Windows X Guide - Fix all the Windows 10 "Features"

[DTX]

This guide is for Luke, Linus and anyone who has been forced to upgrade to Windows 10 and is not familiar with the new features and settings. Here I address the most aggravating issues that can be found in Windows 10, especially after a fresh install. I personally tried following the LTT Windows 9 guide but like some I didn't get too far and wasn't willing to hack Windows into looking like Windows 7 with third party apps. Instead, I researched and developed a standard routine I do every time I install Windows 10 on any of my personal or office computers to obtain a clean and seamless operating system experience.

 

I do not do anything on here that could destroy your operating system but if you are super not confident on your computer skills or simply because it is good practice, create a backup of all your irreplaceable cat photos and important files before we begin. Ideally you are working off a fresh install but if you are not, it doesn't matter as long as you are running any build of Windows 10. You should apply any Feature Upgrade after you are done following this guide and then use this guide again to remove anything useless that got reinstalled by the upgrade.

 

The goal of this guide is get Windows 10 to the basics, disabling anything useless/annoying/unsafe so that you can install whichever programs you wish to use for your specific usage on top of a clean-Windows-7-like install of Windows 10.

 

Before I begin, let me address a couple critiques from the WAN Show on Jan 17, 2020

 

How to change Default Audio Device quickly: [Luke can get this done in 3 Clicks]

• On the Taskbar click on the Volume Icon -> click on the ^ Icon in the corner -> click on the Device you want to output audio
• If you want more control, right-click on the Volume Icon -> click on Speaker setup -> click on Advanced setup to open the Sound Control Panel

How to access Internet Settings quickly: [Linus can get this done in 2 Clicks]

• On the Taskbar right-click on the Wifi/Ethernet Icon -> Open Network & Internet settings

This is the Windows X (Ten) Guide:

 

How to Fix the Taskbar: Cleaner look/Remove useless features

• Right-click on the Taskbar -> uncheck Show People, shouldn't be on by default
• Right-click on the Taskbar -> click on Cortana/Search -> click on Hidden, we will get rid of Cortana later, if it says Search instead of Cortana, Cortana is already disabled
• The Task View button is useful for switching windows but can be unchecked if desired
• Right-click on the Taskbar -> click Taskbar settings
• Everything should be Off except Use small taskbar icons (optional) and Use Peek (optional)
• Click on Select which icons appear on the taskbar and set On at the top to always show all icons

How to Fix the Lock screen/Desktop: Cleaner look/Remove ads/Remove useless features

• From the Settings window opened in the previous section, click the Home Icon to go to Settings and click on Personalization
• Background has the standard Background Image settings
• Colors has the standard Bar Color settings, turn on Transparency effects if able, check both Start and Title checkboxes if unchecked and select Dark or Light mode
• On Lock screen, change Background from Windows Spotlight to Picture mode and disable Fun facts to get rid of ads and junk on the lock screen
• Show lock screen background picture should be On
• This is also when and where you can change your Screen saver settings by clicking on Screen saver settings

Fix the Start Menu: Cleaner look/Remove ads/Remove useless features

• From the Settings window opened in the previous section, click on Start which is above Taskbar
• Everything should be set to Off except for Show app list which should be On
• Click on the Start Menu and you will find 10-20 ugly Windows Tiles on the right side
• Go through and right-click each Tile and either Uninstall or Unpin the tile allowing for time for the uninstall program to finish and authorizing the uninstalls if prompted. Almost anything on there is Bloatware or uninstallable (We'll get around this later)
• Right-click the Settings Icon in the Start Menu and select Personalize this list
• Turn on or off anything you use/don't use, the most useful shortcuts are Settings, Documents and Network, everything else can be accessed through the pinned File Explorer in the Taskbar
• Open File Explorer from the Taskbar, at the top left, click File -> Change folder and search options
• In Folder Options, in the Privacy section, uncheck the boxes for Show recently used files and Show frequently used folders
• I'll go over how to further clean the Start Menu later on the guide once we do other changes

How to Fix the Programs - Part 1: Cleaner look/Remove bloatware/Remove useless features

• Now click on the Settings Icon to open Settings and go to Apps in the center
• Under Startup you can select which programs start with your PC, less programs = faster boot time, don't disable something important like your antivirus
• Back at the top in Apps & features you can view and uninstall all the applications you don't use
• Do not uninstall the Microsoft Store and the App Installer since you will have to reinstall all built-in apps to fix this, it makes Windows unhappy if you do
• Do not uninstall any drivers, anything with the brand of your hardware such as items that mention Intel/AMD/Nvidia or anything to do with Audio
• You can get any default apps back through the Microsoft Store or Powershell if you wish, I recommend keeping Alarms & Clock, Calculator, Paint 3D, Snip & Sketch and Photos as they as useful in addition to the Microsoft Store and App Installer which are required to keep Windows 10 from freaking out and the Camera app only if you wish to use the built in Camera app
• All the Extensions Windows installs are useless and can be removed, if you cannot uninstall an app in this menu, we will get them off later in the guide
• From this window you should be able to find Program and Features either on the right side or all the way at the bottom to reach the classic uninstaller
• Get rid of anything that is unnecessary/unwanted/outdated/trials/bloatware
• If you do not use OneDrive, remove it at this stage, it will take extra steps later to completely remove it from your system

How to Fix the Programs - Part 2: Cleaner look/Remove bloatware/Remove useless features

• This section requires the installation of CCleaner from Piriform, if you are uncomfortable, feel free to skip this step, never pay for CCleaner and only use the free version, I would also only download it from their official site
• When you go to install it, uncheck Google Chrome's option because you should never install bundled software, click Customize and leave only the Start Menu and Open options checked, then install the program
• CCleaner is a great program to routinely clean your PC in addition to Disk Cleanup, it will also clean your registry safely and has useful tools like the uninstaller, startup manager and drive wiper
• Once installed, there is a few things to Fix in CCleaner, mainly to make it less annoying
• Go to Options, Setting and set Custom Clean as the Home Screen, set secure deletion here if you want
• In Smart Cleaning, uncheck the top box, then uncheck the bottom box and then agree, this removes their scan/always on option and makes it on demand only, will also not run in background
• In Updates, I'd uncheck everything and set it to Manual updates
• In Advanced, uncheck everything
• Any saved logins in your browser will be removed when CCleaner clears the cookies, you can opt to keep those cookies by going to Options -> Cookies and adding them to the Keep side, then you won't get logged out of say Youtube when you clean if you add all the youtube cookies to the Keep side
• Now that CCleaner is installed and fixed, we can go to Tools -> Uninstall
• You can uninstall the Uninstallable Built-In Apps by selecting the right item on this list and clicking uninstall, you can use this to remove the rest of the Windows 10 Bloatware plus all the Xbox apps if you don't use them
• Now you should have no more CandyCrush, no more OneDrive, no more Xbox on your PC

How to clean up the Start Menu further: Cleaner look/Remove useless features

• Go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
• This is your Start Menu Folder, you can delete obsolete shortcuts like the OneDrive shortcut once you have uninstalled it, you can remove web pages that programs install, remove the uninstall shortcuts that you can access through the Window's uninstallers or by navigating to the program folder in File Explorer
• I personally copy the main shortcuts of the programs out of the subfolders so that everything is visible in start menu with just 1 click and then delete the folders, if it says Access Denied when you try to copy a file into it, just hit Continue to paste the shortcuts into the main folder anyways
• You will also find some shortcuts and shortcut folders in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs where [username] is your account name
• The idea behind this is that if you want to open Word, you should be able to hit the Windows Key, type Word in 1-2 seconds and hit Enter and you should end up with Word opening up, on that note it might help to delete WordPad's shortcut so that Word is your first choice, remove any conflicting shortcuts from either of these folders so that your search always brings up the desired Program. In addition to Programs, you can also search for Windows Utilities like cmd and regedit by name, and specific Windows Settings but first we need to get the Start Menu to stop searching the Internet and return Bing Search results

How to Fix the Privacy Settings: Reduce Windows spying/Remove useless features

• On the Settings window, go to Privacy
• In General, Speech and Inking turn everything Off
• In Diagnostics & feedback, set Diagnostic data to Basic, set everything else to Off and Feedback frequency to Never, hit the Delete button while you are here
• In Activity History, uncheck everything and hit the Clear button
• On the bottom Apps permission section, you can go through each specific Category, click the Change button and turn it Off, you do not want to give Apps permission to your Location, Cameras, Microphones...Document, Picture, Videos, File System... Turn everything Off, not sure if this helps but it is better than leaving it Enabled and shouldn't affect much besides Telemetry
• On Background apps, I would turn off everything individually except your Antivirus program if present

How to Fix Windows Search: Stop searching the web on Start Menu/Disable Cortana

• Windows Bing Search and Cortana are one and the same thing so to fix the worst feature in Windows 10 we will have to get rid of both at the same time. This requires editing the Registry, please do not make additional changes
• Go to Start Menu -> type regedit -> right-click the Registry Editor and choose Run as administrator

• Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search

• Edit the following DWORD keys by right-click on the key and selecting Modify...

  CortanaConsent and set it to 0
• AllowSearchToUseLocation and set it to 0
• BingSearchEnabled and set it to 0
• If the key doesn't exist, you can create it by right-clicking empty space and clicking New -> DWORD
• Now navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search and edit or create the following DWORD keys
• CortanaConsent and set it to 0
• AllowSearchToUseLocation and set it to 0
• BingSearchEnabled and set it to 0
• If the Search folder doesn't exist, it can be created by right-clicking empty space in CurrentVersion,  clicking New -> Key and naming the new folder as Search
• Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search and edit or create the following DWORD Keys
• AllowCortana and set it to 0
• ConnectedSearchUseWeb and set it to 0
• ConnectedSearchUseWebOverMeteredConnections and set it to 0
• DisableWebSearch and set it to 1
• If the Windows Search folder doesn't exist, it can be created by right-clicking empty space in Windows,  clicking New -> Key and naming the new folder as Windows Search with a space
• Once you've added those Cortana related registry DWORD keys and set them to the correct Values, Cortana should be disabled and you should only find local results by searching on the Start Menu
• You might need to restart your system for changes to take effect, you can make sure it worked by right-clicking the Taskbar and it now show Search -> Hidden instead of Cortana -> Hidden
• On the Settings window, it should say Search instead of Cortana, the latest version of Windows shows both
• If you type fdfsdd (any junk) into your Start Menu, you should no longer get a Bing Search of it, it should say No results found
• Last, go to Settings and click on the new Search (replaced Cortana) near the bottom
• Go to Permissions & History and turn everything to Off, hit the Clear my device history button once, the Safe Search choice is now irrelevant but leave at the default Moderate
• If you are on the latest Windows 10 build, they've added Searching Windows after splitting Windows Search and Cortana, you want to search in Classic, click the link near the bottom that says Advanced Search Indexer Settings, click on Modify and use the Summary on the bottom to find and uncheck all your Personal Files in the top half, searching in the Start Menu should only search Start Menu plus the built in Settings
• You can search for Files normally using File Explorer

 

How to Fix Ghost OneDrive folder in File Explorer: Cleaner look/Remove useless features

• If you uninstalled OneDrive because it is expensive, annoying or you simply don't want or trust Microsoft, you will find a pinned OneDrive folder in File explorer that is practically impossible to remove by normal means and we will need to carefully use the Registry Editor to hide it
• Go to Start Menu -> type regedit -> right-click the Registry Editor and choose Run as administrator
• Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID{018D5C66-4533-4307-9B53-224DE2ED1FE6} and double click on System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree and set the Value to 0
• This should get rid of the OneDrive folder from File Explorer

How to Fix everything else: Cleaner look/Remove useless features

• Disable the built in Notifications by going to Settings -> System -> Notifications & actions and turning everything on there to Off, this will stop your programs from spamming you with useless information and here is also where you can edit your Quick actions accessible through the Notification Icon in the Taskbar
• Unfortunately the Cortana icon will always appear on your Start Menu as it is impossible to hide but  when you click on it, it just brings up the Search Bar so everything is cool
• If you see a Video Editor app that you cannot get rid of, it is the same program as Photos, the new windows default image viewer, it just gets a second shortcut for some reason, I seem to have uninstalled Photos on my system and my PC uses the Windows 7 Windows Photo Viewer which is more user friendly in my opinion, I don't know if this is the default behavior if you remove Photos or just something that carried over from upgrading from Windows 7 but as such I recommend leaving Photos alone
• Mixed Reality Viewer should now be removable through CCleaner, I would remove it especially if your PC has poor graphics and when you open it, it just gives an error telling you that you cannot run it
• Connect is another junky program in Start Menu, especially if you don't use it, I always remove it by using this guide: https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-uninstall-and-remove-connect-in-windows-10/
• Use if you are comfortable with the files it provides and want to get rid of Connect, you only get one go at this so make sure you Run as Administrator or you are stuck with Connect forever. Delete the files once you are done
• You can get the Windows 7 Games with https://winaero.com/blog/get-windows-7-games-for-windows-10/ Definitely disable the Purble Place and Internet Games when installing, disable any games you dislike and when you are done, UNCHECK the Winaero Tweaker offer. These are definitely better than the Freeware Windows 10 added as Microsoft Solitaire Collection
• Remember to go to Settings -> Updates -> Check for updates at least twice a month to keep your system secure and up to date, security patches are pretty much mandatory at this point
• Once a month and definitely after installing large updates, you can use Disk Cleanup to get rid of a bunch of unnecessary junk and free up disk space, remember to select your C Drive and click Clean up system files at the bottom to get the complete list, I would check everything EXCEPT Downloads as this will delete your Downloads folder and you will lose anything you have in it
• Once you've cleared up 10s of GB of disk space, run the Defragment and Optimize Drives app on all your drives by clicking Optimize, this will TRIM SSDs to keep them running smooth and Defragment hard drives to have your data close to the center of the platter for faster access
• If you use an SSD as your boot drive and you use a desktop computer running off wall power, you might want to consider turning off Hibernation especially if have a large amount of RAM memory (32 GB) and a relatively small Boot SSD (250 GB) as you will lose about as much space as you have in RAM if you leave it on, if you are not using a laptop, hibernation won't save help you stay on during a power outage, a UPS would be a much better solution, if you are working on something, Save Often, windows 10 boots in seconds compared to previous versions so it negates the speed boost of hibernating compared to shutting down the computer and some individuals just let it run 24/7 on a UPS making hibernation near useless, to turn off, type cmd into Start Menu, right-click Command Prompt and Run as Administrator, then type "powercfg.exe /h off" and without the quotes and press Enter. You have gained yourself many GB back of expensive SSD space

I wrote and followed this guide on 1803 build and then upgraded to 1903, Connect appeared again in the Start Menu, I ran the fix again to get rid of it again, the OneDrive Start Menu shortcut got added back but it can be deleted from the Start Menu Folder, the Windows 7 Games got deleted so I uninstalled the program and reinstalled it to add them once again, Cortana is now gone from the Start Menu, I then ran Disk Cleanup to get rid of 40 GB of junk on my small SSD, used CCleaner to clean another GB of space, ran the registry cleaner in CCleaner several times until all errors were gone, trimmed my SSD in Defragment and Optimize Drives

 

Please let me know if there are any more annoying features or programs cluttering up your Windows 10 lives and I'll see if it is something I removed and will post how I did it. This is all I can think of at this time. You should end up with a cleaner Windows 10 installation that you can trust a bit more and behaves relatively similar to Windows 7 without having to hack your system with outdated tools that might force you to reinstall. Simply add your files, programs and games to enjoy your shiny new operating system

Spoiler

 

Edited January 19, 2020 by DTX
Suggestion that UAC is useful, removed UAC part

[emosun]

Windows 10 February patch notes:

Quote

address issues caused by "Windows X Guide"

 

[TempestCatto]

This is literally the same thing I've been doing for a long time now. Every client I install Windows 10 for, gets this included in whatever price I charge them. Give the user an experience they will not only like, but that won't give them issues either. I don't want a client to have to call me back with issues, I want the job to go as a "once and done" kinda deal. I wish there was some way to automate this though. Maybe a .BAT file?

[Roswell]

Suggesting that people should disable UAC is extremely irresponsible. It's one of the most important security features of the OS.

[TempestCatto]

18 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Suggesting that people should disable UAC is extremely irresponsible. It's one of the most important security features of the OS.

Gonna be honest, I haven't really read through the whole thing. I sort of selectively skimmed it. If he's suggesting to disable UAC, then yeah that's really bad and I take back some of what I said above. UAC is kinda like the first line of defense after the user.

[DTX]

41 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Gonna be honest, I haven't really read through the whole thing. I sort of selectively skimmed it. If he's suggesting to disable UAC, then yeah that's really bad and I take back some of what I said above. UAC is kinda like the first line of defense after the user.

There is so many exploits out there and many which we don't know about. UAC might work for the obvious stuff but anything truly dangerous will know a way around it, otherwise people would never get viruses. I haven't gotten a virus in about 8 years and haven't used UAC since Vista. I'll remove the UAC part from the guide. It was too annoying in Vista and I decided to use good judgment instead to protect myself, only visit safe sites, only install programs from real companies. Hopefully UAC works correctly on Windows 10 and it doesn't get triggered by anything like on Vista.

[Roswell]

18 minutes ago, DTX said:

There is so many exploits out there and many which we don't know about. UAC might work for the obvious stuff but anything truly dangerous will know a way around it, otherwise people would never get viruses. I haven't gotten a virus in about 8 years and haven't used UAC since Vista. I'll remove the UAC part from the guide. It was too annoying in Vista and I decided to use good judgment instead to protect myself, only visit safe sites, only install programs from real companies. Hopefully UAC works correctly on Windows 10 and it doesn't get triggered by anything like on Vista.

Good judgement isn't enough. In your guide you suggested that people should download CCleaner. Are you aware that their servers were breached and their development branches were compromised, eventually resulting in millions of their users getting infected with hidden payloads in the software? Twice?! 

 

Good judgement doesn't prevent that. It also doesn't prevent infected ads, compromised platforms like WordPress and Joomla or compromised commenting systems. The list goes on, but you get the idea.

 

Lastly, UAC is supposed to trigger on every executable, that's the entire point.

[Delicieuxz]

6 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

Suggesting that people should disable UAC is extremely irresponsible. It's one of the most important security features of the OS.

I've had UAC permanently disabled since it was introduced in Vista, which I guess would be around 13 years ago. Haven't had an issue. And it interfered with half of what I tried to do when it was enabled, rendering PCs unusable.

 

If you need UAC enabled to stay safe, you must be doing a lot of sketchy things on your PC.