Display Settings
Right-click on your desktop and choose Display settings. This is the same as Notification Center / Action Center icon > All settings > System > Display.
Here you can change scaling, resolution, multiple displays, etc.
Personalize
Right-click on your desktop and choose Personalize. This is the same as Notification Center / Action Center icon > All settings > Personalization.
New color options. Here you can set your theme color, set the color for your Start menu, taskbar, Action Center app, and title bars as well as adjust transparency. (Please stop sending me the registry hack for setting the color of title bars. TH2 added this option here.)
Lock screen settings as well as Screen timeout and screensaver adjustments.
Adjust theme, sound, desktop icons, and mouse pointers
I discuss the Start settings in The Start Menu section of this guide.
The Taskbar
This is the same as right-click on the Taskbar and choose Properties. You can see several options here including a way to move the Taskbar.
This is the same screen as Notification icon > All settings > System > Notifications.
Here you can customize notifications and system icons. What you choose is up to you and your annoyance level.
Click Select which icons appear on the taskbar. I like to know everything that is going on with my system show I turn ON Always show all icons in the notification area.
Now go back on step and choose Turn system icons on or off. Available options will differ between a laptop and desktop. Configure it to your preference.
The Search Box
Via right-clicking on the Taskbar. Show it, hide it, or just show an icon.
The Task View And Touch Keyboard Buttons
Right-click on the Taskbar. Uncheck Show Task View button and Show touch keyboard button to get rid of them.
Toolbars
I like to create toolbars to make things more organized and easier to get to. This mostly involves apps and folders that I use frequently. Here is mine.
To create my custom Toolbars, I first make a folder in my C: drive called menu_stuff.
In that folder I create a folder for a specific toolbar(s).
And here I drag my links I want in those folders. These can be created by right-click > Send to Desktop (create shortcut) for apps and Control Panel items, and by dragging to the desktop in the case of Administrative tools. I then move these to my folders. You can add a Toolbar for any folder and it will show the contents of that folder.
The Clock
Right-click on the clock > choose Adjust date/time. This is the same as Notification Center / Action Center icon > All settings > Time & language.
Here you can adjust auto time, time zone, and date and time formats. Click Change date and time formats to do so.
I like a 24-hour clock. To change it set Short time to HH:mm.
Disable System Sounds
What this does is disable the Sound Scheme. The sound scheme contains things like the sound you hear when you click on something. I’m really not concerned so much with the resources it uses but I just find the sounds to be annoying. Either way…
Right-click on the Volume icon in your System Tray and choose Sounds > First save your current scheme, click on the Save As… button, enter a name, I used “1”, and click OK > Next, under Sound Scheme: choose No Sounds and click Apply at the bottom, right.
I think Classic Shell is far superior to anything out there and free.
Hi Eric,
Excellent job. I will have to re-read the whole thing again… My favorite is moving all the DOCS, Pix and Misc. to a separate drive. In this way, I can do more frequent OS backups that will not fill the backup drive too fast.
Issues on my end:
1. When I try to change Geolocation Service to AUTOMATIC, I get “the system cannot find the file specified”. Any suggestions?
2. On your tweaks p. 13, you have more options. On Shutdown settings, I only have SLEEP and LOCK. You additionally have: Turn on fast startup and Hibernate. Are you running Win 10 Enterprise?
Suggestion: It would be great to compile everything into a PDF file that can serve as desktop reference.
Geolocation: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dn764773.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
Shutdown settings may vary depending on setup.
PDF: https://www.tweakhound.com/buy-tweaking-windows-10/
This is funny and just for a point of reference I have worked in IT primarily in Computer and Network installation, support, maintenance for 21 years now and have read Eric’s guides since Windows XP as it is one of the easiest ways to get great info on the manipulation of Operating systems and he is about as complete as it gets.
Anyway the way I organize my files is on seperate hard drives internally and with USB media containers most often now (I have 2 64 Gb’s I use and on 256 GB one as well given to me by Corsair. My computer is set up with 3 hard drives (which I would like to grow to 5 with two or 7 in raid sets in 0,1 and 10 (0,1 being options with 5 and 10 being with 7). The first of course is the OS drive otherwise generally known as C:\ and the other two are P:\ programs, and M:\Media which I organize relatively often and I have backups and everything of course external from the OS drive which is also a Corsair Pro SSD and the things on it are often used, and active programs such as Office etcetera but not generally big saves (I like to keep SSD’s relatively light in volume)!
Two things…
1) Excellent job Eric! One thing I miss is the Logoff, Shutdown, and Restart tiles to which I pin to my taskbar…But hey that’s just me..
2) Might as well make it a sixer…LOL
Excellent work! This really takes all the “mystery” out of running and securing this OS…at least for me. A quick “typo” to correct. On page 3, when copying the GOD MODE title, the space between the period after the word MODE, and the first parentheses has to be removed for it to work.
Thank you again for all your hard work!
Fixed. Thanks!
Defragment and optimize your drives bug
There is a bug in Win 10, V 1511 build 10586.17 setting for “defragment and optimize your drives”. If I turn my HDD defrag schedule to ON, my SSD gets switched on too. If I turn OFF SSD defrag, HDD defrag is also turned off. I have defrag for all drives turned off turned OFF and will do it manually.
I have 8Gs of RAM on a 32bit Windows with SSD on a laptop and it boots twice as fast (average 30 sec.) as Windows 10 32 or 64bit (1 min. +) – and Windows 32 bit can only use 4Gs of RAM max.!
Same programs and all drivers all up to date on both so go figure!
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778%28v=vs.85%29.aspx