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You are using Windows wrong!

Max Friedrich

You are using Windows wrong!

This talk will help you to make Windows:

Windows versions

Windows home is an abomination of a Windows version.

For example, it does not include a group policy editor which is a very powerful tool that allows you to do lots of advanced stuff.

On recent versions, it does not allow you to create a local account either and it is generally more limited.

Group policy editor and Windows updates

{Insert image of windows update reminder here}

Windows often interrupts you at the most inconvenient of times to have you run an update. Most of the time, if this update is brand-new, it will be riddled with even more bugs. You can set a group policy to make sure that you do not get half baked update.

{Insert image of GP edits update settings}

My preference is for delaying security updates by 5 days and feature updates by 2 years.

Windows command line edition

It is possible to do basically everything through the command line in Windows. Microsoft even makes a particularly strange version of Windows server which only comes with the command line.

As you would expect from any good operating system, Microsoft includes 3 different command lines on recent versions of Windows: CMD, power shell and Windows terminal.

To accomplish different tasks, you will need a mixture of both CMD and power shell but together they are very powerful.

Mark of the web

NTFS has a field on each file which indicates whether it has been downloaded from the Internet. However, if you put a file in an archive, it does not get a mark of the web. So, put your malware in a zip archive before telling people to download it.

DOS file names

Due to strange DOS shit, you can’t name a file any of these in any version of windows:

Out with the new in with the old

For reasons of “legacy support” Microsoft likes to keep lots of old shit surrounding Windows.

For example, did you know you can still get the old Windows 7 control panel up just by typing control in the run box?

{Image of control panel in Windows 11 next 2 new settings panel}

Andoird apps on windows

On Windows 11, you can run android apps. But not if you have to get them via Google Play, or they require Google Play services.

Linux apps on Windows

You can get a lot of handy tools on Windows by running them via WSL

Sometimes, software will run faster under WSL then it will normally under Windows.

{Find exact stats from level1techs}

Shit virtual box

As opposed to using virtual box, you can use hyper V to launch virtual machines under Windows. So for example, if you have a lot of Windows server licenses lying around then as opposed to using VMware or something sent you can use this shit instead.

{insert image of using hyper-v}

Re-*

It turns out that the quickest way of speeding up a Windows system is really installing Windows on a frequent basis and rebooting the system at least once a day. Windows magically eats your memory so even if you get it back to roughly the same state you had it earlier in the day, if you have not rebooted sometimes you will find that you have magically started using more memory.

Setup Windows faster

If you are setting up a new Windows machine, when you get to the out of box experience, disconnect your machine from the Internet.

This allows you to:

Auto login

A quick way of making sure you always login automatically even if you have a password is using netplwiz

{Insert image of netplwiz}

Quick access command prompts

If you have not disabled sticky keys, you can rename a copy of the command prompts executable system 32 to the sticky keys program name. That way you can open a command prompts on the login screen with system level privileges.

Always run as admin!

If you are tired of those pesky do you want to run as administrator prompts, you can just disable the user access control prompts entirely in the old control panel!

Plenty of malware!

Because Windows is so popular it is also a popular targets for malware authors. Examples include:

If you have to use one of these, just use Windows defender.

Because, you cannot easily remove it.

Browser, browser everywhere, not useful thing

Some versions of Windows 10 came with 3 different browsers: Edge, Internet Exploder, and HTML help.

All of them are shit.

Whilst Microsoft have mostly got rid of Internet exploder and HTML help, they ram edge down your throat.

Voice Unassitants

Obviously, you need a voice and assistant in your desktop operating system and so Microsoft helpfully installs one called Cortona.

If you have the misfortune of having it pre-installed, you can’t*.