Tips and tricks - You saw it first on TenForums!

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Fellow TF geeks, let's start collecting various Windows 10 & software tips & tricks that are not published elsewher on the World Wide Interwebs.

Post in this thread if you have found an undocumented feature, modified an existing way to do stuff so that either realisation or outcome is something new, or if your way adds something new in a Windows 10 feature. Anything. A creative way to edit Windows user interface or theme, a time saving version of a known PowerShell script that adds something new, a combination of registry edits that makes boot time faster.

Only criteria is that your version of the tip or trick has not been previously posted. Do some creative Googling and Binging before posting, to be sure your idea as such has not been posted on the Interwebs.

Rules are simple:

• Posts should be short; post a tutorial instead if it requires loads of text and screenshots
• Either the idea itself, its realisation or outcome should be new, not copied from anywhere else
• If your tip includes modifications on an already known and posted method you should clearly mention what new your way adds to it. In these cases do not forget to mention the original source!
• Posts can be a single screenshot showing the idea, a batch file, a script, short text based presentation, a video, whatever makes you sure it can be understood and instructions followed
• If posting a script or batch, use [CODE] tags:
  [CODE]your script / batch here[/CODE]
  This makes it easier to other geeks to read it

Short: "I think this is neat, I saw it on this site!" does not qualify but "I saw this on that other site and thought that changing this variable and adding these lines in code the script works far better!" is already a good entry.

If and I believe when we have some nice entries I will start listing them in this first post, with links to each post.

Be creative!

Kari

OK, I'll start.

I searched Google and Bing with every possible search criteria I could think of, didn't find this being posted anywhere. Although I am a big fan of UWP apps, I understand those users who prefer traditional desktop apps. This video is for those members.

Windows 10 Creators Update - Clean Install without Windows Store (UWP) Apps



The method shown adds two minutes to time needed for a clean install giving you a stripped down Windows 10, or rather a complete Windows 10 without any UWP apps.

PowerShell command used in video to completely remove all UWP apps including Store during installation:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage –Online | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online

Alternative for those wanting to keep Store, to be able to reinstall and use UWP apps later on:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage –Online | where-object {$_.packagename –notlike “*Store*”} | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online

Pro, Education & Enterprise users, this is the policy modified in video:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and taskbar > Start Layout

Kari

Related Tutorials

---

• Clean Install Windows 10 - Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials
• Uninstall Apps in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Apps Features Tutorials

Windows 11 Tutorials

Cheers Kari!

This should qualify, have not seen it on any other site:

Windows 10 Creators Update - Name PC at Setup



In my opinion, one of the worst decisions Windows 10 developer teams made was to remove possibility to name your PC already when setting it up. Especially when this feature was removed at the same time when Windows introduced digital licensing. For instance, transferring a digital license to another computer is based not only on your Microsoft account but also on old computer's name.

In Windows 7 setup, PC was named after your chosen username but you could change it to whatever you wanted to. Windows 8 took this a step further. No name was suggested, you simply had to name the PC otherwise you could not finish the setup.

This video shows how to fix this, name your Windows 10 PC already when setting up a pre-installed or a clean installed Windows 10 Creators Update or later version.

Kari

Nice you guys!

How to convert an mbr legacy bios boot disk to uefi gpt mode with no data loss

The CU update has a great new too called mbr2gpt which converts legacy bios boot disks to uefi gpt format.

It works with virtual hard drives as well - so if you have e.g. a hyper-v gen 1 disk, this is the easy way to convert it to a gen 2 disk.

I will do steps for a vhd

Step 1 - make a copy of vhd (for real disk - an image backup) in case things go pearshaped.

Step 2 - attach vhd using disk management - here disk 2 is legacy bios



Step 3: shrink the OS drive (H here) to give room to write EFI partition. I actually shrank it a lot as I had no idea how much space it needed

Step 4: validate the install is suitable for conversion from an admin powershell or admin command prompt

[CODE]mbr2gpt /disk:2 /validate /logs:c:\ /allowfullos[CODE]

The /allowfullos switch allows you do this from normal Windows.

If doing a real disk and it was your boot disk, you need to do it from a winpe environment (eg bootomt from a 15063 installation disk and pressing shit+f10)

I recommend you create log files to directory of your choice - I choose C:\ as easiest to type.

Warning - if you omit the /disk switch it will do it on your boot disk by default!




Step 5 - Do conversion

[CODE]mbr2gpt /disk:2 /convert /logs:c:\ /allowfullos[CODE]



Step 6 - examine drive and tidy up

Look at drive in disk management




You can see it does not delete old SRP (partition 1)

You can also see I shrank it a lot - not needed to do it so much of course.

Both these are easily tidied up using minitool partition wizard :-



Step 7 - the Acid Test - Does it work?

Yes!

I created a new gen 2 hyper-v vm and it booted just fine as you can see.



The whole conversion process only took a few minutes - minitool was the slowest part!

This new tool is truly awesome.

Kari said:

This should qualify, have not seen it on any other site:

Windows 10 Creators Update - Name PC at Setup

Really like this one Kari as I always rename my PC after setup. +1

sygnus21 said:

Really like this one Kari as I always rename my PC after setup. +1

Thanks Sygnus.

Correctly renaming PC is quite important, I thought I might not be the only one missing the option to name it already when setting up Windows :)

Yeah, I love the ability to rename my PC in the beginning of a setup, not after. Nice find.

Tried to rep but I've not been spreading enough love :)