MAKE WINDOWS FASTER (AND PRETTIER!)
Ditch Cortana
Cortana is woven into the fabric of Windows 10, but can be disabled. In Windows Home, open the Registry Editor (use the Search box to find “regedit” and click the top result), and then navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\ Microsoft\Windows”. Right-click on “Windows” and select New | Key, then rename it “Windows Search”. Right-click the empty space in the main pane and pick “DWORD (32-bit) Value” from the New menu. Specify “AllowCortana” as the header and zero as the value. Exit Registry Editor and reboot your machine and your searches will only encompass your local machine. The taskbar’s search box will be replaced by a magnifier that offers just to Search Windows when clicked.
If you’re running Windows 10 Pro, launch the Group Policy editor (“gpedit.msc”), again from the Search box, and click through Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Search | Allow Cortana. Click Disable.
If you only want to hide Cortana, right-click the Taskbar and pick Hidden from the Cortana sub-menu.
Remove apps
Deleting apps you’ve installed is easy. Doing the same with the preinstalled defaults is trickier as they don’t appear in Control Panel. Instead, type “Powershell” into the Cortana box, right-click the top result and pick “Run as administrator”. PowerShell is text-based, but the formula for removing a program is the same:
Get-AppxPackage *app-name* | Remove-AppxPackage
Replace app-name as appropriate. So, to delete Zune Music, use:
Get-AppxPackage *zunemusic* | Remove-AppxPackage
For a list of all apps installed on your system, use Get-AppxPackage on its own, read off the application title from the Name line of each entry, and use the last part of it between the asterisks in the commands above. Microsoft.ZuneVideo, for example, would be truncated to *zunevideo*.
Apps that you’ve installed from the Windows Store don’t appear in Control Panel’s “Add and Remove Programs” pane, but can be removed by right-clicking their icon on the Start menu and picking Uninstall.
Get the classic Start menu
Windows 8 and 10 have moved further and further away from the standard set back in 1995, with the simple set of apps and options hidden behind the Start button. To get that minimal interface back, install the free Classic Shell ( classicshell.net), which can emulate Windows XP, 7, 8 and 10 menus with single and double columns. It also lets you revert Windows Explorer to behave the way it did in XP or Vista, and add loading progress, security zone details and the title of each page to Internet Explorer.
Shift-clicking the Start button opens the regular Windows 10 tiled screen, and there’s an option to do the same from the top of the old-style Start menu. Uninstalling Classic Shell will roll back your changes entirely.
Remove discretionary apps
Windows 10 also ships with a lot of non-core discretionary apps such as Weather and Sport, which are just wasting space if you don’t use them. Delete them by opening Settings and clicking through Apps to “Apps & features”. Click what you don’t need to reveal its Uninstall button.
Speed up your PC
Tweaking several settings in sequence can help your PC run more smoothly, and extend its usable life. Find “Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows” through the Cortana box and click the radio box beside “Adjust for best performance”. Now type “Choose a power plan” in the Cortana box and select “Create a power plan” in the left menu. From here, you can pick the hidden “High performance” option (this will burn through your battery more quickly on a laptop).
Next, free up disk space by opening a new Explorer window, selecting “This PC” and searching for “size:huge” to find all files between 16MB and 128MB, then again with “size:gigantic” to find files larger than 128MB. Move as many unused or old files as you can from each set of results to an external drive archive.
Lock your PC
If you work in an open-plan office – and especially if you handle sensitive data – you should lock your PC every time you leave it. Or set it up to lock itself. Pair your PC with your phone using Bluetooth (open Settings, click Devices, then “Add Bluetooth or other device”. Select your phone from the list of devices and, if the code on the PC and phone match, authorise the connection).
Switch to Settings’ Accounts pane, click “Sign-in options” in the sidebar and scroll down to “Dynamic lock”. Check the box to “Allow Windows to detect when you’re away and automatically lock the device”.
Check that it’s working by moving your phone out of Bluetooth range of your PC and, a minute later, the PC should automatically lock.
Install the Linux subsystem
If you work cross-platform, or need to use Linux to administer a server, you can run the same environment on your Windows machine. The Linux subsystem isn’t designed for running graphical apps (although you can do so if you install an Xwindowing system – see our tutorial in issue 274).
Open Settings | Update & Security | “For developers”. Select “Developer mode”, then switch to Control Panel and click “Turn Windows features on or off” in the Programs section. Tick the checkbox beside “Windows Subsystem for Linux” and click OK. Windows will reboot and download Linux from the Microsoft Store.
You can now access the Linux prompt by searching for bash via the Cortana search box and agreeing with the Ts&Cs. This installs the subsystem itself, then asks you to pick a Linuxspecific username and password, after which you’re ready to roll.