F R  www ver:Home 64bit

Setup

• Install Windows 10 offline, skip name/email/phone identification, decline personal info collection
• Turn off Device encryption (Security group)
• Deinstall spam offline (McAfee, MSOffice, MSOneDrive, Dropbox)
• Deinstall built-in applications: login to a desired account, lunch Windows Power Shell, run Get-AppxPackage > C:/tmp/new.txt to get list of application names, then run Get-AppxPackage *name* | Remove-AppxPackage to delete them
• .NET Framework 3.5 (includes 2.0) is required for older apps

Control Panel

• About: name the computer
• Apps and features: remove garbage
• Background: set Desktop background color to (43,85,128)=#2B5580
• Date and time: set time zone
• Default apps: set your favorite file associations by manually patching Windows Registry, see my code here
• Device Manager: check for malfunctioning devices
• Desktop Icon Settings: remove everything, but Pin to Start Recycle Bin
• Display: native resolution, 125% font size
• Indexing Options: check
• Language: add Ukrainian language and replace default keyboard layout with ukru (see layout), hide language bar (also in "Turn system icons on or off")
• Mouse: adjust speed, wheel scrolls 1 line
• Power and sleep: screen off after 5/15 min, sleep after 15/30 min, hibernate after 30/60 min; power button hibernates, closing the lid turns into sleep; low/critical battery level 6/2% (by Dell)
• Printers and scanners: install printers including print-to-file printers
• Region: change system locale to Russian if needed
• System Properties: disable Remote Assistance; Environment Variables: add "C:\Sys" to PATH; Visual Effects: Show thumbnails, Show window contents, Smooth edges, Smooth-scroll
• Taskbar: lock, auto-hide, use small icons, never combine; disable annoying icons in Notification Area; customize Start Menu (see table below)
• Touchpad: disconnect when mouse is connected
• Windows Update: automatically check for updates but let me choose whether to download them (not availabe in Windows 10)

Desktop, Taskbar, and Start Menu

Maintenance

• Create Restore Points on System Protection tab of System Properties
• Clean up autorun programs in
  • System Startup and User Startup
  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
  • Task Scheduler
• Use System File Checker regularly
• Use Windows Performance Toolkit to pinpoint problems

Battery saving

• To investigate performance run powercfg /option /output filename.html, where option is one of batteryreport, energy, sleepstudy.
• In case of sleep problems, to disable Connected Standby set HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\CsEnabled to 0.
• Common battery drainers:
  • Intel SST Audio Device – update driver, if doesn't help then use Auto Mute utility
  • Intel AVStream Camera – update driver, if doesn't help then don't know

Resources saving

• Trun off Delivery Optimization in Services and Windows Update
• Turn off Microsoft Store in Services
• Web Account Manager (TokenBroker) service can be stopped if Windows Update is not needed

Custom system settings

• Services switched to Manual start: Cisco AnyConnect, Windows Search, YandexBrowserService

Tips and tricks

• Use WSL
• Windows Desktop Gadgets (Windows Sidebar) is discontinued by Microsoft but can be found here
• To fix a crazy printer restart Printer Spooler service
• Install K-Lite codec pack from here
• To fix blurry text override high DPI scaling in Compatibility, see here
• Changing lock screen timeout
• To tune Windows appearance backup your current settings by exporting HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop, edit WindowsMetrics.reg file and run it
• To restart a malfunctioning device by a single click create a batch file with pnputil /disable-device "device instance ID" and pnputil /enable-device "device instance ID", create its shorcut, check "Run as admin" box, and asign a shortcut key.
• Changing language for single-language version (original post):
  1. Determine the name of your current language pack: dism /online /get-packages, e.g. Microsoft-Windows-Client-LanguagePack-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~x86~ru-RU~10.0.14393.0
  2. Download the required language pack, e.g. lp_d17ad4e6831135935760d21e2c8689b667430d0b.cab
  3. Install it: dism /online /add-package /packagepath:C:\path_to_cabfile\cabfile.cab then dism /online /get-packages
  4. Remove the current pack: dism /online /remove-package /packagename:current_pack_name
• To delete Windows Defender history remove all files in its Service folder.
• To disable hotspot for standard users set or create HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Network Connections\NC_ShowSharedAccessUI=0 as DWORD (32-bit) Value.
• To limit number of hotspot connections to X set or create HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\icssvc\Settings\WifiMaxPeers=X as DWORD (32-bit) Value.
• To block web-parasites update your HOSTS file by MVPS list. For efficient browsing stop "DNS Client" service from automatic loading.

Batch operations

• Convert to UTF-8: foreach($i in ls -recurse -filter "*.html") {$temp = Get-Content $i.fullname; Out-File -filepath $i.fullname -inputobject $temp -encoding utf8 -force}

Help

• Windows keyboard shortcuts
• Windows Batch Scripting (Wikibooks)
• Windows Server Management documentation
• Windows commands
• PowerShell