Windows 10

My Windows 11 List Of Demands

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Windows 11 is a nice visual refresh to the Windows line of Operating Systems. However, there has been a simplifying and removal of many useful functions; usually these are just hidden behind more clicks, which leaves are more frustrating experience when we’ve become used to a certain way of doing things.

In no particular order, here’s the bug bears I’ve found so far in using Windows 11, and if I’ve found a fix/workaround/setting change:

Start button Location Moved to Middle

The Start Button is in the centre of the screen by default – breaking what we’ve been doing constantly since Windows 95. This change seems unnecessary and even on my 44″ Ultrawide monitor, I’d rather it in the bottom left. I tried leaving it in the middle but gave up after a week.

You can change this back to the left side by:
Click ‘Start’ > ‘Settings’ (if you don’t see it, type it)
Click ‘Personalisation’ > Taskbar (not Start, where you’d expect it!)
Click ‘Taskbar behaviours’ to expand it.
Under Taskbar alignment, change the dropdown from ‘Center’ to ‘Left’

Task Manager missing from right click on taskbar

Task Manager has grown into a much more useful tool since Windows 10, beyond just killing off programs; it provides a bunch more visibility into what your computer is actually doing. For some reason, being able to access it via a right click on the taskbar has been removed.

Ctrl + Shift + Esc will still bring up Task Manager, but it’s one of the more awkward key combos. Right clicking on the Start button itself will bring up a very useful menu (as it does on Windows 10), with one of the options still brining up Task Manager.

The new way I’ll probably try to teach myself to bring up Task Manager is, Winkey + X > T.

‘Edit’ option missing from File Explorer right click (and others)

If you have a look at the right click menu against a file in File Explorer, it will be a much shorter list than what you’re used to. Several common functions (cut, copy, rename, share, delete) are icons at the top, but everything else that didn’t make the ‘cut’ is in the ‘Show more options’ menu, which takes you back to the classic looking right click menu.

As Nathan McNulty pointed out, this can be restored to the old ways via a reg setting (run in PowerShell):

New-Item -Path "HKCU:\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" -Value "" -Force

or via Command Prompt:

reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve

File Explorer Command Bar Simplified

File Explorer had a bunch of useful options in the top Command Bar. They’ve mostly been removed (seeing a trend here?) to simplify and show only a few options. The idea of tabbed menus is completely gone. Some options like ‘Map network drive’ are in an ellipsis menu

PowerShell:

New-Item -Path "HKCU:\Software\Classes\CLSID\{d93ed569-3b3e-4bff-8355-3c44f6a52bb5}\InprocServer32" -Value "" -Force

Command Prompt:

reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{d93ed569-3b3e-4bff-8355-3c44f6a52bb5}\InprocServer32" /f /ve

Show all icons in Notification Area

Those little icons in the bottom right side of the taskbar – that’s the notification area. I like seeing them all, rather than having them hidden in a submenu. Windows 10 has an option to ‘Always show all icons in the notification area’. In Windows 11, this option isn’t available. I did learn that rather than mucking around with settings, you can just drag an icon out of the menu and pop them straight onto the notification area – but you shouldn’t have to do this for each icon.

Programs in Task Bar don’t expand out

In Windows 10, I’m used to having a reasonable sized bar for each program I have open. It shows the Icon and a bit of text to help identify what the program is (or in the case of Microsft Edge, which profile/web page for those untabbed). It’s great, it uses up all that task bar space. The second monitor does have a consolidated view, but I drive which program I want by clicking in the primary task bar.

Windows 11’s design is to remove that, and have all taskbar programs just show the icon. For pinned programs, you’ll need to look for a blue line/dot below the icon, to indicate a window is open. Multiple windows of File Explorer open? They’re consolidated into the one icon, you’ll need to hover over that and pick the one you want.

This one isn’t possible to restore natively, and there’s a lot of feedback about people wanting it.

Widgets

Widgets are back again (I actually liked them in Vista) except this time, Widgets is a popout menu triggered by a button in the Task Bar (although checking an Insider’s build, this looks like it will change to a weather button in the bottom left). The Widgets popout menu then contains a bunch of sections around news, weather, stocks, eSports, Traffic and so on.

It’s abilit to remember what I actually like or don’t like seems non existent. I’ve removed ‘NBA’ that many times – and yes, I am signing into Widgets with the same account, and on Windows 10 the News and Interests button works the same way). It’s a very US centric service – and only has configuration around 3 Australian Cities (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne). There’s a web search function, which of course only uses Bing. Although I like seeing the temperature, if you want to turn off Widgets:

Click ‘Start’ > ‘Settings’ (if you don’t see it, type it)
Click ‘Personalisation’ > Taskbar
Under ‘Taskbar items’ turn the switch ‘off’ for Widgets.

I’m sure there are a bunch of other frustrations in the simplification of Windows 11, as I’m sure the idea is that there’s too many buttons and options for a ‘regular’ user, so the idea is to clean it all up. The problem is that for many people used to these options, it feels like a step back.

Maybe the approach Microsoft should take is to have Windows 11 ‘Basic Mode’ and ‘Advanced Mode’ to try and keep everyone happy?

There are some good features in Windows 11 too, such as Snap Layouts / Snap Groups, where you can pick the size of the window to fill in your sceen – handy on an ultrawide, where you want to move a window to the right third of the screen. There’s also the whole Android app support that’s coming…

Anyway, it’s early days for Windows 11 – and although there’s plenty of criticism from Insiders on recommendations that were not taken up, I expect we’ll see the continual improvement and evolution of the platform; mostly for the better ( News and Interests is one of the reasons I say ‘mostly’ ).

Screen Sharing to a TV

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Screen Sharing on Windows 10

Screen sharing is easy to do on Windows, as long as you have a cable.

  1. Click on the Notification icon in the bottom right of the Start bar, next to the time.
  2. In the notification section that pops out, click the ‘Project’ button. If you don’t see it, try clicking the word ‘Expand’ first to show more icons.
  3. From the Project options, either choose ‘Duplicate’ to show the same on the external screen as your PC screen, or Extend to treat the external screen as a second monitor.

Applies To: Windows 10

If you’re using a cable (generally HDMI), screen sharing to a TV is easy – it’s really treating the TV as another monitor. However, if you’re trying to do it wirelessly, there’s a lot more factors going on.

There is no single standard for having a wireless display. This is why extra hardware or software is required to wirelessly transmit your video to a TV. One of the most well known ways is via Chromecast, as a lot of TVs have this built in. From the PC side, you’ll need to have the Google Chrome browser installed and follow these instructions.

Alternatively, if you have an Xbox One or newer, you can use the Wireless Display app to broadcast from your Windows PC or Android device, to the Xbox itself, which if plugged into your TV will use that as the video output.

If you’re interested in more details around Cast, Project or DNLA options, there’s a great post here from Microsoft Answers.

Display Settings in Windows

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Where are Display Settings on Windows 10

Display Settings on Windows 10 are easy to find.

On the desktop background itself, right click with your mouse. The menu that pops up will contain the option ‘Display settings’.

From this screen, you can set many settings such as the arrangement of your displays, screen resolution, and which screen is your main display.

Applies To: Windows 10

Display Settings seem to be a frequent point of confusion. Relating physical problems and changes to choices in software seems to be harder than it sounds, but here’s some tips on the Display Settings on Windows 10 that might help:

Even though it actually says what to for rearranging your displays, you may not realise that you can click and drag your monitors around. Ideally, the screen should match how they are physically – this is so Windows knows where to put the cursor when you scroll from one screen to another. If you have one screen a bit lower than the other (common if you have different sized screens) then make that screen also sit lower on this view, and you won’t have the problem where you think the cursor is stuck, or jumps way off from where you thought it would go when jumping from screen to screen.

The Night light option is good if you’re working in the evening – just like most mobile phones do these days, it will reduce eye strain by looking at a less bright, and display warmer colours to help you get ready to sleep. You can also go into the Night light settings to adjust the strength of the setting:

Display resolution should probably stay on the recommended setting, as Windows is detecting the monitor’s default resolution. The resolution being showed is based on what monitor is highlighted under the ‘Rearrange your displays’ section at the top, so you’ll need to highlight each monitor then check the ‘Display resolution’ setting after that, as each monitor can have it’s own different resolution.

Finally, if you think some things look blurry on your screen and can’t get the monitor’s settings to fix it, you can try going into ‘Advanced scaling settings’ and turn on the option for ‘Let Windows try to fix apps so they’re not blurry’.

How To Reset Your PC

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Reset Your PC

You can Reset your PC if you’re experiencing problems and want to start afresh

  1. Click on ‘Start’
  2. Choose ‘Settings’ – the cog image near the ‘Start’ button
  3. In the ‘Windows Settings’ screen, choose ‘Update & Security’
  4. In the left menu options, choose ‘Recovery’
  5. Under ‘Reset this PC’ choose the ‘Get started’ button

Applies To: Windows 10

Resetting your Windows 10 computer is an easy task to do these days. Going through the above options will trigger the Reset this PC wizard.

If you don’t have administrative access to the device, you’ll first be prompted for those credentials.

Once you have access, you’ll be presented with two choices:

Keep my files – this will leave your files on the device. You ‘should’ be using something like OneDrive to back up all your personal files, and you should back up everything you care about before running a ‘Reset your PC’, but if you’re not sure, and you’re keeping the device for yourself, then this is the safe option.

Remove everything – this is good if you want to start from scratch, or are giving the device to somebody else, as nothing is saved beyond Windows 10 itself.

The wizard will then confirm the option you chose, and after clicking ‘Next’, the process will start. This can take a while depending on the speed of the hardware; but at the end of it, you’ll have a fresh Windows 10 to set up again!

How To Log Off Using Windows 10

Posted on by Adam Fowler

How To Log Off Using Windows 10

  1. Click on the ‘Start’ button in the bottom left of your screen.
  2. Click the ‘Account’ button (which might be your own logo or picture. or just a grey circle with a circle and half circle inside it).
  3. Click ‘Sign Out’.
  4. You’ll now log off and be back on the Windows 10 login screen. Note that this isn’t rebooting your computer.

Applies To: Windows 10

Log Off

It can be a bit hard to find the ‘Sign out’ option in Windows 10 if you don’t know where to look.

The regular ‘Start’ > ‘Power’ option by default doesn’t present a ‘Sign out’ or ‘Log off’ option which people may be used to from older versions of Windows:

There’s also another trick; you can right click on the Start button (or press Win key + X) to bring up the Quick Access menu, which includes a ‘Shut down or sign out’ option, and within that, you can Sign out, Sleep, Shut down or Restart:

You can even open the Run window by using Win key + R, and type the command ‘Shutdown /r /t 0’ to Shut down the computer and restart (/r), and do it now (/t 0 is time, zero seconds):