By MellowD / Tips and Advice / • • • • • • • • • / 0 Comments

Optimize And Speed Up Windows 10 in 10 Steps

Hi everyone in this tutorial dedicated to Windows 10 we will talk about setting up privacy options, disabling telemetries so all of those services that communicate your personal information to Microsoft and third parties, then we will set up default apps and remove all the pre-installed apps in the system finally we’ll discuss performance optimization also with regards to system services and hard disk management.

As you can see I set up a virtual machine so I can show you all of the mods in a clean way directly from the stock state of the system.

I advise you to watch the video in full screen and at the highest definition so that you can clearly see all the details and all of the input text.

I’ll prepare a text document which will be linked in the description below, in that text file I will recap all of the operations included in the tutorial, I will also provide useful links as well as all of the text commands so you can copy and paste them in your own terminal.

So we can now get started, we are in the pre-configuration window of Windows 10, the system has just been installed.

In case your system has been set up already you can skip to the next step which will be the first login to the desktop.

My advice is not to set up with Express settings but instead to click customize in fact by clicking customize we’ll have access to the pre configuration mode of Windows 10 privacy settings so that we can mod part of them in advance and then we’ll be able to set up the rest once we login into our system.

Here we have options regarding the communications of your pc usage habits to Microsoft for research purposes and I just advise you to turn them all off, so we’ll turn off system access to contacts and calendars we’ll turn off advertising ID, we’ll also turn off app access to the same contacts and calendars, we’ll turn off position and geotagging services and so on and so forth.

Then we’ll turn off automatic access to any kind of wi-fi network and we’ll also turn off automatic sending of diagnostics.

We’ll also turn off the smart screen filter which will communicate our browsing habits to Microsoft and we’ll also turn off all of the additional browser capabilities.

Another thing we will turn off is peer-to-peer updates which I will later explain you in detail, so this was it for the pre-configuration, we’ll wait for the system to load.

Here we will select that the pc is ours and not business owned or shared, Microsoft will prompt us for the creation of a Microsoft account but we will ignore this and favor the creation of a local account by clicking “skip this step”, so for the sake of this video I will call the user “test” and we can now access our desktop.

The first step will be the continuation of our privacy set up, but first a little premise.

My goal would be to turn the system into a classic desktop system that just uses classic desktop software and not modern apps, so I will deactivate everything regarding modern apps so for instance if you want to use Windows 10‘s integrated email system you must not turn off options regarding the email system itself on the other hand if you use any web mail or any desktop software you’ll be fine.

That being said we will get into start menu, settings and privacy and pretty much turn off anything we don’t feel comfortable about.

we’ll see that part of the settings have been disabled already in fact we did that in the pre configuration phase not long ago and now we’ll just disable the rest so we will disable app access to our camera and our mic, here we will see settings for Cortana and we won’t click “get to know me” so the program won’t start collecting information about us but we will see how to disable Cortana later.

we will then disable app access to our accounts and in addition, to our contacts we will disable app access to our calendar, to our calling history, to our mail, we will deactivate access to our messaging, to the radio and to third party devices.

In the feedback window we will set “never ask for feedback” and “collect basic diagnostics” but we will later see how to disable the feedback function entirely.

In the background apps window we’ll turn off everything because we don’t want any unwanted app to keep working in the background but we just want the software that we actually asked to start to work in the background this also serves to save resources for the system.

so we’re done for this section and we can go backwards.

still in settings we’ll select updates and security > windows updates > advanced options and finally “choose how updates are delivered”.

here we are looking at peer-to-peer updates, the option on which I ran on before.

I personally agree on the option of receiving windows updates automatically but I don’t like the fact that by default my pc would be turned into a peer-to-peer node sending and receiving updates from and to other PCs, sucking up at my bandwidth.

so I kept the option of automatic updates but I turned off peer-to-peer updates.

we can now get back to our desktop and we can see how to first just turn off Cortana but we will see how to actually eradicate and delete the service for good.

we will click on the search bar and select settings but we will see that Cortana is already off because we turned it off in the pre configuration settings but we can still turn off search history and search online.

We’re getting to the step of telemetries blocking, little bit of a disclaimer now.

I’m warning you that we’re going to modify the system registry so proceed at your own risk although I have to clarify that I personally did apply this mods to both of my windows 10 PCs and as well as many other users who did the same, I didn’t run into any kind of problem afterwards so we can move on and if you don’t want to get this mods done you can just skip to the next step.

first thing, we’ll need the command prompt so we’ll search for “cmd” in the search bar and we have to run it as administrator so right click, run as administrator.

we need to enter the command “sc delete diagtrack” and hit enter if we did everything correctly the system will report the service has been deleted and this was the first telemetry service.

as for the second telemetry service we need to type in “sc delete dmwappush service” and hit enter.

this time as well the system should notify the service has been deleted successfully so we can now close the command prompt.

we have an extra step in blocking telemetries which only applies to users of Windows 10 professional edition or enterprise edition so you can skip to the next step if you’re a Windows 10 home user.

we have to look for gpedit.

Msc in the search bar and open it as administrator we then have to look for the key: computer configuration > admin templates > windows components > data collection and preview builds > allow telemetry, we’ll then click on that, hit disable and then apply and ok also if you’re not a onedrive user we can also disable the onedrive service by looking for computer configuration > admin templates > windows components > onedrive and hitting disable, apply and ok.

we will now conclude the telemetry blocking with the setup of the software SpyBot AntiBeacon which automatically blocks the most harmful registry keys associated with telemetries.

spybot antibeacon has been produced by the same producer which designed the popular Spybot Search and Destroy so we’ll now google for spybot antibeacon and set up the latest version.

be careful to leave the option “check immunization after each system restart” ticked, in fact it is always advisable to check spybot at each system update because it is possible that windows would have reactivated all telemetries or even introduced new telemetries and also it is advisable to check spybot yet at the next system restart so we will launch spybot and notice that despite all the modifications we introduced up to now, the greatest part of the telemetries are still working so we’ll hit immunize so the software can block automatically all of the desired registry keys.

additionally, in the optional tab we will be able to block additional services, i personally blocked everything here too but you have to be careful not to block services you actually use for instance I don’t use either onedrive or bing so I blocked both of them i also blocked office even if i do use it and i can assure that every version of office can be safely immunized without getting problems to the use of the software itself, after all spybot just blocks the telemetries associated with the services and not the actual softwares themselves.

we can now close the program but I remind you that it’s a good habit to check spybot at the next system restart from now and also to check it at every system update in fact it is possible that the windows updates could have had unblocked telemetries or introduced new ones.

Our next modding step regards appsm first we’ll enter in settings > system > notification and turn off all notifications except app notifications in fact it is a rumor that specifically notifications regarding windows suggestions can cause system bugs and overloads.

next we’ll be able to set our favorite default apps in the default apps section, we’ll be able to do a macro edit by assigning each specific app to each specific file typology for instance i set up Firefox as a default browser, VLC media player as a default Media Player, the old windows photo viewer software as a photo manager, and so on.

as a little performance optimizer we can get into personalization and deactivate transparencies for both the start menu and the dock bar, we will then be able to customize the content of the start menu and you will set it up as you wish, I personally like to turn off windows suggestions and leave the counter for most frequently used software on to optimize my workflow, we’ll then be able to fine tune all the present or absent menus from the start menu but we will encounter this again later.

the next step will be the removal of all preinstalled apps and we will need windows powershell for that so we’ll look for windows powershell and run it as administrator so right click, run as administrator.

the command we need to enter to remove windows store plus all the pre-installed apps from all users simultaneously and in one single step would be “Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Remove-AppxPackage” and we will enter however in the text file link in the description i will provide several options including commands to remove single apps or commands to remove apps from just one user.

once we enter the command we have to wait for the terminal to completely stop working I have to remind you that windows powershell won’t be able to remove special apps such as edge, microsoft feedback or cortana, in fact we will need appropriate scripts we will be downloading in a while.

at the end of the process we can close powershell and check that all pre-installed apps have been removed excluding traditional system software and the desktop apps we set up ourselves so the list in the start menu should be way less populated than before.

as mentioned before we’re left with those special software we can’t eradicate in any other way than with a dedicated script such as edge, feedback but above all cortana.

so we will now see how to remove those.

to remove those apps we will need specific scripts downloadable for free from the website winaero.

Com.

all the needed links are in the text file linked in the description.

those scripts will come in separate zip files containing self executable scripts we will run as administrator and they will take care of the removal process automatically.

another disclaimer here, about the removal of Cortana: first, removing Cortana will make the service permanently unavailable that means forever so updates won’t bring it back and second removing Cortana will permanently bug both the present search bar and the present windows start menu so they won’t work anymore.

the solution for that which we have to do absolutely before removing Cortana is to download and setup classic shell which is a substitute start menu which includes the search bar that is fully customizable and will accompany us from now on so let’s Google Classic Shell and set it up we’re now in the setup phase and amongst all the software components we can just install classic start which is the extension we actually need, and the updater if you wish at the end of the setup we will notice by clicking start that we won’t get the windows 10 menu anymore but instead Classic Shell pops up with the configuration wizard.

we will be able to fine tune classic shell as we wish, I personally chose the windows 7 style menu with no skin both for aesthetic and performance reasons.

available options are really broad in number and I remind you that from this moment on classic shell has automatically set up to start at every system startup so you won’t need to worry about your Windows 10 start menu anymore.

finally we will be able to safely remove cortana via the script so we’ll have to unzip the content of the folder and run the script as an administrator so right click, run as administrator.

we’ll wait for the script to stop elaborating and as suggested we will need to reboot the system and this will be the procedure for each script.

after rebooting the system we’ll notice that the search bar is now bugged so that’s the sign we correctly removed cortana.

we’re not able to notice that the start menu would also be bugged because we’re already covered by classic shell we can now move on by removing the residual apps the same way so we’ll execute the script as an administrator and at the end of the mods we’ll reboot the system so we’ll do this for edge and feedback.

as for cortana, we will be able to notice that after the removal of edge and the rebooting of the system its icon won’t be responsive any more so that’s the sign we correctly removed the software.

last step will be then the removal of feedback and another reboot.

the next step regards setting up hard disk management and we will need to enter the control panel which is now completely listed at hand in Classic Shell.

we will need to get into power options and select advanced options so that we can set up hard disk management.

we will set up turn off hard disks at least after 20 minutes on battery in fact less than 20 minutes is too much often and can put mechanical stress on our disks and we will select never on plugged in or as you wish.

then we’ll look for usb selective suspend or selective sleep, we’ll surely turn it off for battery and for plugged in as well if you wish.

this will prevent windows from standbying external hard drives when in use, as well as any other USB powered device.

next step of our mods is the optimization of system services so we’ll need the task manager we’ll open the task manager and notice the system is pretty much over loaded now but this happens since i’m on a virtual machine so basically my pc has to bear two OSs at the same time.

we’ll now take care of solving the system bug that puts your hard drive use at one hundred percent for no apparent reason and usually the cpu too.

if you maybe experienced this, this is a system bug caused by Windows 10 on some machines and I personally had this happening on one of my two windows 10 PCs, the solution for this is to selectively turn off and disable some system services that are actually unnecessary and can cause overload to your system.

preliminarly, we’ll step back for a second and check that in settings > system > notifications all notifications have been turned off except for app notifications.

it is a major rumor in fact that the single notification “show suggestions from windows” can cause system bugs and overloads.

we’ll then check back into our task manager and select services so we’ll need task manager > services > open services and we have to check that all system services that are not of our interest or that are linked to the default apps we removed before are disabled and turned off.

a practical example of service disabling can be that of disabling xbox related services so since we removed preinstalled xbox related software before and assuming you won’t need those services, we’ll double-click the service hence opening its properties, we’ll stop it if it’s running and then set disable, apply and ok and we’ll do this for each single service we want to disable.

in case you’re experiencing the previously mentioned bug, the constant a hundred percent usage of your hard drive, we can safely disable these two services: windows search and superfetch.

despite the name disabling the windows search service won’t cause any issue to the use of the windows search function so for the sake of this video we’ll search and disable both services windows search and superfetch.

additionally i have to inform you that in case you’re suffering from this overloading problem and you have an nvidia graphics engine, if you’re not into online gaming and direct streaming you can safely turn off those free services: nvidia streamer service, nvidia streamer Network Service and nvidia streamer user agent.

however i’ll add more information about this the text file linked in the description.

another useful information is that some people have experienced overloading bugs coming from the use of skype and google chrome.

I personally didn’t experience any of that so modifications on skype and google chrome won’t be shown in this tutorial but i’ll provide additional information on this topic in the text file linked in the description as well.

so we now stumble into bits which would stand for “background intelligence transfer service”, some people advised to disable bits in case you are experiencing the hard disk overloading bug but I strongly suggest not to since bits is directly linked with windows update and with the updating process in general so by disabling bits you’ll risk not receiving any more updates or not being able to install them so I heartily recommend not to disable bits.

at the end of the mods on services we’ll notice that in the task manager the hard disk usage is a little better off but before actually checking on that i would suggest rebooting your pc so that the modifications can actually fall into place.

last big step in our modifications regards performance optimization.

first we’ll take care of taking some weight off of our pc’s capabilities by disabling all visual effects.

i personally disabled all of those and to do that we’ll need to go into control panel > system > advanced options and finally hit the performance tab.

once in the performance tab we need to set the system to best performance but leaving the ticks on show thumbnails instead of icons and smooth font edges.

by clicking apply and ok we’ll be left with a system which is now really lightweight in performance but it’s still aesthetically pleasing in fact it won’t look as ugly or empty as windows 98 or windows XP did on the same settings.

we’ll also be able to check that in the Task Manager system performance should be a little better off.

we are getting to the last step of our modifications which is the system cleanup.

we’ll need to open this pc, right click on the system disk, hit properties and then hit disk cleanup.

we’ll wait for the software to elaborate we can also clean up system files, i personally won’t clean up the disk now this was just to show you how to do that and I remind you that you can do the same process with the classic ccleaner software as well.

we have come to the end of our modifications in windows 10 and we can reboot the system but before doing that, as an additional step of optimization you can also defrag your disks by looking for the command defragment and optimize drives, clicking analyze and optimize on your system disk.

we actually concluded our modifications and we can now reboot the system and come back for a last checkup.

if you had any doubts in the procedure feel free to ask me by commenting below.

so the mods have ended and we have to check that all the details have come to the desired result, for instance we can click on Microsoft edge’s icon and check it isn’t active any more so we can remove the icon from the bar.

same, we can remove the search icon which was originally from Cortana and is now replaced by Classic Shell so we’ll hit right click, search and hidden.

then we will quickly check that all the privacy options we set up have remained unchanged, I advise you to do this at each system update in fact it is possible that windows would have changed your privacy settings or introduced new ones for instance here we can notice that edge is still active as a background app but we removed it so we can turn this off with no worries.

as I repeated a few times we’ll check back on spybot anti beacon to see if any telemetry has been re-enabled, so everything’s alright.

at this point all the modifications i suggested are done so the tutorial is over, again if you have any doubts or questions feel free to comment below and we can now turn off our pc.

 

By MellowD / Tips and Advice / • • • • • • • • • • • • • / 0 Comments

Install SSD Dell Notebook PC – Kingston Technology

Installing a SSD or solid state drive in your new Dell notebook or ultrabook PC has many advantages over the older hard disk drives, like faster boot times and longer battery life.

And they are easy to install too, here's how.

But before you begin there are a couple things you need to know.

First, if you're installing an SSD in a new computer, setup will be a breeze, just make sure you have the install discs that came with your computer.

Otherwise, you will need to backup or clone your existing drive.

And before upgrading anything in your computer, it's always a good idea to make sure your system BIOS is up-to-date.

Check Dell's website before you begin.

Next, your work surface should be clean and you should ground yourself first by touching an unpainted metal surface to prevent damage to any components.

And lastly, in many cases, a simple Phillips head screw driver is all you'll need to replace the hard drive in your notebook computer.

With your computer shutdown, remove the power adapter and the battery.

And just to be sure all the remaining power is drained from the computer press the power button after the battery is removed.

Next, find where the hard drive is located.

Usually on the underside of your computer.

If you have trouble finding it, check Dell's website first.

Now, unscrew and remove the cover and you should have a good view of the old hard drive in your computer.

Each model will be slightly different, but carefully remove the screws, to disconnect the SATA and power connector, usually by sliding the drive away from the connection to remove the drive from the computer.

And if you have a supporting bracket, like we do, remove it and set it aside.

When installing the new SSD drive, re-attach any brackets that were used on the old drive to the new SSD drive first.

And it's important the SATA and power connection is securely connected when you slide the SSD into the drive bay.

It'll fit snugly, but don't force it in.

Screw it into place.

Replace the cover and the battery, now flip the computer back over and turn the computer on.

You may be alerted that there's no operating system, just insert the original install discs that came with your computer and restart again and boot from the CD-ROM.

Just follow the prompts to install the operating system and restore from a backup.

And that's it.

If you have any other questions or need additional help installing a SSD in your computer, be sure to visit www.

Kingston.

Com/support for more information.

Thanks for watching.

By MellowD / Tips and Advice / • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • / 0 Comments

How to Install an SSD in a Dell Desktop PC – Kingston Technology

Installing an SSD, or a solid state disk drive in your DELL desktop computer has many benefits over the older hard disk drives, like faster boot times, plus, it's really easy to do.

Here's how.

But before you begin there are a couple things you need to know.

First, if you have the install discs that came with your computer, the setup will be a breeze, otherwise, you will need to backup or clone your old hard drive.

And it's always a good idea to make sure your system BIOS is up-to-date first, so check Dell's website before you begin.

Next, your work surface should be clean and you should ground yourself first by touching an unpainted metal surface to prevent damage to any components.

Start by shutting down your computer and removing all cables from the back.

And it's important to remember where each cable belongs when plugging them back in after you're finished.

If you plan on adding the SSD drive, instead of replacing your old hard drive, you need an available drive bay, which should be easily accessible inside the computer, by removing one of the side panels.

In most cases, you wont need any tools whatsoever to remove the side panel, because several computer manufacturers have switched to easy-to-remove thumbscrews or latches.

Otherwise, consult Dell's website before you begin.

Once you get it open you'll have a clear view of the drive bays, find old hard drive and you'll most likely find another bay nearby.

If you don't have a 2.

5" drive bay available, you'll have to attach a bracket, like this, to the SSD to fit the larger 3.

5" drive bay.

Slide the drive in to place with the SATA and power connector facing outwards where you can access them, and line up the holes to screw it securely into place.

Now, locate an unused power cable inside the computer.

Any one will do, just follow the group of cable coming from the power supply until you find one.

Or, use the existing power cable from your old hard drive and connect it to the SSD.

Next, connect the SATA cable from the motherboard to the SSD.

You can follow the SATA cable from your old hard drive to the motherboard to find and available SATA connectrion or use the existing cable that was connect to your old hard drive if your replacing your old hard drive.

Now, connect the other end to the SSD.

Slide the side panel back on, screw it into place, plug the cables back in, and with that done, now turn on your computer and insert the operating system installation CDs.

And when prompted, boot from the CD-ROM drive.

You can now install the operating system to the new SSD, just be sure that if you left your old hard drive in, that you don't re-install over your old hard drive, or you could lose all your data.

And you might also have to change the boot order from the old hard drive to the new SSD before copying over your files or after you restore from a backup.

And that's it! If you have any other questions or need additional help installing an SSD drive in your computer, be sure to visit www.

Kingston.

Com/support for more information.

Thanks for watching.

By MellowD / Uncategorized / • • • • • • / 0 Comments

Windows 10 – Beginners Guide [Tutorial]

Have you recently upgraded to Windows 10 ? or are you planning to If yes then this video will help you get the most out of it In this video you will see the new features of windows 10 Some nifty tips and tricks to boost your windows 10 experience and ease your transition from windows 7 to windows 10.

The Windows 10 boot screen has the new windows logo with the revamped boot animation.

Microsoft has redesigned the look and feel of windows based on the principles of minimalist, clean and simple user interface But there is more than a UI change in windows 10 Now Windows can also be cloud synced using the Microsoft account This is like IOS or Android operating system and allows you to sync your settings in the cloud Let us now log in to our system Unlike the Windows 8 which showed the start screen after login In Windows 10 we login straight into the desktop environment just like Windows 7 Also, the start button has been restored Let us click it this new start menu is a kind of a mashup between the Windows 7 start menu and Windows 8 start screen But I feel it is even better than both of them because of the sheer amount of customization that Windows has allowed its users to make Not only we can resize the start menu like this we can change the size and switch from live ties to a static one by right clicking on them like this It also allows us to completely remove a tile again we will right click on the tile and select unpin from start If you do not want any of the tiles on your start menu you can remove all the tile one by one By removing all the tiles it will look similar to the Windows 7 start menu But that’s not all folks for those who like the windows 8 style start screen they can turn it on from the settings It looks like Microsoft has finally learned its lesson It is best to leave the user the flexibility to choose from There is also some new functionality in the start menu Let us, click on the apps button over here this is similar to the all programs button in Windows 7 Like Windows 7 it lists down all the programs that are installed in the system and we can scroll through them Here is a quick tip to simplify your program search Click on the letter over here and this menu will pops up when you click on another letter let’s say C it scrolls back straight to that letter Using this feature you can filter through your applications alphabetically One more tip to improve your productivity Right-click on the start button and this menu pops up Using this menu you can access those features that were earlier present on the original Windows 7 start menu Like Run, Search, Control Panel but besides that it adds several commonly used system tools Like the device manager disk management computer management which you can access with just a single click This feature is also available in Windows 8.

1 The best attraction of Windows 10 in my opinion is Cortana,  Cortana unlike many other personal assistants like Siri, Google Now has a character of its own From chatting with you to telling you a joke to singing for you It will do everything with a human-like personality And what I mean by that can be seen clearly by these couple of commands To give a voice command to cortana click on this mic button over here Hey Siri Shirley,you’re not siri-ous Okay Google Google is okay, but this is Cortana.

There are several other commands to which Cortana replies wittily But don’t mistake it to be just as a source of entertainment It can set your calendar add reminders, set alarms, send an email, play your favorite music, get your directions for your next visit tell facts, track your flights, provide statistics and many other functions You can customize these to your interest using the notebook section.

By clicking over here so like this you can customize cortana to your own interest Not only that using cortana you can run a voice-activated search so for that click on the microphone button find a PowerPoint file that I created 2 days ago As you can see it is trying to search my computer for a powerpoint file that was created 2 days ago since I don’t have any such files it is not showing me anything but you get the idea Now let’s look at the file explore The file explorer has not changed much except a ribbon menu has been added to the top section This is quite like the Office ribbon menu using it you can copy, paste create a new folder, check the properties, and other features.

These features were available in Windows 7 by right-clicking and on the top menu Just like Windows 7 Windows 10 also provides side-by-side window placement functionality, so if you have got more than two windows open you can drag a window to one corner of your screen and it will automatically resize it so that it gets fixed on the half part of the screen Not only the Windows sticks to the side but also it provides a suggestion to fix other Windows So as you can see now in my case it is showing me whether I want to fix this users folder so when I click on it it automatically adds this in the second half of the screen.

Also now you can fix four Windows to a single screen For that you drag a window to the corner of the screen like this and now it automatically resize to one fourth of the screen To further improve your multitasking experience Windows now packs in the virtual desktops Now you can open many windows on different virtual desktops and switch between them This provides a great way to reduce the clutter To create a new virtual desktop click on this icon on the taskbar it is called task view On clicking it it will show the currently available desktops at the bottom section you can see there are two desktops available desktop 1 and desktop 2 to add new desktop click on this plus sign over here new desktop and boom a new desktop will be added to your system you can continuously keep adding multiple desktops And To switch to a particular desktop just bring your mouse over that desktop and click on it and here you go you get a new desktop without all the windows that were present on the previous one The task manager has also undergone a significant upgrade To open the task manager right click on the taskbar and select task manager This is the new task manager as you can see this is the process tab and it now categorizes the process in three different types that is apps background process and windows process and in the app history you can track the resources used by an app since a particular date as you can see in my case it is showing these are the resources used by an app since 6, 8, 2016 Also, you can check what all programs are configured to run on startup By clicking on the startup tab but if you don’t like the new look of the task manager You can see the Windows 7 style task manager by clicking on the details tab The single biggest change to Windows is the addition of apps Now just like the Playstore in Android and App Store in IOS Windows has added the Windows Store to manage your apps You can open the Windows store by clicking on this icon on the taskbar The number of apps that are currently available in the Windows store is less compared to Android or IOS However, you can find some popular apps Like facebook candy crush Netflix and its improving day by day Finally, Microsoft has ditched Internet Explorer to start from scratch with the edge browser.

You can open it by clicking on this icon on the taskbar The features of the edge browser are not up to the mark with the likes of Chrome or Firefox.

In fact it is not fully developed and so Microsoft has kept internet explorer as a backup option which you can open by clicking on this icon and then clicking on open with internet explore But given its early days it’s a step in the right direction There are a couple of unique features like the on-page annotation which allows you to quickly add a comment, highlight, and markups to any web page and share it instantaneously with anyone Let us check that feature out let’s go to Google news to add annotations to this page click on this icon over here make a web note ok now these five six tools are available this is a pen so we can change the color let make it to orange ok Dallas shooting security forces ok you can also use a highlighter and add your own comments very bad and then you can also clip a particular page like we want to show only this much there you go One more cool functionality that the edge browser has inbuilt is the the read view functionality to activate the read view click on this book icon that you can see on the address bar as you can see it just trimmed down all the other cluttering items on the page and just kept the article that we were reading this feature is also available in other browsers One more new feature added to Windows 10 is the notification and action Center Click on the bottom right corner on this icon to open it On this icon The notifications and action Center not only have the notifications that were originally seen on Windows 7 Like that of the maintenance or any error related or update reminders.

But now you can also have email alerts and any custom alerts generated by a Windows app.

In my system as you can see I have got an email alert I have also got an alert from cortana app that I had installed on my android phone this is a very neat feature it automatically transfers notification from my phone to my windows system there are some tips there is a security and maintenance alert this is again quite like what is present in android and IOS On the bottom there are a couple of toggle buttons This button the tablet mode when switched on makes all the apps full screen and instead of the desktop we see the start screen Let’s toggle it on and here you go now we are in touch optimized environment and this is particularly useful if you have a convertible system were when you remove your keyboard it will automatically converts to this tablet mode I believe this feature is the best way to bring the best of both worlds Allowing your system to perform both as a tablet as well as a personal computer The next toggle button is this rotation lock this allows you to fix your orientation or keep it on auto rotate this is relevant if you are using a tablet the note button allows you to opens the Microsoft’s one note software There is a project toggle button which allows your computer to share your display to a projector or other monitors connected The quite hours toggle button silence the notification center so that you won’t be distracted between the time period of 12 AM to 6 AM The connect button allows you to connect a wireless display and audio devices that are supported by Windows 10 On switching it on it tries to search if there are any device available on the same network If you have a VPN connection you can activate it using the VPN toggle button The location button allows you to switch on and off Windows location tracking feature If your system has got Wi-Fi or Bluetooth then from here you can toggle them also on and off.

The settings button allow you to open up the all-new Windows 10 settings panel.

I will open it up.

This new settings panel tries to bring all the settings at a single place that were before available in separate menusin Windows 7 It is kind of a mini Control Panel.

The old menus are still present in Windows10 but it has been hidden down within the settings panel Let us look at the first setting that is the system settings under this the display and power & sleep settings are the ones which are quite like what we had in Windows 7 The display allows us to change the orientation, brightness, text size and other advanced display settings While the power and sleep changes the idle times for your computer to go to sleep and to turning off the display The notification and action settings allow us to customize the notification panel as well as the taskbar It allows us to select which icons should appear on that taskbar and which notification should be shown on the notification and actions panel Again, here Windows provides a lot of customization of the user experience which is quite helpful.

The apps and features section is kind of the program and features dialogue that was present in Windows 7 Control Panel The only difference is that this allows us only to uninstall apps and not the desktop applications You can also add or remove some optional features by clicking on manage optional features The multitasking settings allow us to customize the behavior of autosnap in and virtual desktop functionality.

Tablet mode allows you configuring how the Windows should behave when you toggle to tablet mode.

The storage setting shows the current disk consumption of your Windows system It also allows you to change the default location for saving your apps, documents, videos, music and pictures One tip if you wish to separate your personal files from windows system drive you can change the storage drive in this settings panel Off-line map section provides a new feature of saving Bing maps on your computer Default app settings allow you to select apps for common functionalities like email, maps, music player, photo browser,video player and web browser.

A handy tip if you wish to change the default browser to let us say to chrome you’ll have to change it from this settings panel The about panel gives us the system information you can view the previous menu that was visible in Windows 7 by clicking on system info over here Now let us go back The device settings provide the option to add common hardware components like a printer, scanner, monitors, Speaker,and microphone.

It is kind of a trimmed down version of device manager which is still available in the Control Panel The network and Internet settings panel provide an easy interface for changing a couple of settings like proxy, VPN, Ethernet settings and adding a new internet connection A neat trick to keep track of your data consumption you can check the data usage section here The personalization settings screen provides configuration options for the background,lock screen, themes and the start menu A quick tip if you don’t like the default windows 10 dark theme color You can change it to any other color by changing the accent color That can be done by clicking on colors and here changing it to any other color let say reddish color now as you can see the entire system changed its color If you want to activate the start screen by default you can toggle this use start full screen to on and then when you will click the start button your start screen will pop up instead of the start menu like this.

The accounts section in the settings panel provides the options to change the Microsoft Account to which you want to sync.

You can add or change the account using this settings section Time and language provide options to change your date time settings as well as the region and language settings.

Plus it allows you to change your microphone and speech configurations settings The ease of access settings provides accessibility settings for Windows10.

You can change the options for narration, magnification, high contrast, keyboard,mouse and closed caption.

Under the privacy settings there is a ton of options Unlike Windows 7 Windows 10 collects a lot of data.

This data is used by third-party apps and Microsoft for performance improvement and feature development.

The amount of data that you want to share can be controlled by using this privacy settings.

You can toggle off sharing of data about your location, camera, microphone, speech, typing, contacts, calendar, account information, email, messaging, feedback, diagnostic, device information, and other general settings.

A tip to boost the windows startup time.

In the background app settings section you can toggle off those app that you are not using In the Update and Security section you can control your Windows Updates, Windows Defender, Backup and Recovery and Windows Activation related settings.

I hope this video helped you in easing your transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10