All your PC are belong to ... you? I've painstakingly woven this long, detailed tutorial showing how to customize the Windows 10 post-install experience for maximum privacy, security and efficiency, including local account setup, how to disable unnecessary services and automatic updates, drivers installation, privacy options, Cortana and Web search, Chromium-based Edge upgrade and Edge settings, default browser option, notifications and disruptions, startup apps, default folders in This PC in Windows Explorer, Quicklaunch toolbar, desktop personalization and customization, Microsoft Office installation customization and privacy options, sound tweaks, Game bar, fullscreen game alt-tab freeze workaround, performance, power profiles, hibernation, other tips and tricks, and more. Have fun. https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-10-essential-post-install-tweaks.html Cheers, Mrk Mods: please merge with other threads, if appropriate.
Cool, may come in handy when I switch to Win 10, seems to be useful indeed. However, what does worry me is that Win 10 apparently still has got the ugly focus rectangle, are these guys for real? https://www.askvg.com/how-to-remove-the-annoying-focus-rectangle-in-windows/
Like Mrkvonic, I have a brand new Win10 Pro system running since FEB 7 and I've spent alot of time under the hood. Way back when, I messed with Win10 Pro as a Windows Insider and even after the real thing was released, nothing could compel me to upgrade my Win7 system. (That "insider" Win10 is still running on an old E8400/G35 box, without activation. I power it up every now and then - recently it updated to 1909.) While using all the "off" options available to the user and making use of utilities like O&O Shutup go a long way, there's still a great deal of activity churning away in Windows' nether regions. Go to your sound control panel and under Sounds find the Close Program event and add a ding or beep distinctive from all your other event sounds. Keep an ear out while your PC is just sitting there doing nothing. (This is a desktop support troubleshooting trick I learned from an old timer when I wasn't an old timer.) On my brand new setup, the dings were practically non-stop. Download NirSoft's Last Activity View https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/computer_activity_view.html and run it and check out all the Task Run activity. It doesn't update on the fly, so hitting Refresh is mandatory. Since first power-up, this system has been running about 10 hours a day and svhost.exe has hit over 300 different servers. Right now, svchost.exe has 61 PIDs listed in Task Manager. While I have blocked in Windows Firewall, using GlassWire, most of the prolific call out stuff, wwahost.exe, runtimebroker.exe to name two, and all the junk running out of the windowsapps folder, blocking svchost.exe is, of course, out of the question. It would be a daunting and never ending task to handle svchost.exe connections with a good old fashion "real" firewall. It used to be fun in XP and the early days of Win7. I've decided to just go into Task Scheduler and disable whatever I deem needing that adjustment regardless of whether or not they connect out. Those tasks in Xbox Game Save, Language Components Installer, Application Experience and Maps got immediate attention. So far, I disabled over twenty of the most active tasks. Research into exactly what the H stuff like HelloFace, Flighting and CloudExperienceHost do is on the to-do list. To keep track of it all and watch out for the few of those tasks that magically un-disable themselves, I'll be using NirSoft's Task Scheduler View https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/task_scheduler_view.html which provides a management console UI for Windows' Tasks. So far, my Close Program dings are getting much quieter. And I'm thinking disabling DiskCleanup > SilentCleanup and DiskDiagnostic > Microsoft-Windows-DiskDiagnosticDataCollector might be of benefit to my two MVMe drives. Cheers.
