Windows 10 : Java Glossary

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Windows 10 logo Windows 10
Introduction Where To Find Shopping
Advantages of Upgrading Reinstalling Futures
Disadvantages of Upgrading Printers Rant Links
Windows Home vs Pro versions Flaws
Tips Books

Introduction

Microsoft has committed two deceptions in the release of Windows 10.

  1. If you have Windows 7 or Windows 8, the upgrade is free until 2016-07-29. The problem with the upgrade is you don’t get a disk to repair or reinstall the OS (Operating System) . They don’t tell you that you will be getting a invoice each year to continue using it. In contrast, the upgrades to previous versions gave you unlimited use into the future. If you need to reinstall, you must pay Microsoft $198 for the pro edition and $119 for the home edition.
  2. Windows 7 tries to sneak the upgrade to Windows 10 in as if it were a routine update. You are so used to OKing all the updates, you mindlessly OK the upgrade to Windows 10. You can block it by refusing the KB 3035583 update.

There was no Windows 9. Microsoft officially announced the version after Windows 8 will is called Windows 10. It is billed as being a cross between Windows 7 and Windows 8. I guess they are trying to put distance between the failed Windows 8. Microsoft is discarding their metro interface which makes your desktop behave as if it had a screen the size of a cellphone. So basically they are reverting to Windows 7, except that Windows 10 will run on both desktops and mobiles. The start menu will be back in modified form. It is missing in Windows 8. It will have two different user interfaces, one for mobile and one for keyboard and mouse. It will not try to unify the two as it does in Windows 8. You will not be able to buy it, just rent it. To soften people up of the new strategy, existing users of Windows 7 and 8 will get a year free rental. This will allow MS to come out with new versions of the OS without having to convince people to use them.

Advantages of Upgrading

Disadvantages of Upgrading

Windows Home vs Pro versions

What do you get extra if you buy the pro version?

There is also an even more expensive enterprise edition.

Tips

Where To Find

Here is where to look:

32 or 64 bit OS? Environment Variables Printer Sharing
8.3 legacy short file names Folder Icons Program Data
Account Control Folder Options QuickLaunch
Change Account Name Font Size Repair Explorer
Change Account Picture Format Restore Point
Anti-aliasing Group Policy Run
Associations Host/machine Name/workgroup Schedule a Task
Certificates Icon Arrows Sharing a disk over a LAN
Checkpoints Icon Size Shared disk accessing over the LAN
Clear Event Log Install Fix Suppress Peek
Clean junk files off your disks Install a Font Show Hidden Files
Command prompt IP configuration Snapshots
Correct Problems IP display SNTP Clock Setting
Country Java Control Panel Add To Start Menu
Create Repair Disc .keystore Startup Programs
Date and Time Format Lost Icon Recovery Stopping a Program
Defender Memory Test System Volume Points
Defrag your Disks Menu Task Bar
Desktop pagefile.sys Transparency
Device Manager Mouse Configuration Themes
DNS Clearing NTP Clock Setting Uninstall
Drive Letters Performance Monitoring Version
Eject Printer Cancelling Wallpaper

I just cut/pasted this guide from the Windows 7 entry with some minor changes. I will gradually be making it more accurate. The entries above the multiple bars have been updated to Windows 10.

Where Windows 10 Hides Interesting Information
Function Where To Look Notes

32 or 64 bit

To find out if you are running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows 10.
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click System. Then look in the middle of the screen where it says system type.

8.3 legacy short file names

To turn off the creation of new 8.3 legacy short shadow file name entries:

Run this in a command prompt as administrator:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Type cmd into the search/Cortana box.
  3. Click cmd. Optionally click cmd.exe run as administrator.
fsutil.exe behavior set disable8dot3 1

If some ancient program stops working, you can turn them back on again with:

fsutil.exe behavior set disable8dot3 0

To actually remove existing 8.3 filenames from the directory, you need:

fsutil.exe 8dot3name strip /s /v Z:\

where Z: is the drive you want to strip. Fsutil not only strips the 8.3 filenames, it renames all legacy references in the registry. Unfortunately, this expands the registry and you cannot undo this. The ideal time to make this change is before you have installed any apps.

In the DOS (Disk Operating System) days, filenames were limited to 12 characters in the 8.3 format. Even today every file is registered under its actual name and a DOS-compatible equivalent name such as TEXTFI~1.TXT for TextFile1.Mine.txt. Programs can look up files by either name. By turning this feature off, you shrink and speed up the directories. However, this just stops the creation of new shadow legacy names. It does not get rid of existing ones. For that you must strip existing 8.3 files.

After you have done this, run a defragger to compact your directories.

Account Control

To turn off account control (UAC (User Account Control) ):
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. In the search control panel box, type uac.
  4. Click Change User Account Settings.
  5. Adjust the slider.
By default Windows warns you every time it runs a program not digitally signed or anything that could install or uninstall or change a setting including its own software such as w32tm.exe. This can drive you nuts, since it will ask about the same program 10 times a minute.

Change Account Name

To change the name of an account:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click User Accounts.
  4. Click User Accounts.
  5. Click Change your account name.
Unfortunately, this does not change the name of the C:\Users\xxxx\ directory.

Change Account Picture

To change the logo/picture to an account:
  1. Click Start.
  2. Click your account at the top of the box.
  3. Click Browse and select a picture at least as large as the sample.
Microsoft does not provide any images to choose from. You must create your own and browse to it. It will take your rectangular image and put in a circle. You would think you could alternatively navigate to this setting via the control panel, but you cannot.

Anti-aliasing

To turn on font smoothing (anti-aliasing)(ClearType)
  1. Right Click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Appearance and Personalisation.
  4. Click Font.
  5. Click Adjust ClearType Text.
  6. Turn on ClearType.
By default anti-aliasing(ClearType) is on.

Associations

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Programs.
  4. Click Default Programs.
  5. Click Associate a file type or protocol with a program.
  6. Pick an extension and a program to handle it.
This only lets you configure which program handles open when you right click on a file, not print or edit. I know of know existing utility that lets you completely control the right file menu. You can do it with regedit.exe if you are brave. Making a browser the default browser is not sufficient. You must also configure *.html to be opened with that browser.

Certificates

To view digital certificates:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Network and Internet.
  4. Click Internet Options.
  5. Click Content.
  6. Click Certificates.
  7. Click Other People
    [or other category].
  8. Select certificate of interest.
  9. Click View.
  10. Click Details.
  11. Optionally export it and import it into Java.
To edit/manage digital certificates:
  1. log on as administrator.
  2. At the command prompt, type:
    certmgr.msc.
  3. Follow your nose.

Lets you view or add digital certificates used for SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encrypted Internet links. Java code-signing certificates do not appear here. Editing certificates is not for novices. You might want to turn off OCSP revocation checking, for example.

Clean junk files off your disks

To get rid of unnecessary orphaned temporary files:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Under Administrative Tools, Click Free up disk space.
Get rid of temporary files, empty the recycle bin. Note you don’t actually click Administrative Tools. Look for Free up disk space right below it.

Clear Event Log

To get rid of old event logs that waste disk space:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click Administrative Tools.
  5. Double click Event Viewer.
  6. Select a log you want to clear.
  7. On the click clear log.
There are several kinds of logs you can clear. You can sort by severity of the error first then scan the logs by eye to look for problems before you delete them.

Command prompt

To bring up a command prompt box to run command line utilities:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Type cmd into the search/Cortana box.
  3. Click cmd. Optionally click cmd.exe run as administrator.

If you use BAT (Batch) files extensively, you probably should using tcc/TakeCommand instead.

16 bit DOS and Win 3.1 programs no longer work under Windows 10. You need new 32 or 64 bit version of them.

For convenience, create a shortcut for C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe or and put it on your task bar at the bottom of the screen. Ten ways to open the command prompt

Correct Problems

At the command prompt run as administrator:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Type cmd into the search/Cortana box.
  3. Click cmd. Optionally click cmd.exe run as administrator.
  4. Type sfc /scannow.
This checks Windows 10 files for consistency and automatically corrects some problems.

Create Repair Disc

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click Backup and Restore.
  5. On the left, click Create a system repair disc.

Date and Time Format

Change the Date/time format:

  1. Right click the time in bottom right of screen.
  2. Click Date and Time settings.
  3. Under Related settings, click Additional date, time & regional settings.
  4. Under Region, Click Change Date Time or number formats.
  5. Under Formats, you can select the format or write in your own, e.g. yy-MM-dd or yyyy-MM-dd.
I like ISO-format yyyy-MM-dd it sorts naturally in order, and it is unambiguous. You can tell it is ISO (International Standards Organisation), just by looking at a sample date.

Country

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Clock, Language and Region.
  4. Click Region.
  5. Click Formats Tab.
  6. Click Format.
  7. Click Select your country.
  8. Click Location tab.
  9. Click Home Location.
  10. Click Select your country.
  11. Click Administrative tab.
  12. Click Copy Settings.
  13. Click OK.
  14. Click Change System Locale.
  15. Click Current System Locale.
  16. Click Select your country.
  17. Click OK.
  18. reboot.
The trick is you have to set the country in four different places

Defender

How to start up the Defender GUI (Graphic User Interface) program.
"C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MSASCui.exe" "C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MpCmdRun.exe" is a corresponding command line program. If you use the Defender often, you might set up a short cut to it on your desktop.

Alternatively:

  1. Left click Start.
  2. Click settings.
  3. Click Update & Settings.
  4. On the left, click Windows Defender.

Security Essentials has been discontinued. By default, Defender runs all the time aka real time protection. This gives you extra protection, but a hugely slows things down, especially in programs that hammer your disk like browsers or search/replace. I turn it off, and run manual virus scans daily. Windows likes to turn it back on again when I am not looking. To turn real-time scanning off permanenly requires a registry tweak that looks like this:

.

download and run it. It must be preserved in UTF-16LE (little endian) encoding with an FFFE BOM (Byte Order Mark).

Defrag your Disks

To defrag your disks:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Under Administrative Tools, click Defragment your hard drive.
Pull files scattered over the disk into one contiguous piece. Note you don’t actually click Administrative Tools. Look for Defragment your hard drive right below it. See defraggers for better quality third party tools. If you use some other defragger, make sure you configure weekly defragging with Microsoft’s off.

Desktop

C:\Users\user\Desktop\ and C:\users\Public\Desktop\ Where desktop shortcuts and folders live.

DNS (Domain Name Service)

To clear the DNS cache:

un the command interpreter (command prompt) as administrator:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Type cmd into the search/Cortana box.
  3. Click cmd. Optionally click cmd.exe run as administrator.
  4. Type ipconfig /flushdns.

If you use DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), your router or IAP (Internet Access Provider) will provide the IP (Internet Protocol) of the DNS servers automatically, so you don’t have to configure them. Typing ipconfig at the command prompt will display the names of the DNS servers. If you suspect one of your DNS servers is not working properly, you can use ipconfig /renew to ask your IAP to resend the list.

Device Manager

To see what hardware and device drivers are configured:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Hardware and Sound.
  4. Under Devices and Printers, click Device Manager.
What devices are connected? Are there IRQ (Interrupt Request) conflicts? Where you can disable and enable devices. Where you install new device drivers.

Drive Letters

To change the drive letter of a disk partition, CD (Compact Disc) or DVD drive there are three techniques:

Drive Letter Mapping

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click Administrative Tools.
  5. Click Computer Management.
  6. Under Storage on the left, click Disk Management.
  7. Right click the drive/partition you want to change on the right.
  8. C/ick Change Drive Letter and Paths.
  9. Removable drives are at the very bottom. You will probably have to scroll down to see them.

It is a bit like one of those sliding square puzzles. You can’t change a partition to S: if there already is a partition or device S: even if you plan to change S: to something else soon. You must first change it to something else. If you are doing a major reshuffle, assign all the partitions to temporary drive letters that will not be the permanent set, e.g. X: Y: Z:. Then you can change them to their final letters in any order because all the letters you want to use will be free.

Network Drive Mapping

You can also use:

  1. Click File Explorer.
  2. Click This PC.
  3. Right click map network drive.
  4. The drive is the new pseudodrive you want to use in your scripts. The folder is the actual drive or folder you want that pseudodrive to map to.
  5. To set up as share of a drive or folder on some other machine, e.g. choose J: as the drive and type in the name // roedy/E$ as the share name where roedy is your computer’s name. Infuriatingly, you can’t simply browse to the E:\directory.

SUBST

You can use subst X: Y:\ to define alias drive letters for existing drives, or subst X: Y:\somedir to create shortcuts to commonly used directories. However, Windows forgets your settings after every reboot. To get around that problem you need to compose a bat file to do the SUBST and install it as the login script. SUBST is quicker and does not fail when other network connections fail. See J Drive for details.

I like to make the DVD-reader always R: and writer always W: on all the machines I use. Scripts work everywhere and I don’t have to think. Be careful reassigning drive letters. Registry references will not automatically be adjusted. You may find programs on that drive stop working. You can’t reset the system partition or the partition CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide on Silicon) booted from. This makes it vary hard to clone a system without help from a BareMetal tools. If you add a drive, swap primary and secondary drives, or change the drive CMOS boots from first, it suddenly forgets its letters and reverts to a default set and very likely will become unbootable.

Eject

Ejecting a CD/DVD (Compact Disc/Digital Video Disc) is flaky in Windows 10. There are three techniques to try when it does not work:
  1. Press the eject button on the drive.
  2. Right click the drive in File Explorer and select eject.
  3. Type ejectmedia V: at the command prompt.
Often Windows 10 saves up writing to do when the disk is closed/ejected, so be patient so long as the CD/DVD is whirring. Sometimes you have to reboot to clear a stuck eject.

Environment Variables

To permanently set environment variables:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click System.
  5. Click Advanced System Settings on the left.
  6. Click Environment Variables on the bottom.
Where you do you SET XX=YYYY controls for BAT files. If in doubt, put your variables in the system section. This way they won’t get lost if the system decides to rename your user directory, which it will do if you change your computer workgroup/name. After you set you variables, start new DOS boxes to make the changes take effect. To make the changes take effect in BAT files that you trigger with the task manager, you must reboot.

To more rapidly get to the deeply nested environment variables, set up a shortcut or bat file to C:\Windows\System32\SystemPropertiesAdvanced.exe which does not get you all the way there, but at least most of the way. The icon looks like a LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen with a big check mark on it.

Folder Icons

You can assign new icons to folders on your desktop two ways:

  1. The new icon overlays the old paper folder image.
  2. The new icon replaces the old paper folder image.

To start, use Google image to find a new suitable icon. Use Google advance search to limit the search to *.ico files. Download your new icon to your icon collection folder on the desktop. Right click the folder you want to improve. Click properties. Click customise. If you want to overlay, under folder pictures, click choose file. If you want to completely replace the icon, click change icon.

Folder Options

To modify the Windows explorer display of folders, open a window with Explorer. Click File ⇒ Change Folder and Search Options. You can change options just for this folder or for all folders.

Font Size

To control the size of type and icons an your desktop:
  1. Right Click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Appearance and Personalisation.
  4. Under Display, click Make text and other items larger or smaller.
  5. Click use these display settings..
  6. Use the slider to select degree of magnification. Some apps will stop working at large magnifications.
  7. Sign out and login again.

You may also have to adjust other apps individually.

Format

There are three places to format:
  1. format.exe command line utility.
  2. Control panel:
    1. Right click Start.
    2. Click Control Panel.
    3. Click System and Security.
    4. Click Administrative Tools.
    5. Double click Computer Management.
    6. Double click storage.
    7. Double click disk management.
    You can then format partitions.
  3. Pop-up. When you insert a blank DVD a dialog box pops up.
    1. click Like flash/Live File System or with CD/DVD/Mastered. See the DVD entry for which to choose.
    .
You can format hard disks, CD s, DVDs and floppies. However, you do not need to format CDs and DVDs if you use burning software.

Group Policy

The Group Policy editor lets you configure various options and set up login scripts for each user. Unfortunately, Microsoft only ships the editor gpedit.msc with the pro version. If you have the home version, you must download and install a third party version of the editor Download. You can then invoke the editor with gpedit.msc from the command line.

Host/machine Name/workgroup

To change your computer’s name on the LAN (Local Area Network) :
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click System.
  5. Under computer name click change settings.
Computer name and Workgroup for this machine. Only machines in the same workgroup see each other.

Icon Arrows

To get rid of arrows on shortcut icons use the fxvisor utility.

Icon Size

To change the desktop icon size:
  1. Right click on an empty part of the desktop.
  2. Select view.
  3. Select Large Icons, Medium Icons or Classic Icons for small.

Install Fix

If you are having trouble installing software, Microsoft has a generic fix for various problems that interfere. download and install.

Install a Font

To install a font, usually TTF (TrueType Font) or OpenType-TTF:

Streamlined Method

  1. Right click the font file.
  2. Right click open-with.
  3. Select Windows Font Viewer.
  4. Click install.

Infuriatingly, you can’t select multiple fonts, even weight variants of the same font. You have to install them one at a time.

Zip Method

  1. Double click the zip file.
  2. Right click the font file.
  3. Right click open-with.
  4. Select Windows Font Viewer.
  5. Click install.

Control Panel Method

  1. Right Click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Appearance and Personalisation.
  4. Click Font.
  5. Drag your new font file(s) onto the collection of already installed fonts.
 

IP configuration

To manually assign a fixed IP or to select automatic DHCP IP assignment:
  1. Left click Start.
  2. Click settings.
  3. Click network and Internet..
  4. On the left, click Ethernet..
  5. Right click properties on your connection.
  6. Click Internet Protocol Version 4..
  7. Click properties..
Configure static or dynamic (DHCP ) IP/DNS assignment. This menu item will not exist until your Ethernet card is functioning properly. Check with the device manager if you don’t see the Local Area Connection option.

IP display

To display the IP automatically assigned to your machine or manually configured:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Type cmd into the search/Cortana box.
  3. Click cmd. Optionally click cmd.exe run as administrator.
  4. Type IPCONFIG.
What IP addresses in this machine using? What has DHCP given me for a DNS server? The full name is C:\Windows\system32\ipconfig.exe.

Java Control Panel

To access the Java Control Panel:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Programs.
  4. Click Java.
 

.keystore

C:\Users\user\.keystore Java code-signing certificates. Use keytool.exe to view the file.

Lost Icon Recovery

To recover lost desktop icons:
  1. Right Click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Appearance and Personalisation.
  4. Click Personalisation.
  5. Click Change Desktop and Icons (in the left panel).
  6. Then make sure all the icons you want to see are selected and you hit restore to default, e.g. restore computer, network, user and the recycle bin. To recover your file explorer icon, create a shortcut to C:\Windows\explore.exe.

Memory Test

To run a memory diagnostic test.

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click Administrative Tools.
  5. Click Windows Memory Diagnostic.
It will reboot and take quite a long time. You can also start it with C:\Windows\system32\mdsched.exe

The menu structure is kept in directory trees as *.lnk files.

"C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\" There are also frequently used pinned entries in: "C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu\"

Menu items accessible to all users are stored in:

"C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\"
You can manipulate the menu by deleting *.lnk shortcut entries, or moving them around in the menu tree, by renaming them or by modifying their properties. However, these changes will not necessarily show up in the menu. You can also manipulate menu-items to some extent with right-click.

Mouse Configuration

  1. Left click Start.
  2. Click settings.
  3. Click the icon above devices.
  4. On the left, click mouse and touchpad.
  5. Click additional mouse options.

Unfortunately the option to display the cursor when you hit Ctrl does not work on my machine.

Also see configuring a mouse

NTP (Network Time Protocol) Clock Setting

Installing the free Meinberg NTP software for Windows is very easy to set up. It does not require run as administer. It automatically probes using a pool of NTP servers. It is very accurate. It is superior in every way to the default SNTP tm32.exe default method.

Old OS

Windows 10 will delete the files from your old OS in windows.old after a month. To free up the space earlier:

  1. Left click Start.
  2. Click settings.
  3. Click System.
  4. Click Storage.
  5. Click This PC (C:).
  6. Click Temporary files.
  7. Click Delete Previous OS.

pagefile.sys

To change the size or placement of the paging file:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click System.
  5. Click Advanced system settings on the left.
  6. Under performance, click Settings.
  7. Click Advanced.
  8. Click Change under virtual memory.
Set the size of your backing store, usually to 1.5 to 3 times the size of real RAM (Random Access Memory), e.g. if you had 3 GB of real RAM set it to 6000 Mb. If you have 16 GB or more of RAM, you might consider setting the size of each pagefile to 0 to turn off virtual memory.

Performance Monitoring

To see what percentage of your disk i/o, CPU (Central Processing Unit) capacity etc you are using:

  1. Click Start.
  2. Type perfmon into the Cortana box.
You can also invoke it at a command prompt with C:\Windows\System32\perfmon.exe.

Printer Cancelling

To cancel/abort a print job:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Under Hardware and Sound click view devices and printers.
  4. Right click the printer of interest on See What’s Printing.
  5. Right click on the print job you want to cancel.
Even after you stop your computer from sending more material to a printer, the printer has a buffer of material the computer previously sent but which has been printed yet. The printer may carry on for another couple of dozen pages. Windows is too stupid to tell the printer to clear its buffer. You have to do it by turning the printer off then on again.

Printer Sharing

To share your printer with others:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Under Hardware and Sound, click view devices and printers.
  4. Right click the printer of interest on Printer Properties not Properties.
  5. Click Sharing tab.
  6. Click Change Sharing Options.
  7. Check Share this printer.
This lets you share your printer with others on the LAN.
Anyone wanting to use the shared printer must have an account on the computer with the printer, or at least must know some user-id/password combination on the server to connect to the printer with.

Anyone wanting to use the shared printer must first:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Network and Internet.
  4. Click view network computers and devices.
  5. Right click on the computer that has the printers you want to use.
  6. Click open and login to that computer. You must have an account on it.
  7. Double click that computer. Its printers will display.
  8. Right click the printer you want to connect to, and select connect.
  9. Repeat for other printers you want to connect to.

Just once, you have to turn on the ability to share printers and possibly the ability to let others share your printers. You do that with:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Network and Internet.
  4. Under Network and Internet click Network and Sharing Center.
  5. On the left click advanced sharing settings.

For more detail, see the printer sharing entry.

Program Data

C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\ (supposed to be for configuration data that would ideally follow you around from computer to computer). This is a hidden directory. Make AppData visible if you are doing any work with it.
or
C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\
(supposed to be for configuration data that is tied to this particular computer). Make AppData visible if you are doing any work with it.
Where programs tend to keep configuration information.

QuickLaunch

C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\StartMenu\ Where the *.lnk files corresponding to the QuickLaunch icons are stored. The QuickLaunch icons live in the left side of the task bar at the bottom of the screen. You can launch programs with a single click.

Remove Obsolete OSes (Operating Systems)

Remove obsolete OSes from the boot menu.

Use bcdedit run with administrator
rem to see what you have bcdedit rem to remove junk bcdedit /delete {name} /f

Repair Explorer

Sometimes Windows explorer complains when you double click a directory, saying it is missing an association. To repair it:

  1. Visit TenForums and download the registry patches for Directory, lnk and Folder.
  2. Start a command prompt run as administrator.
  3. Insert each patch into the registry by typing its name, e.g. Directory.reg

You can correct most other broken associations the same way.

Restore Point

To turn off restore point checkpointing:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click System.
  5. On the left, click System Protection.
  6. Select drive.
  7. Click Configure.
To create a checkpoint:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click System.
  5. On the left, click System Protection.
  6. Click Create.
Keep several restore points (aka checkpoints or snapshots) since the most recent one may already have been corrupted. Restore points are not a substitute for image and file-by-file backups. It is probably a good idea to turn this on drive D:, you won’t protect changes to drive C:. The restore points will be stored in files with the unlikely name of System Volume Information.

Run

To run a program, just one command, without the run as administrator option:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Run.

To open a command prompt box with run as administrator option, where you can enter many commands:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Type cmd into the search/Cortana box.
  3. Click cmd. Optionally click cmd.exe run as administrator.
You can create a shortcut to C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe (or X:\Program Files\JPSoft\TCMD21\tcc.exe for tcc/TakeCommand), and drag it to your task bar at the bottom of the screen. You can then invoke a command prompt with a single click of that icon.

Schedule a Task

To schedule a bat/btm file to run at a certain time periodically:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click System and Security.
  4. Click Administrative Tools.
  5. Click Schedule Task.
  6. Click Task Scheduler Library.
  7. To edit an existing task, right click properties.
You may specify multiple triggers, to schedule a task to run more than once a day.

Shared Disk Accessing

To access a shared disk:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Network and Internet.
  4. Under Network Sharing Centre, click View Network Computers.
  5. Click the desired computer.
  6. Right click the desired disk.
  7. Right click map network drive.
  8. Select an unused drive letter on your machine to represent the shared folder.
This procedure lets you look at somebody else’s hard drive. Optionally, set up a drive letter so their drive forever after looks to be part of your machine. You won’t be able to access any network drives on a machine that is hibernating. Just looking at its drives will not bring it out of hibernation. You must walk over to the that machine and wake it up. This is also true for accessing a shared printer on a hibernating machine.

Sharing your directory over a LAN

To share your disk, or a folder with others:
  1. Find the folder in the explorer.
  2. Right click share as.
  3. Click the user you want to share with.

Show Hidden Files

To display hidden files in directory listings:

  1. Right Click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Appearance and Personalisation.
  4. Click File Explorer Options.
  5. Click view.
  6. Uncheck hide extensions for known file types
  7. Check show hidden files, folders and drives.
Can also navigate there directly with a shortcut C:\Windows\System32\control.exe /name Microsoft.FolderOptions

SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol) Clock Setting

To set the date and time from an atomic clock on the web:

NTP is superior in every way to the default SNTP w32tm.exe, so I do not recommend the following SNTP method of setting your clock.

What’s wrong with SNTP?

  • To have to trigger the time resyncing probes manually.
  • You can only use one time server.
  • It is up to you to chose an optimal time server manually.
  • It only runs as administrator.
  • It requires you to start a service
  • It uses the stripped down SNTP protocol, not the full accurate NTP protocol.

Periodically resync the clock with:

rem sntpresync.bat
rem make sure clock is accurate
rem must run as administator
rem start service, need be done only once after boot.
sc.exe start W32Time
rem probe an atomic clock on the web to resync the clock
w32tm.exe /resync

I suggest you Install the free Meinberg NTP software instead.

  1. Right click the time in bottom right of screen.
  2. Click Date and Time settings.
  3. Under Related settings, click Additional date, time & regional settings.
  4. Under Date and Time, click Set the Time and Date
  5. Click Internet Time
  6. Click Change Settings
  7. Click Update Now

Don’t use this to adjust daylight savings. If you have the time zone configured properly the leaping forward and back should happen automatically. Using it to adjust for DST (Daylight Saving Time) will screw up your file dates which are based on invariant GMT/UTC.

Synchronises with Microsoft atomic clock, time.windows.com. That server is quite unreliable, so I suggest replacing it with another from this list of timeservers. If that does not work, try SetClock. I have mine set to ca.pool.ntp.org to select a server from a pool of Canadian NTP timeservers. To sync the clock, you must run w32tm.exe which will only work after the W32Time service is started. You must run as administrator. I recommend using NTP instead.

Add To Start Menu

To make a copy of a launch icon in the left start menu, right click, click pin to start.

Startup Programs

To control which programs automatically run (autorun) when you start up the computer:
  1. Click Ctrl-Alt-Del holding all three keys down.
  2. Click Start Task Manager.
  3. Click the Startup Tab.
  4. Right click on the program you want to enable/disable.
A few of these program will be represented by *.lnk files in "C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\".

Stopping a Program

Sometimes a program won’t stop, or won’t start because another copy of the program got stuck half way through stopping. To stop a program:

  1. Click Ctrl-Alt-Del holding all three keys down.
  2. Click Start Task Manager.
  3. Right click on the Program you want to stop.
  4. Left Click end task.
You will see all kinds of programs listed there you did not start yourself, such as svchost.exe You can get overview of what they are for in this essay.

Suppress Peek

If you let your mouse wander into the bottom right corner of the screen, (and perhaps other magic places), suddenly your app will disappear and you will see the desktop. This is called peeking. To suppress this behaviour:

  1. Right click on an empty part of the task bar at the bottom of the screen.
  2. Right click properties.
  3. Unselect Use peek to preview the desktop when you move your mouse to the show desktop button at the end of the task bar.
What a hare-brained idea this was! Why not click an icon if you want to see the desktop, which you can’t easily to by mistake?

Task Bar

To move the task bar from the side back to the bottom:

  1. Unlock the task bar by right clicking it and deselecting lock tool bar.
  2. Left click an unused part of the task bar and drag it to the bottom. It will suddenly jump to the bottom, not move smoothly as with other dragging, so it looks as if nothing is happening.
  3. Right click an empty region of the task bar.
  4. Click Properties.
  5. Select task bar icon size and other properties.
  6. Relock the task bar.

To create more room on the task bar.

  1. Right click Cortana on the task bar.
  2. Left click Cortana.
  3. Left click Show Cortana icon.

Themes

To select a new theme:

  1. Right click anywhere on open space on the desktop.
  2. Click Personalize.
  3. Click theme.
  4. Click theme settings under themes.
  5. Click get more themes online to get Microsoft’s themes.
  6. If you don’t want transparent borders, click Color and deselect transparency.
  7. Alternatively, search the Internet for Windows 10 themes to find third party themes and follow the instructions. Beware of Trojan horses and id theft.

Transparency

To turn off transparent window borders:

  1. Right click on an empty part of the desktop.
  2. Click Personalize.
  3. Click Colours.
  4. Uncheck enable transparent class.
By default transparent windows borders are on.

Uninstall

To uninstall a program:
  1. Right click on an empty part of the desktop.
  2. Under Programs, click Uninstall a program.
IObit Uninstall does a much more thorough job since the uninstall programs that come with apps generally leave all kinds of directories files and registry entries behind.

Unsharing a folder over a LAN

To stop sharing a folder with others:
  1. Right click Start.
  2. Click Control Panel.
  3. Click Network and Internet.
  4. Under Network Sharing Center, click View network computers and devices.
  5. Double click the icon representing your computer.
  6. Right click the folder you want to stop sharing.
  7. Click share with.
  8. Click Advanced Sharing.
  9. Click the Share tab.
  10. Click Advanced Sharing again, but this time the one with a shield.
  11. Untick Share this folder.

This is insane. You should be able to unshare by right clicking the directory in the explorer.

Update Check

To force a check for updates to Windows 10:

  1. Right click Start.
  2. Type cmd into the search/Cortana box.
  3. Click cmd. Optionally click cmd.exe run as administrator.
  4. Type C:\Windows\System32\control.exe /name Microsoft.WindowsUpdate.
If you do this often, create a shortcut to invoke:
C:\Windows\System32\control.exe /name Microsoft.WindowsUpdate

Version

To find out the Windows version and build number.
  1. At the command prompt, type winver.
  2. If you use Take Command, you can type ver to get both the TCC (Take Command Command line) and Windows version.

Wallpaper

C:\Users\user\Pictures\. . Where Windows 10 stores desktop wallpapers, past and present. You can change the wallpaper by finding a suitably large image in your browser and right click Use image on desktop. Also see Themes

Weather for your city

To configure the default city for which Windows displays the weather:

  1. Left click on Start.
  2. Click the weather tile.
  3. Click the cog icon in the bottom left of the weather window.
  4. Select default location.
  5. Type your preferred city with state and country into the search box.
  6. Close with the X icon.

If there other functions you would like instructions to find, please let me know.

Reinstalling

When you reinstall Windows 10, unfortunately you must also reinstall all your applications, a very tedious process. You can reduce the pain somewhat by copying all the C:\Windows.old\users\user\appdata hidden directory to C:\Users\user\AppData\ and C:\Windows.old\users\user\my documents directory to "C:\Users\user\my documents\" before you do any installing. Prune out directories for programs you no longer use. This way much of the time you will not have to reconfigure your application settings, or restore data from backup.

Every time you re-install Windows, it has to re-download all the updates from scratch. It should be smart enough to let you burn a CD with the updates on it, so you only have to re-download updates since the last reinstall.

Printers Rant

Printers are very badly done in 10. Here are a few of my complaints:

Flaws

Here are some of what I consider flaws in the design of Windows 10. Some of them have been in Windows for decades, so I am not holding by breath these will ever be fixed.

BOOKS

Shopping

electronic product image recommend electronic⇒Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64 Bit System Builder OEMto electronic home
asin B00ZSI7Y3U
You might want the 32 bit version, the French version, or the pro version instead. This version comes in plain packaging, normally used by people who build computers and throw the packaging away. The advantages of having an install DVD are:
  • You can reinstall later, if for example you get a bad virus or ransomeware infection.
  • You don’t have to spend hours and hours downloading the install images.
  • You don’t need room on disk for the install images.
American flag amazon.com bestbuy.ca Canadian flag
Canadian flag amazon.ca canadacomputers.com Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de ncix.ca Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es newegg.ca Canadian flag
French flag amazon.fr www.staples.ca Canadian flag
Italian flag amazon.it tigerdirect.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk bestbuy.com American flag
India flag junglee.com ncixus.com American flag
UN flag other stores newegg.com American flag
www.staples.com American flag
tigerdirect.com American flag
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock
electronic product image recommend electronic⇒Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit System Builder OEMto electronic home
asin B00ZSHDJ4O
You might want the 32 bit version, the French version, or the home version instead. This version comes in plain packaging, normally used by people who build computers and throw the packaging away. The advantages of having an install DVD are:
  • You can reinstall later, if for example you get a bad virus or ransomeware infection.
  • You don’t have to spend hours and hours downloading the install images.
  • You don’t need room on disk for the install images.
American flag amazon.com bestbuy.ca Canadian flag
Canadian flag amazon.ca canadacomputers.com Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de ncix.ca Canadian flag
Spanish flag amazon.es newegg.ca Canadian flag
French flag amazon.fr www.staples.ca Canadian flag
Italian flag amazon.it tigerdirect.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk bestbuy.com American flag
India flag junglee.com ncixus.com American flag
UN flag other stores newegg.com American flag
www.staples.com American flag
tigerdirect.com American flag
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock

Futures

In my view, the key feature missing from Windows since DOS days, is a the concept of default source and target directory. Then you could copy and move files without the spastic contortions of drag and drop. I am not holding my breath.

For programmers there should be an API (Application Programming Interface) for creating temporary files that will automatically eventually be deleted, even if the app or OS crashes. It could even be implemented as a standard naming convention. The business of recovering junk files is fraught with danger. Utilities are always deleting files that are not really abandoned temporaries.

I think everyone has absolutely had it with malware. We need a top to bottom rethink to keep each app in its own airtight box where it cannot interfere with any other program. A vendor should be able to modify its own code, but no one else’s. They should be able to modify only their own registry entries.

I have been asking for these things for decades, so do not hold your breath.

Fixes for Windows 10 install problems.
fxvisor: simple utility to get rid of arrows from shortcut icons
How to remove arrows from shortcut icons: alternate
Magic Jelly Bean KeyFinder: discover your Windows product id serial number
malware
media creation tool: to install from DVD
Meinberg NTP software
TenForums: forum to get help with Windows 10 problems
Windows
Windows 10 flaws and fixes
Windows 10 futures
Windows 7
Windows 8

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