UPGRADED TO WINDOWS 10?
The first 14 settings you must change
Choose between Local and Microsoft accounts
When you first sign into Windows 10, you can choose to enter your old Windows 7 account details or sign in with a new Microsoft account. With the latter, your Windows settings are synced across all the PCS you use, and you can quickly reset your password online if you forget it. If you decide to switch to a Microsoft account at a later date, you need to click Start, Settings, Accounts, ‘Your info’, then click ‘Sign in with a Microsoft account instead’. If you already have a Microsoft account, use your credentials to sign in – if not, click the ‘Create one’ link and follow the steps.
Check your security software
Once you’ve signed into Windows 10, it’s important to check the security status of your PC. Click the Windows Security icon (a white shield) in the bottom-right corner of the taskbar (click the up arrow if the icon isn’t visible), then select ‘Virus & threat protection’. You should see your antivirus software listed here and it should be marked as ‘turned on’.
If not, Windows 10 has defaulted to using its own antivirus protection, Windows Defender. This has been strengthened in recent years and will protect you from viruses, but a security suite (such as Kaspersky Internet Security - see our Reader Offer at www. snipca.com/33063), offers additional protection, including a password manager and VPN.
Change your privacy settings
Windows 10 provoked widespread criticism when it first launched due to a proliferation of privacy-eroding settings, many of which were switched on by default. Nowadays, Windows takes a more sensible approach, letting users review and manage their privacy settings when installing the operating system.
Our advice has always been to carefully work your way through these options during the setup process. However, you can review your privacy settings at any time by clicking Start, Settings, then Privacy. From here, go through the categories on the left and make changes to each setting in the right-hand panel. For example, under General, we advise disabling all the options (see screenshot below left), because these let Windows track your activity in order to target you with personalised adverts.
Update Windows 10
You may have just finished installing Windows 10, but that doesn’t mean it’s up to date – it might still be missing important security fixes. Windows installs updates automatically (see next tip), but you can protect yourself immediately by checking for updates yourself.
Go to Start, Settings, ‘Update & Security’, then click the ‘Check for updates’ button. Windows will search for and download any available updates. Once they’ve been installed, restart your PC and run another check for updates. You may need to do this a few times, even if Windows Update claims ‘You’re up to date’, just to make certain you have everything you need.
Choose the best update settings for you
While you’re on the Windows Update settings page, there are a few options you should customise. Windows will install automatic updates at random times, potentially interrupting any work (or play) you’re doing. You can’t switch automatic updates off, but you can tell it
what times of the day to avoid. This is done by setting your active hours – a period of the day when you’d rather not be bothered by updates. Click ‘Change active hours’, the Change button, select a ‘Start time’ and an ‘End time’ (see screenshot below left) then click Save.
On the Windows Update page, click ‘Advanced options’, then ‘Delivery optimisation’. Windows 10 shares update data with other PCS on your network and – potentially – strangers’ PCS over the internet. Microsoft insists this is safe, but it can slow down your connections. We therefore recommend switching off the ‘Allow downloads from other PCS’ setting.
Set your default programs
Windows 10 has a rather sneaky habit of setting Microsoft’s built-in apps as the default. For example, you may find that Edge has been set as your go-to web browser, even though you normally use Chrome. To change these back to your own preferences, click Start, Settings, Apps, then click the Default apps option in the left-hand pane. Here, scroll through the program categories to see if there are any defaults that have been changed. To change one back, click the app icon below the category heading, then select the program you want to use instead from the list that appears (see screenshot above right).
Check for hardware or driver problems
We recommended you unplug any non-essential hardware during the
Windows 10 upgrade (see part 3 of our Survival Guide in Issue 565, page 60). Now it’s time to plug those devices back in to make sure Windows recognises them.
If not, try updating the driver for your device. We covered this detail in Issue 565 (page 60), but it basically requires updating the driver using Device Manager. If that fails, download the most recent driver from the device manufacturer’s website.
Switch on System Restore
System Restore can be a lifesaver, letting you roll back your computer to a previous point in time. However, it’s disabled by default in Windows 10.
To re-enable it, open File Explorer, right-click This PC, then select Properties. Click ‘System protection’ in the left-hand pane of the window that opens. If protection for your C drive is displayed as being Off, click Configure, then select ‘Turn on system protection’ (see screenshot above right), use the slider to set a maximum drive-space usage (3GB is plenty), then click OK twice.
Windows 10 has a great backup tool – File History – but this isn’t enabled by default and you’ll receive no prompts to turn it on. To set it up, click Start, Settings, ‘Update & Security’, then Backup on the left. Plug in an external drive or USB stick and click ‘Add a drive’. Once it’s enabled, click ‘More options’ to configure File History’s settings.
Here, you can choose how frequently to back up files and how long to keep the backed-up files for, or add custom folders to your backup, for example. It’s also worth creating a recovery drive, which you can use to boot your PC if you’re having problems starting up. We explain how to do this in our cover feature, so turn back to page 56 for instructions.
Free up space on your hard drive
When you upgrade to Windows 10, the process creates a large amount of leftover data, including installation files and a backup of your previous Windows installation that you can roll back to should you experience any problems. However, if you followed our instructions earlier in this series (see Issue 564, page 61), you’ll already have a system image backup of your PC as it was with Windows 7 installed. And that means you can reclaim around 6GB of hard-drive space by deleting all of these installation and upgrade files.
Instead of using Windows 10’s ‘Storage sense’ tool here, we’ll turn to the Disk Clean-up tool you’re more likely to be familiar with as a Windows 7 user. Open File Explorer, click This PC, right-click your C drive and select Properties. Next, click Disk Clean-up, then ‘Clean up system files’. When the next window opens, tick the boxes for anything you want to clean up, paying special attention to entries labelled Windows Update Clean-up, ‘Windows upgrade log files’ and ‘Previous Windows installation(s)’. Click OK, then Delete Files.