I'll be buying a new computer...

[anunitu]

best computer power unit.

hamster wheel power.

[daydreamer]

I finally got rid of the last of the remaining "Metro" apps from Windows 10 Home.
It fubarred the Start Menu, but that's okay. I have a work-around for that.

No more Cortana, no more Edge, no more of any of the other Sh***y apps
that came with Win 10 Home. Only the legacy "Programs" remain.   

Paintbrush, Norton commander,file explorer, lynx,calculator,notepad,qbasic?
I recommend try out different modes in calculator in newer windows,old had only two modes,simple and advanced
I tried to convert some hex numbers to get an idea of how many Chinese unicodes it had,so when I saw a,I typed 10 etc and when I changed mode on calculator in win 8 64bit,it had several more modes,including 'programmer', where all kinds of conversions between binary,octal,hexadecimal,decimal,it even had and,or,xor,not,left/right shift/rotate

[zedd151]

A toy worth owning, Spybot Anti-Beacon.

I will look into that.

best computer power unit.
hamster wheel power.

Power supply is fine thanks.   :P   :lol:

I recommend try out different modes in calculator in newer windows,

If it's part of the "Metro apps" it is already history and will not be back on MY computer.
Anything that calls itself an "APP" is not worthy imo. Look at the junk they put into cheap smart phones. Hopefully in the
more expensive smartphones they have better "PROGRAMS"

Anything that resided in the "APPS" folder is history. I want PROGRAMS on my computer, not "politically correct, written by some suburbanite, college educated 'know-it-all', who only knows how to program in Visual.WhateverTheFork.Net," APPS!    8)

Otherwise, hey! How ya doing?    :lol:

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

Otherwise, hey! How ya doing?

   Well, following this thread caused me to go out and buy an
inexpensive Windows 10 laptop just to see how different that is.
It came in yesterday.

   I just powered it up to take stock, and encountered Cortana
right off the bat.  While it worked better than I would have
expected, it's not what I wanted to see.  It (or whoever set up
the introduction) wanted to set up names, passwords, and
register the thing.  So I played around a bit and finally hooked
it up to the internet to close a registration window.  So it starts
downloading updates.  Yuck.  If there is some pointers to clean
things up, it would be nice to have a walk through to help start
things off.

   Good news, the touch pad works much better than any I
have seen up to now.  Bad news, I probably should not have
bought the thing.  Windows 10, out of the box, doesn't seem
usable.  I was hoping for nice little portable computer.  Not a
steep learning curve.

Muttering,

Steve

[zedd151]

Hi FORTRANS!

I have completely removed Cortana and a host of other bad actors from my setup.  I also killed any updates from downloading,  or  I am sure that all the changes I made to MY computer would be undone on the very next update.   If I have to,  I could even remove the update program and so called helper modules too.  But so far no need for the nuclear option.

I really miss the plain and simple xp.   Windows 7 wasn't so  bad either.

Just wait until you start running some home brew software.   Watch in Task Manager how that plays out.   Cortana will make a big appearance, windows defender anti-virus as well,  MrT. might even show up.. (I pity da fool)

My first week with Windows 10 was a nightmare.  I'll post more after work.

[avcaballero]

I have heard so many bad things about W>7 that if someday I'd lost my W7, I'd seriously consider switching to Linux with WXP/7 in a virtual box.

[felipe]

I haven't found anything wrong with windows 8.1. Is really manageable i think.  :idea:

[zedd151]

If there is some pointers to clean
things up, it would be nice to have a walk through to help start
things off.

I would really be the wrong person to ask. I've fubarred this computer a dozen times in just the first two weeks.

Even now with all of the invasive stuff either disabled (permanently) or removed, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop and Windows come crashing down with a great big BSOD from all of my tinkering.

[Lonewolff]

I haven't found Windows 10 to be that bad really. Pretty much just removed all of the adds and crap from the start menu and was good to go.

[zedd151]

I haven't found Windows 10 to be that bad really.

My main problem is having an embedded small hard drive. out of 32 GB I only have 27-28 GB to work with. The first week, after all the updates I was down to a very low free space on the hard drive.

That was the first of many troubles. Then there is the issue of invasive 'apps' monitoring everything that you are doing on YOUR VERY OWN COMPUTER. Nevermind Windows Defender deleting your homebrew masm32 assembled programs. I just got sick and tired of all of the shiiite that is put into Windows 10 (the Home version at least). So I opted for the 'nuclear option' deleting as much as the OS would let me get away with.

Between Cortana, Defender, and a couple other 'apps' my PC was running constantly at 35-45% cpu, and near 40% memory usage at "idle" (apparently some apps don't know the word 'idle'). Some days were worse. Now it purrs along and runs much faster with all of the crap removed.

[Lonewolff]

Yeah, 32 GB isn't much to work with. I struggle to stay afloat with a 128 GB SSD as my primary drive.

[zedd151]

I've got the OS down to 8.5 GB, and now have plenty of space to work with. I put most stuff on external flash drive. But when downloading for instance, I'll use space on C: for speed. and I now have a partition (on main HD) with a secondary backup of C: on it, in case the backup on the flash drive fails or gets corrupted in some way.

[zedd151]

My latest adventure involves removing extra pre-installed languages.  There are a total of 14 languages including English "en-en"
From winsxs I have already started. I'll post more info as it becomes available.

Later -->>

So far, it has been a success. OS size is now down around 7.2 GB.
Now to remove the unused languages from the other directories. 

[zedd151]

Now to remove the unused languages from the other directories. 

I have put that on hold for the moment as I am off on another tangent.

Have used a utility 'AOMEI Partition Assistant' to merge the 'SYSTEM' (boot) partition with the Windows OS partition. This was done after deleting the hidden (unformatted) MS partition.

Had to adjust the BCD Store, using 'EasyBCD' to ensure the bootmgr was pointing towards the new C:\Windows partition.

After all the changes were made, works like a charm. I was a little hesitant at first, but realized I could always revert to the backed up version of my system if anything went wrong - and went ahead anyway.

The next step will be to re-create a recovery partition. Not like the pre-installed recovery partition. It will hold mainly two things, The latest backup of my C: drive and the utility to recover the C: drive from the backup file. I am strongly considering making it a bootable partition and installing WinPE on it to run the backup utility. It's a little work though getting WinPE set up on a fixed disk when it expects to be run from either cd/dvd  or a removable drive. But there is a way, I just have to read up on it. This will be in addition to the backup that I have stored externally from the computer.

With the few essential programs I have installed, my C: drive weighs in at 7.99 GB. and right now has 21.1 GB free space available. -- I had already removed the recovery partition when I wiped the entire drive - when I converted from GPT to MBR. I am preparing for the event that I may yet install Windows xp on this computer. But I have to see if drivers are available for this fairly new machine. It is highly doubtful though.

The best I can hope for in that regard is probably running xp from VMWare or other emulator (VirtualBox?) don't know just yet. I need my xp fix.  :P

[daydreamer]

My latest adventure involves removing extra pre-installed languages.  There are a total of 14 languages including English "en-en"

dont forget to remove unused languages like assembly  :P
I do the other way around and install many languages so I can test unicode
wonder what kinda smartphone you had,even a 16gb connected as external would help a Little
or buy a  cheap usb memory