Woody’s Win10 Tips

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There’s a new series on InfoWorld’s Woody on Windows called Woody’s Win10Tips. The tips are targeted at people who just want to use Windows 10 and get
[See the full post at: Woody’s Win10 Tips]

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Woody, off your subject but what happened to the check box in windows update that let you “Never check for updates”? My Win 7 SP1 x64 is not acting right. I have never had this happen before. I am trying to be in Group B.

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I don’t see the Win10Tips you mentioned here on InfoWorld.
Is this a “coming soon” thing?

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Nov. 1

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It’s in the drop-down list. “Not recommended.”

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Woody, no article yet on InfoWorld, but the intention is excellent and I am sure it will generate good information from you and community.
Although Windows 7 has most followers, I think it is enough information generated about Windows 7 for everyone interested and now is the right time to try to move on and find a little bit more about the new kid on the block Windows 10.

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I should’ve noted in the post that the series starts November 1.

right now I’m concerned about the people who are floundering with Win10. Win7 and 8.1 have been around the block a few times – the main change is in the patching methodology. But Win10 is still under-tipped.

I’m also interested in “tools” – programs that folks find useful.

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Sounds like a good idea to me your right win10 in all its incarnations is probably poorly covered and even the most seasoned Win etc survivor is always willing to learn a new trick and whoever wrote “you cant teach an old dog new tricks” obviously wasnt a PC user lol 🙂

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When it comes to “Tools”, Wushowhide should be the first tool to download in my opinion. It’s Microsoft sanctioned, and for my money, it takes the cringe out of Patch Tuesday.

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Personally, I know all I need to know about Windows 10 already. (grin)

The good part about how horrible it is, is that many people will need Woody’s third-party help in grappling with it for years to come.

Woody’s found himself “in the right place at the right time” this year, as Microsoft bizarrely morphs and destroys its reputation in the process (with many customers), so his readership will continue to grow (for all OS’s).

As soon as Halloween comes ’round, and the days become misty, grey and atmospheric like today has been (where I live), and the trees down the street light up in their bright crimsons, oranges and yellows, I get in a Thanksgiving mindset,
and I am thankful to you, and for you, Woody. God bless you.

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Excellent point.

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It disappeared from the drop down list

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Windows Update MiniTool.
Allows customising updating style (in the “old” style if you wish) for all editions.

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Any tips or observations?

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I see a note that this can be caused by invalid registry entries. Try the method published by Ricardo500 here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/no-never-check-for-updates-not-recommended-option/c06fbc27-23dd-4155-b978-099b98b8481a

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Please cover “Do not include drivers with Windows Updates (ExcludeWUDrivers)”, which is new in 1607:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/waas-configure-wufb

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Thanks! Too bad it’s Pro only….

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How about a section on the different internet browser options and their configurations, search engines, etc. so that people may make choices based upon the security levels they’d like to have?

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Woody,
I have a question.
Ver. 1507, Ver. 1511, Ver. 1607, and the upcoming Ver. 1703. These are all brand new Windows 10. They are not like taking the first version and rolling in the new features like updates. It’s like if you go to the store and getting 4 shrink wrap boxes of Win 10. Am I in the ballpark?

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Not exactly. In fact, I’ll be publishing my first Woody’s Win10Tip on that topic, probably tomorrow.

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Hey Woody. I think you should do a topic on Windows Update MiniTool. It’s a great tool that’s much easier to use than the actual WU component in Settings. It definitely deserves more exposure IMO.

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It’s already on my list. I could use some testimonials, test experiences, etc., etc.

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Did your suggestion step by step. Didn’t work. Found m sfc finally and ran scan and it turned up nothing. Guess I have lost it so I will stop and disable windows update every time I need to use it.

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One tip I have is: Disk Clean which is in Windows 10 by default. After the upgrade from 1511 to 1607 you will find that the system has 15+Gb of less space. By using Disk Clean and [system disk clean] within, you can remove the .oldwindows folder and non essential upgrade files from previous version of windows 10 if you are short on space.

If debian is good enough for NASA...

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@ch100: Your transition to actually promoting Windows has been extraordinarily gradual.

Boil the frog slowly, right?

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Is “Notify but don’t download” still there?

If so, use that. It’s basically the same thing, give or take an annoying popup or two.

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Brian. Do this.
Stop the Windows Update service.
Open regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionWindowsUpdate
Delete this key.
Restart Windows Update service.
Restart once more.
Check your settings.

If what I said above is too complicated, just ignore it.

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Yes, it allows Windows 10 updating in the old style. What better tip can there be about Windows 10 other than controlling the automatic behaviour of the updates? 🙂
Maybe controlling Cortana in 1607 to be a hotter tip?

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Woody, can you advice from a user’s perspective please.
Windows 10 with Outlook (versions are not relevant). PDF attachment in email. Sumatra PDF default reader set in Sumatra options.
Opening the attachment in Outlook, opens the PDF in Edge. Adobe Reader is not installed.
Sumatra tends to lose the defaults in favour of Edge.
Any idea?

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Note: Windows 7 does not have this behaviour and opens the attachment in Sumatra.
Would this indicate not a full compatibility of Sumatra with Windows 10?

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Yep. Many Win10 cumulative updates have reset default file associations. Microsoft claims that the bug’s been fixed, but I’m not so sure.

There’s a 3rd party program that claims to re-associate file types. Stop Resetting My Apps, from Carifred http://www.carifred.com/stop_resetting_my_apps/ may solve the problem.

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Heh. I wish I could figure that one out. You can disable the Cortana interface in 1607, but that’s about it.

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Thank you, I will check the URL.
I think my problem is not related to updates, but rather to a behaviour of Windows/Edge which takes over from Sumatra again and again. This is why I suspect Sumatra is not fully compatible as Outlook preview plugin and not being recognised, W10 falls back to default.

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You can disable all Universal Apps running as built-in Administrator (the one disabled by default) or by running another administrator with Admin approval mode disabled.
This is basically what any user in LTSB version would see, less the Win32 application Calculator.

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A lot of the unexpected actions related to Windows Update can be found under:
Task Scheduler LibraryMicrosoftWindowsUpdateOrchestrator
Other related actions are under:
Task Scheduler LibraryMicrosoftWindowsWindowsUpdate

At least one useful Group Policy does not apply on stand-alone machines (Enterprise version too), which is something that I noticed from the early days, but applies on domain joined machines. That policy is:
Computer ConfigurationAdministrative TemplatesWindows ComponentsWindows UpdateAutomatic Updates Detection Frequency.
The corresponding task can be modified instead of using Group Policy, but this is not recommended for everyone.

Do not modify built-in Scheduled Tasks unless understanding all details and interactions.

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OK gents, there’s one for you…

I’ve been Windows Insider since Oct 2014 and I was playing with most of Windows 10 builds from the very beginning. One problem that was permanent from the very beginning was audio issues – popping, cracking etc. I own X-Fi card from Creative, so at the very beginning guys at MS forum wrote: “wait for W10 drivers”. When they finally appeared, there were still no changes. So they started replying: “reinstall drivers”, “reinstall Windows”, “clean boot”, “run our troubleshooting tool” and so on… To no avail. I wasn’t too keen to jump on W10 train, so I didn’t really care. But recently W10 got considerably better at gaming (which is basically what I mostly use my desktop for, since I do my work on a company laptop) so I really wanted to get this sorted out. As Creative is quite known not to care too much for the driver side of the business (not mentioning my X-Fi is like 10 years old, so it’s still impressive they released a driver for this) I even thought of selling the card and using my built-in ALC889A or buying a new soundcard. I took the card out, enabled onboard audio in BIOS, reinstalled W10 and… same story again!
So it looked like it’s not really the X-Fi that is at fault or it is more general and even buying a brand new card might not solve the issue. I started more intensive search over the Web and… on tenforums.com I found a post when somebody wrote increasing the Minimum processor state in Power options to 100% solved the issue for him (it’s on 5% by default). So I went there, did some experimenting and when it is set to 67% or higher, no audio issues anymore! Which is cool, but that is still just a workaround…
Now I am wondering – who is to blame? Creative or Microsoft? Maybe I should change some settings in BIOS? Just to add to the confusion, the computer is on dual boot now and in Windows 7 everything works perfectly with Minimum Processor state set to 5%.

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