Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   windowscentral[.]com/software-apps/windows-11/6-registry-tweaks-every-tech-savvy-user-must-apply-on-windows-11

   Windows Central's Mauro Huculak wrote a How-To for 6 tweaks -- you might find one or more useful.

   #1 disables the Home screen in Settings, showing the System heading when Settings is opened. It's not much, but it lets you escape the ads, or whatever Microsoft is urging you to do, and get right to whatever you opened Settings for.

   #2 disables automatic Windows Updates.

   #3 lets you skip the lock screen -- the screen that shows up before you see the login box. Not a Huge time saver but I guess every little bit helps.

   #4 prevents any results from Bing [Microsoft's search] from showing up when you perform a Start Menu or Taskbar search.

   #5 *to me* is a biggy -- it's the 1st thing I've done every time I've installed/upgraded to Win11, and that's to bring back Win10's right click context menu. [It's actually the 1st thing I researched as soon as I installed the 1st Win11 Beta.]

   #6 requires a bit of background explanation... Windows used to make a backup copy of the registry every time Windows successfully started. The empty folder where it was stored is still there: C:\ Windows\ System32\ config\ RegBack\. Microsoft turned those backups off to save disk space, and to be honest, restoring that backup requires more tech know how than simply resetting Windows, which Microsoft has been trying to make idiot proof since 3.1. To use the backup you have to replace the current registry files with those in the RegBack folder after booting to a USB stick or Windows To Go drive. Turning the registry backups back on involves adding a registry key followed by creating a new scheduled task to create the backups.

   Posted 3 weeks ago #
2. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   I tried the registry edit + scheduled task to enable Windows automatic registry backup. It works if I run the task manually, but following the How-To, setting up the task to run at 12:00 AM, when the PC is off, it does not work. Editing the task to run as soon as possible when it misses the scheduled time does not work. Editing the task to run at login does work, but in my case at least, that defeats the purpose, e.g., if I update/add a driver, that commonly requires a restart, so if the driver is bad, when I log back in after the restart the registry backup will be overwritten. The task itself calls/runs a builtin Windows task, which cannot be edited to see the command it uses. I was however able to create a shortcut that runs the task on demand, which is the closest I can come to something maybe useful. When you right-click -> Create shortcut a dialog opens asking you to type the location of whatever it is you want to run. On that line enter: C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /run /i /tn "\Microsoft\Windows\Registry\RegIdleBackup"

   Posted 3 weeks ago #
3. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   RE: Registry Backup
   You can find the original task that's included in Windows using Task Scheduler in Task Scheduler Library -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Registry. If you right click the task and select properties you can edit the task, adding a scheduled time to run etc. In my experience over the last several days it does work *sometimes* on this copy of Win11 on this PC. There's no rhyme or reason -- it just works sometimes, sometimes not, sometimes when you 1st start Windows for the day, sometimes later in the day. I Googled, and some people seem to experience this erratic task scheduler behavior, but apparently some don't, so in case this does you any good, here it is.

   Posted 2 weeks ago #

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