Getting rid of Photos

I got this machine from a friend and it was my first experience with Windows 10. My previous unit ran Windows 7, and I was quite happy with it. I do not like Windows 10 as it is and would like to disable or completely get rid of Photos. I have other issues (like the white taskbar) but those in due time. In contacting Microsoft support, I got answers - but incorrect answers. I've no problem playing with .regedit. Thanks for your time!

Senior Citizeno said:

I got this machine from a friend and it was my first experience with Windows 10. My previous unit ran Windows 7, and I was quite happy with it. I do not like Windows 10 as it is and would like to disable or completely get rid of Photos. I have other issues (like the white taskbar) but those in due time. In contacting Microsoft support, I got answers - but incorrect answers. I've no problem playing with .regedit. Thanks for your time!

Welcome to Ten Forums.

Personally I don't like Photos much either, not for quickly viewing images anyway. Do what I did, just ignore it and enable the Windows Photo Viewer that we knew and loved in Win7. You can then set it as the default app for images.

Restore Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 10



As for the light Taskbar... Settings > Personalization > Colors. Set 'Choose your color' to 'Custom' and set 'Choose your default Windows mode' to 'Dark'.

Is the Win 10 computer a Inspiron 3847?
The computer that had Win 7, did it came with win 7 or you bought a license?

Try3,Bree, thank you for responding to my question.

I want to eliminate Photos, not ignore it. One wrong slip with the mouse and BOOM!, Photos is active. Since Microsoft in its less-than-infinite wisdom decided to merge the old Windows Movie Maker into the application, with such gems as Paint 3D thrown in to boot, my experience with both has been not good. I'm learning Shotcut to make videos, and I have Photoshop and GIMP; thankfully, they left Paint alone; I do use it.

Bree, I tried the white taskbar color change as per your screenshot, and it didn't work. My visit to Microsoft dot com proved just as fruitless. I don't exactly recall, but they ran me through several ways of doing it - nada.

I should add that I got the machine from a friend, and it wasn't his. Apparently, the former owner bought it with Windows 7 installed, then upgraded to Windows 10. Too late, I learned about how the upgrade kept the old OS in a folder named "Windows.old," but that folder was long gone by the time that I got the unit.

I have a second issue which I may as well lay out here. Back in 2004 or so, I bought the Microsoft Digital Image Suite, I mean, I bought the disc from Microsoft. When I put the disc in the drive, I got a message to put a disc in the drive; so I went down that rabbit hole, was able to do a diagnostic on the disc, and got a message that the software was incompatible. I understand-but-I-don't-understand. Logically, a Microsoft product should be compatible with a Microsoft product, but it isn't as per my PC. If anyone has had this problem, is there a workaround?

Push comes to shove, I'll take it to the local IT shop, have them eliminate everything and install Windows 7, but I'd like to save the money. But thanks again to everyone!

As in post #2 I just change the default application to what is preferred, currently I have IrfanView selected but choose what you want there.

The Photo App is just sidelined. Don't see why you should accidently click on it.
A Start Screen Tile can be removed by Right click > Unpin from Start.
A Taskbar instance > Right click > More > Unpin from Taskbar.

The Taskbar colour is just Settings > Personalisation > Colours > Scroll down >
Default Windows mode > Dark.
Default App mode > Light.

Show accent colour on the following surfaces.
Untick the Start, taskbar and action centre box.
Or alter the accent colour and tick the box.

Just fiddle with those until you get something more to your liking.

To make the vertical scroll bars much more obvious:
Settings > Ease of Access > Display > Scroll down > Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows > OFF.

Helmut, thanks for your response. I'm looking to eliminate Photos, not live with it. How do I do that on .regedit? Also, I think that wasting four hours on the usual method of changing the taskbar color - and some unusual methods, as well as Microsoft being unable to help is three hours and forty-five minutes of wasted time.

Senior Citizeno said:

I want to eliminate Photos, not ignore it. One wrong slip with the mouse and BOOM!, Photos is active....

It's only possible to activate Photos by accident if you still have it set as the default image viewer. So enable the Windows Photo Viewer (or install something else like IrfanView) and make that the default image viewer. Photos will never run again unless you deliberately start it from the Start menu.

Since Microsoft in its less-than-infinite wisdom decided to merge the old Windows Movie Maker into the application, with such gems as Paint 3D thrown in to boot, my experience with both has been not good. I'm learning Shotcut to make videos, and I have Photoshop and GIMP; thankfully, they left Paint alone; I do use it.

What MS put into Photos is a pale shadow of Movie Maker, virtually useless for anything but making slideshows. Shortcut is a good substitute, but I have the real Movie Maker installed. It was part of Essentials 2012 for which I made sure to keep a copy of the offline installer before MS removed the download from their servers.

...Back in 2004 or so, I bought the Microsoft Digital Image Suite, I mean, I bought the disc from Microsoft. When I put the disc in the drive, I got a message to put a disc in the drive; so I went down that rabbit hole, was able to do a diagnostic on the disc, and got a message that the software was incompatible. I understand-but-I-don't-understand. Logically, a Microsoft product should be compatible with a Microsoft product, but it isn't as per my PC. If anyone has had this problem, is there a workaround?

It looks like some required parts of the Microsoft Digital Image Suite install are 16-bit applications, which cannot run on a 64-bit Windows.

...got this error: "The Windows Update: Internet Explorer and Internet Tools cannot be installed on this computer. This product does not install on 64-bit platform."

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...4-a6a6d51c6fa1

The rest of the suite is 32-bit, so can run in x64 Windows, if only you could get it to complete the install. There are workarounds to get past this and successfully complete the install. See here...

Install Microsoft Digital Image Suite on Windows 10 | Microsoft Surface tablet

Hi there

OK the OP doesn't like photos.

I'm still using Photoshop CS6 (the last one before they all went subscription) and Bridge which I use as default app for browsing images.



Sometimes it's just not worth the hassle of getting rid of a "built in" app in Windows -- just change the default to something else.

If you really want to have 100% total control over what gets installed in your OS - there's really only 2 solutions -- Use a Windows server and convert to a desktop -- quite do-able but it will cost you if you don't get a copy from work etc or install a Linux based system.

The standard consumer editons of Windows unfortunately always come with a "bit of baggage" - Windows W10 Home for example !!.

why not change the default to use something else for example create a batch file that simply has "exit" as its sole command as a default app for the one you don't want to use.

Cheers
jimbo.