization | Colors | and enable Show Color on Title Bar. This adds color back to the application caption bar instead of the default plain white bar.
- Inactive windows in the background still have a white title bar. Adding color to this helps it to stand out as a background windows. Open regedit and browse to HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\DWM. Create or edit the DWORD value AccentColorInactive. Set it to the hex value for the color you want, e.g. 00c0c0c0 for 192 192 192 (light gray).
- Add my computer and network links to the desktop by selecting Settings | Personalization | Themes | Desktop Icon Settings and enable Computer and Network.
- Disable that annoying lock screen which forces you to "swipe" to login (which is annoying for keyboard and mouse). Open the registry editor and ensure the following key and value exists: Key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization Value: "NoLockScreen" Type: DWORD, set to 1. Update: I have noticed not all versions of Windows 10 will honor this registry key, in particular Windows 10 Home and especially newer updates. But after much trying I got this to work, even on Windows 10 Home Creators Update. In addition to this registry key, you need to make a Group Policy change. The trick is, Windows 10 Home does not include the Group Policy Editor, so you need to install that. This website has a batch file you can download and run that installs the Group Policy Editor. Then run gpedit.msc and browse to Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Control Panel | Personalization. Find "do not display the lock screen" and change it to "enabled." If you try and that and it still doesn't work, here's one final thing to check. Browse to (or create if missing) the following registry key: HKLM\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SystemProtectedUserData\<SID>\AnyoneRead\LockScreen. There should be a DWORD registry value "HideLogonBackgroundImage" and set to 1. Note, this last registry key is a system-protected registry key, you'll need to take ownership of the registry key in order to change the value.
- If you try and copy files to/from your Windows 10 machine using the admin shares, you might get access denied even when you enter valid credentials. To fix this, open the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System then create a DWORD value "LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy" and set it to 1.
These steps make Windows 10 very usable. In fact, with these changes I think Windows 10 is better than Windows 7. But without these changes Windows 10 is hard to use and navigate.
