Customize Folder Options
These are how folder viewing options. Sections are arranged in tabs. IMHO this new interface makes the options most folks use far more apparent than in previous Windows versions, and thus more user friendly. (Still, it wouldn’t have killed them to make the old menu style available.) Long ago I adopted my “when in doubt, right-click” strategy and I right-click everything. All the right-click options you are used to are still there.
The File tab is the default view.
The Home tab is where you can manipulate files.
The View tab. Options are pretty much unchanged from Windows 7 but now you don’t have to navigate with a menu. It’s all where you can see it. Rolling over an option will immediately show you a preview of what that option looks like. See the next section entitled Folder View Options for more on this.
The last tab is usually Manage but for media files it will show Play.
Notice the Manage options for drives. It allows you to defrag, trim, cleanup, and format.
Folder View Options
Here are all your Folder view options. My preferences are as you see below.
It should be noted that if you uncheck the Hide protected operating system files box you’ll have to look at those desktop.ini and thumbs.db files everywhere including the desktop.
Oh, and for the love of all that is Geeky. Checking the Launch folder windows in separate process box is not a performance tweak. It is a legacy stability setting that actually uses more of your memory. Please see by Bad Tweaks page.
Optimize Folders
Win10 has various viewing and indexing options for specific folders. Default viewing options are changed based on the content of the folder. For instance, the Pictures folder will display thumbnails while the Documents folder will display details. If you’re like me, you create a lot of new folders for various items. They are often not optimized for the right file types in the folder, especially if the folder has various file types. This can slow the viewing of folder contents. To optimize your folders: Right-click on the folder > click the Customize tab > in the Optimize this folder for: box, choose the appropriate setting (when in doubt I recommend General items) > Click Apply and OK.
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