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Win10 Tips, Tricks, and Workarounds

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Reply 20 of 23, by beastlike

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Also - I will be doing this on ALL my Windows 10 machines going forward:

Use this png as the start button. Right-click and download to a path you can keep it permanently.
http://www.classicshell.net/forum/download/file.php?id=1922
this one if you want a hover effect:
https://i.imgsafe.org/8ed96cc4dc.png

Once you download classic shell, right click the shell, click settings, check show all settings.

Under Start Menu Style, Pick An Image and point to your image, go to "Advanced button options" and set the size to 90. Works great.

More options here:
http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4400

Last edited by Stiletto on 2020-05-10, 06:17. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 21 of 23, by lafoxxx

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The best tip I can share is --

Never store your user data (Documents, Desktop, etc.) and important software on C: partition. It should only be used for Windows and small programs like web browser or media player.
Also -- C: should be located on separate disk device. Small SSD (120 GB) preferred.
When you'll have to reinstall Windows or replace the disk, your data will not be lost. You'll just need to install the required software (when overwriting existing disk paths -- copy the configs if needed) -- and you're "back in business".

Also -- regularly check disks using CrystalDiskInfo. If you hear music playing -- buy new disk immediately and copy all files from the problematic disk to it.

Reply 22 of 23, by ZellSF

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1) Disable hibernation. Run a command prompt as admin and write:
powercfg /hibernate off
This disables fast startup and hibernation. Hibernation is practically useless with SSDs and efficient sleep modes in current laptops. Fast startup is entirely useless with for the same reasons. If this wasn't obvious: SSDs are no longer optional for modern computers.

2) Either set a complex password + PIN or no password. Setting a poor password means other people on your network can potentially access your PC. A complex password + PIN however means that anyone who wants to access your PC needs to brute force a complex password, while you can use a simple PIN to login yourself. Make sure you have the complex password written down in a safe location though, you might need it sometime. If you set no password, Windows generally doesn't allow network logins.

3) Obviously while following the above advice, create two user accounts on your PC. It's not fun having to reinstall (or try to recover from a recovery disc) because your user profile is corrupted. It's also handy if a program is severely misbehaving (common with games) and you can't end the task, just switch user and you're good. Make sure to make both users administrator accounts.

4) If you have no preferred backup solution, use file history to backup files. Storage media fails and accidents happen. Backups are very important so you should carefully examine other options here, but if you're lazy file history will work.

lafoxxx wrote on 2020-05-06, 18:16:

Also -- regularly check disks using CrystalDiskInfo. If you hear music playing -- buy new disk immediately and copy all files from the problematic disk to it.

Terrible advice. A lot of the time, HDDs will give you no warnings before failing. Always have a backup of all files that are important.

lafoxxx wrote on 2020-05-06, 18:16:

Also -- C: should be located on separate disk device. Small SSD (120 GB) preferred.
When you'll have to reinstall Windows or replace the disk, your data will not be lost. You'll just need to install the required software (when overwriting existing disk paths -- copy the configs if needed) -- and you're "back in business".

Just remember not to follow any tutorial that tells you to use junctions for this; it messes with Windows Update at times.

I wouldn't recommend it anyway. Windows is pretty fragile and any deviations from the standard setup should be considered carefully. You should always have a backup and transferring the files from backup shouldn't be that much work. Plus Windows 10 has some options for reinstalling while leaving user files anyway.

FFXIhealer wrote on 2016-12-14, 03:58:
Jorpho wrote:

I hear running "netsh winsock reset" is useful for when the Internet goes down.

Please be very careful about telling people to do this. This isn't a "fix" so much as it is a "bulldoze the entire TCP/IP stack and replace it with a brand new one" step and is a very drastic procedure to do on a PC if the situation doesn't actually require it.

I've read this a few times and never with any reasoning. What problems exactly are you expecting out of this?

Reply 23 of 23, by beastlike

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clueless1 wrote on 2016-12-14, 19:21:

Macrium Reflect is another good backup imaging solution. Works from within the OS, so no need to boot from a livecd (like clonezilla) unless you have catastrophic failure that keeps you from booting. In that case, you can use the Macrium Reflect emergency disk that you create when you set it up.

Just moved up to a larger NVMe. When I tried to clone to the larger disk using either AOMEI or EaseUS (I've had good luck with these in the past), it would almost boot, but then do a weird waiting animation loop and not let me log in. There were a few extra recovery partitions on the disk, maybe that had something to do with it, not sure. Remembered what you said about Macrium tho - worked like a charm, and did the clone while I was in Windows.