Windows 10: I know what I'm doing

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Windows 10: I know what I'm doing

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Any idea how to get start menu search back reliably? I'm used to either clicking the start button and then typing, or pressing the windows key and then typing, but this only sometimes works now, the rest of the time it just seems to ignore the keypresses.

E: For now, fixed it by installing StartIsBack++

Lum fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Aug 13, 2015

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 03:11

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:15

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

WattsvilleBlues posted:

Are there any universal Windows apps, or instant messenger applications, that support Facebook Chat properly? I've tried a bunch but they're either missing features (emoticons or stickers etc.) or just don't work properly.

Closest I've got is Pidgin with this plugin which emulates the Android client, but not sure about emoticons or stickers as I don't really use them.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 16:25

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

If you're like me and prefer a vertical taskbar, but want it really narrow, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker is now out of alpha and can be downloaded without being forced to donate.

Also the latest WinAero Tweaker lets you enable the Aero Lite theme which has coloured titlebars without the bugginess of the other method.

Now if I can just find a way to move the start button to the bottom of the taskbar and things will be perfect.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2015 01:42

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

The build in mail and calendar apps in Win10 seem to play nice with Google for me, even Lightning for Thunderbird isn't too bad, apart from one really irritating bug.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2015 04:58

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

I have found out how to add the recycle bin to the quick access panel in explorer. This is great for people who prefer to hide desktop icons.

Download ThisPC Tweaker. Choose the option to add a shell location, and add the recycle bin there. It'll now show up in ThisPC alongside C:\ etc.
Then you can drag it onto the quick access bar (but can't right click and pin), and optionally remove it from ThisPC using ThisPC Tweaker again. It functions like a proper recycle bin, with the correct context menu, and ability to drag things into it.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2015 16:47

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

7+ Taskbar Tweaker is now out of beta for Win10, for all those who like narrow vertical taskbars. He also has some utility out that changes how Win10 calculates colours, to give you brighter colours on the taskbar etc. though I have not tried it.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2015 15:31

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Repo Man posted:

Well, I would like Windows 10 to handle my camera the way that Windows XP and Windows 7 did, by which I mean I could plug in the Camera's USB cable, turn the camera on and scroll through the images on the camera's memory card.

WinAero Tweaker has an option to re-enable the Windows 7 photo viewer.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2015 01:17

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

ChaosArgate posted:

I followed this guide.

http://www.howtogeek.com/222831/how-to-get-colored-window-title-bars-on-windows-10-instead-of-white/

You would be better off using WinAero tweaker and enabling the Aero Lite theme. It looks better and is much less buggy than that one.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2015 14:15

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

MohShuvuu posted:

I replaced it with TeraCopy. It always shows up on top of everything.

Just don't use it over a network

# ¿ Aug 30, 2015 12:35

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Srebrenica Surprise posted:

Unfortunately it still doesn't help me because there's no way to add a newline. So my left-docked taskbar would have to be stretched out like three times as wide. This person had the same problem. If anybody has a solution/tweak let me know.

dog nougat posted:

Is there a way to get the clock to show up on the taskbar on my second screen?

Both of you need to get T-Clock Redux

Not tested the option to show on second taskbar, but it exists and is labelled as Windows 8+

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 01:45

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Srebrenica Surprise posted:

You were right! I couldn't figure out how to access it after I installed it before realizing it was integrated with the clock settings but it even fixed the horribly excessive blank space above and below. By default it looked way too crammed together but I messed around with the height/vertical sliders and it looks much better. Thanks for nothing, Win10!!!

'sup vertical taskbar buddy.

May I also recommend 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to allow a narrower taskbar and get rid of the show desktop button.

e: also where did you get that battery indicator?

Lum fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Aug 31, 2015

# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 03:45

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

At the risk of turning this into a post your desktop thread, I think I have sufficiently undone all of Win10s awfulness, and can now just enjoy the good stuff under the hood.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 04:35

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

xamphear posted:

This, but sincerely (unless you are being sincere). Part of the value of Windows to me is being able to make it work and look how I want. My customizations aren't as drastic as his, but that doesn't make them any more or less valid. I'm glad that Windows can, for the time being, still be configured however you'd like.

hers

And for the most part I just wanted rid of the awful bright white that everything is, so aero lite theme (which is signed by MS, just disabled by default) and glass8 it is. I actually like the new start menu and am only running StartIsBack because win+start typing program name fails about 50% of the time and just ignores your keystrokes. Once that's fixed I'll go back to the new menu.

Yeah I have like 4 UI hacks running, but so far they're all stable. (7tt, tclock, startisback & glass8)

Also, thank gently caress the new command prompt finally has cut+paste that works in a sensible manner.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 21:36

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Sir Unimaginative posted:

(8.1 still doesn't let you set a third-party handler for ZIP files, and I don't know why)

Yes it does.

If it's 7zip, you need to run 7zip file manager manually as admin, then change the option as 7zip doesn't bother to elevate when you try to change this.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2015 17:09

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Sir Unimaginative posted:

Try it. 7 yes. 10 yes. 8.1 doesn't even recognize that you can change the program associated with the ZIP format in particular and even when setting directly in elevated 7-zip Windows always clawed the association back to Windows File Explorer somehow.

Worked for me, though I did clean install 8.1. Don't have any 8.1 machines left to test this on now though.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2015 17:45

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Tapedump posted:

Latepost.. Why is this? Speed?

Old old sh/sc joke that came about after someone's rant thread.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 14:44

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

So people on the insider build can now do "hey cortana, please do the needful?"

# ¿ Sep 3, 2015 01:56

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

wormil posted:

Yeah, I don't get it. It's currently using a W8.1 driver. I've tried all sorts of things from updating my bios, deleting/reinstalling/updating various MB utilities, deleting/reinstalling the video driver. Nothing works. If I play one video at a time in Firefox, not full screen, I am relatively safe from crashing. Chrome pops almost immediately. Edge goes bang after a few minutes. Open two tabs with youtube videos in any browser and it's game over.

Is weird. I have an HD3000 and nV 555M Optimus setup and it just works for me. No problems at all.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2015 05:11

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

GreenNight posted:

If you don't want to gently caress around in Powershell, or have other built in apps you want removed, download this free app:

http://www.iobit.com/en/advanceduninstaller.php

Works great getting rid of that junk.

Though it also bundles a piece of shovelware if you aren't careful. It's hidden as a tiny green tickbox in the bottom right.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2015 18:52

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

AbstractNapper posted:

Is there a reason that every once in a while (seemingly non-deterministically) the Search functionality from the start menu gets broken and I get absolutely no results for valid application names; I just get some dots animating from left to right. This is with No cortana and no web search.
And it non-deterministically gets fixed after a logout/login or a restart. I am guessing that there is something wrong with the indexing service....

I never fixed this, and ended up installing bloody StartIsBack to sort it. Already had a licence for it from the Win8 days.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 12:30

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Ekster posted:

There's no (free) adblock equivalent for edge availabe yet, right?

I checked the previous couple of pages but couldn't find anything on it.

There's a freeware utility called HostsMan which will fill your hosts file with entries to resolve lovely domains to 127.0.0.1, similar to what a lot of the Android ad blockers do. I guess that is better than nothing if you want to use Edge.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 20:45

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

wookieepelt posted:

Is there a reason to use ad blockers from a security standpoint? I know that a lot of sites only function because of ad revenue, and I haven't used an ad blocker because of that. I'm not trying to be contrary or anything, just curious as to why ad blockers seem to be such a big deal that people don't use Edge because of the lack of ad blocking.

The post above pretty much answered the security side. There's also things like metered connections and ads choking up low powered mobile devices which is definitely a thing for some Win10 devices.

I recently started using the Clean Links addin for firefox. For the tinfoil hat crew it is anti-tracking, but mainly the web feels so much smoother when your google results go directly to the page and not via an intermediate page that then refreshes to the one you wanted.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 22:34

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

lllllllllllllllllll posted:

Would it have killed them to preload those Windows 10 Nvidia drivers too? Oh, well now everything works nicely.

I only feel that when you drag a window to the side it tries to be a little too clever. I almost never get what I want: a window that only fits half of my screen (and even if I do it requires one additional click to confirm). In any way it's not important.

Anyone knows what the blue lines under the apps' name mean? I read that they indicate a minimized app, but they never change.

They disappear if the app is pinned but not running, and I think they get smaller if minimised or on another desktop.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2015 14:30

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

berzerkmonkey posted:

Has anyone found an alternative? I'd love to come in with a USB drive, force the two KBs, then install from the drive...

Burn ISO to DVD, or extract to USB stick
Run the setup.exe on it.
Profit.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 16:42

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Segmentation Fault posted:

IE 7 is the gold standard in bad browsers

Look at this babby who didn't have to suffer IE4.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 01:39

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Truga posted:

I can't decide whether ie4 or ie6 were worse.

I mean, ie4 was worse in every way, sure, but it was at a time when the other browsers was almost just as bad. Meanwhile ie6 was relatively bad when it released, but then also held on to its share for like eleventy years.

ie6 was fine if you didn't use it to browse the internet. ie4 could gently caress up your system just by being installed, thanks to the active desktop poo poo

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 01:46

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

WebDog posted:

Are other people getting duplicate icons when opening a program? For example firefox is sitting in the middle of my taskbar, but opening it creates a new icon at the end. iTunes used to do this until it updated.

I've had that with some versions of firefox. Making sure you have a shortcut to it on the start menu (left hand side) seems to help with some apps, but not so much with firefox.

Switching to Waterfox finally cured it for me.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 13:00

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

dissss posted:

You'd have to be nuts to run the insider builds on anything but a dedicated test PC

I think the whole insider thing is genius, because the kind of person who pirates leaked betas for their bedroom/basement PC and then pirates the finished thing when it's out, thus never making MS any money, now gets to give them free beta testing forever.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 13:03

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Ghostlight posted:

WinAero Tweaker includes an option to re-enable coloured titlebars.

You're better off using the Aero Lite theme from that app, it fixes so many niggles like programs not wanting to re-open at the edges of the screen because they think the new invisible window borders are meant to be visible.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2015 14:19

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

I'm seeing a lot of Win10 tablet/hybrid machines being sold with only 2GB RAM, such as the Asus Transformer Book series.

Am I right in thinking that Win10 with only 2gb is going to be utter poo poo and I should be looking at 4gb minimum?

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 12:31

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Sir Unimaginative posted:

Maybe not, but it's an easy way to make using a Windows machine an utter nightmare over a long enough timeframe.

They're doing that because Windows licenses cost less on 2 GB machines. I suspect that loophole was made to drive manufacturers to make more Windows 10 tablets, but Microsoft hosed up by allowing for it.

Guess I'll go for the 4GB TB200 then, shame I can only find that with 32GB storage, but I'll just nuke the recovery partition when I get it.

This isn't for me, GF really really wants a touchscreen despite me telling her it's a bad idea when the budget is around �300 ish. (Insurance payout for breaking her old Acer Aspire 5732Z). Is going to mostly be a facebook/mplayer/ms word machine. She says she wants to run games on it, but I've told her she can't have both gaming and a touchscreen at that price.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 13:06

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Decius posted:

Don't buy one with less than 4 GB if you plan to use the tablet for more than a year. You might get by with 2 GB now if you don't do much in terms of Desktop software, but down the road? It's like buying a 1 GB RAM iPad Air instead of a 2 GB iPad Air 2.

This is what I was thinking.

Personally I think she should drop the touchscreen requirement and just get a bloody laptop. I have a bit more cash to spend on mine, since the one I claimed on was worth more to begin with, so am looking at a Clevo N150SD with an M.2 SSD and a single 8gb stick of RAM in there.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 17:44

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

So did Microsoft basically make a more neatly packaged portable version of this loving thing or that ridiculous MSI one?

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 13:46

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Last Chance posted:

lmao What a clusterfuck. Dumb dumb dumb.

Given that this is supposed to be the last version of windows, and from now on it's free updates forever, it makes sense because otherwise those who owned retail copies of Win7, would never buy another copy of Windows again.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 22:31

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Last Chance posted:

Idk it just sounds confusing. If it's free updates forever then just make the thing free and be done with it.

Why? MS make most of their Windows money from OEM licences and Software Assurance. If they just made it free they'd have no money coming in for Windows at all.

Basically they're relying on the fact that PCs break and need to be replaced, hence the push for per-device licenses, and trying to get rid of all those transferable retail box copies.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2015 23:07

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Now that there's a hybrid tablet/laptop in this house (Asus T200TA, 4gb/32gb) I'm starting to see the beauty in this hybrid OS thing.

Is there any way to teach Cortana commands that do something specific, e.g. if I say "Hey Cortana, turn the bedroom light off" it would make a JSON call to http://192.168.1.2:8084/json.htm?type=command&param=switchlight&idx=99&switchcmd=Off (also need to figure out how to make Android do the same thing)

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 18:12

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Hadlock posted:

You have a 16GB/32GB primary drive size device and were able to upgrade to Win10? How much space is available to the user? Microsoft does some special things to shoehorn 8.1 in to that space so I had assumed those limited size devices wouldn't be eligible for the 10 upgrade. I guess I assumed wrong?

Can't remember, think I had over 20gb free. I did clean install and get rid of Acer's recovery partition and bloatware. Actually getting it to upgrade required an external drive for temp files.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2015 22:15

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

^^^ I'm still using PSI2, because I hated the new UI on 3. Is working fine for me on Win10.

Hadlock posted:

Oh ok so this wasn't some "mash button, walk away, come back later to win 10 login screen"type deal, additional effort was required.

It was and it wasn't.

It does the check and asks for more disk space to be provided right at the start, then the usual choice between upgrade and clean install then walk away and come back a few hours later.

I did have a few issues after doing a clean install. Windows Update provided a broken camera driver and no-version of the drivers on Acer's website would work with it. Most people on the Transformer forums are running 32bit and they found an Acer driver that did work, but my GF's machine is a 4gb 64bit one. I ended up having to install the BayTrail platform drivers for a Lenovo Thinkpad 8 (or something like that) to get the bloody thing working.

That said when it was an upgrade install the camera and everything worked fine afterwards. I just had to be an awkward sod and flatten and reinstall didn't I? (Well who wouldn't when it's a brand new machine)

As an aside the "Grab and drag" extension for Firefox makes it pretty good for touchscreen use. Now I just need to find a way to make Steam play nice with a touchscreen, and certain games that have weird mouse handling.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2015 17:12

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

So on the login screen, the virtual keyboard that pops up covers the area where you select which user you want to be.

Similar issue with writing messages in the Facebook app.

I know you can detach and move the keyboard, but this is kind of a lovely solution, is there any way to make it behave nice, or have I just been spoilt by Android?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 22:31

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 12:15

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

Ghostlight posted:

Why would you even have WSUS if you're going to let people check for Microsoft updates.

I'm a full-time home worker. My laptop was set up by IT to only be able to get updates from their server, not from Microsoft.

It only ever sees an update if I visit one of our sites.

Because of this I haven't had a security update in 3 months and since I'm not allowed to get them from Microsoft there's gently caress-all I can do about it.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2015 02:39

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