I created this to be a place where people can post their Windows 10 life hacks. Not a place to troubleshoot problems, but rather a place to put ways to customize and tame the beast.

I will start with a little program I just found that can restore the old style start menu from Windows 7 or XP. Open Shell Menu is a free program that allows you to customize the Windows 10 Start Menu. As I said, it allows you to recreate the format of the older Windows editions.

You can also create folders on the start menu, and move shortcuts back and forth on the menu however you want. Things you cannot do in Windows 10. (You can do that with the tiles, but not with the list of programs on the start menu just left of the tiles). It also brings back the Recent Items list.

It also still leaves you a single icon on the new menu that you can click to bring up the original Windows 10 style start menu.

Here is an example of what I did with it on my non-gaming PC There are a lot of ways you can customize it however. So this is not the only way it could look.

Ever have your PC randomly wake up from sleep mode overnight? Here's how to find out why and stop it.

https://uk.pcmag.com/windows-xp-2/127291/ho...from-sleep-mode

Mine does this ALL the time, so I thought I'd pass it along.

Well I finally decided to update my Windows 7 box to Windows 10. It was still free from here so long as you already have an older version of Windows


Now I am customizing, and the black start button and other system icons were driving me crazy, as it was hard for me to see with my green taskbar. So I found out how to change them to white.



Go to Personalization -> Colors

Under Choose Your Color, set to Custom, then:
Choose your default Windows mode = Dark
Choose your default app mode = Light

Transparency Effects = On

Pick your accent color below

Show accent color on the following surfaces
Start, taskbar, and action center = On
Title bars and windows borders = On



Note, the Start, taskbar, and action center box will be grayed out unless you set Color to Dark or Custom.

If you like the Dark option, you don't need to set your Color ot Custom, just go Dark.

OldNewExplorer will get your old style Explorer back, including the preview and details pane on the bottom of the window, instead of on the side.

Here is how to remove the arrows on desktop shortcuts:

Open Registry Editor

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Create a new Key and name it Shell Icons

Within its folder, create a new String Value and name it 29

Double-click it to open it up, and in the Value Data box add: %windir%\System32\shell32.dll,-50

Restart Windows

ahhhhhhhhhh...good old Explorer. I recommend going a step further and download a full-function replacement. My file manager of choice has long been Free Commander, found here:

(link) Free Commander (link)

Go to its 'screenshots' page and check out the many ways you can set it up to your liking.

I, however, stick with an old 2009 version, which works just fine with Win10. Why? For whatever reason, later versions got rid of my preferred panes configuration. Either that or I'm too dumb to figure out how to implement it. Admittedly, I miss out on a few bell-and-whistles recent versions provide. Most folk will be quite happy with the latest edition.

(We of course shouldn't physically ditch Explorer.)

I found how to remove the blue and yellow UAC shield that Windows puts on icons when you set them to run in Administrator mode.


Open Registry Editor

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Create a new Key and name it Shell Icons

Within its folder, create a new String Value and name it 77

Double-click it to open it up, and in the Value Data box add: %systemroot%\system32\imageres.dll,197

Restart Windows



Edit: I have noticed a side effect that can sometimes happen if you do either this or the previous icon hack. Sometimes your desktop icons might turn solid black. I did some research, and what is happening is that your icon cache is having issues. I have had it happen twice now since doing both, so I am not sure which is responsible.

The first time it happened I rebooted, and the icons were back to normal again. Basically the icon cache rebuilt itself. The second time I was busy writing and did not want to reboot. So I just kept on working, and when I looked back later the icons had fixed themselves.

No tip, trick or improvement here. Just reporting that, in a reversal of my long-held practice of not installing a 'major' Win10 'update' until Windows tell me to, often as much as a year after that update is first available, I went ahead and voluntarily updated to Win10 20H2. Didn't even both to research it first! After that, I updated to the latest Nvidia graphics driver. (Via an Nvidia download. I don't and won't do it through Windows driver update.) No idea what this will do to/for me. To the plus, I notice no cosmetic difference on the desktop. Or do I? Hmmm...

I just checked, and that is the version of windows that I have.