This file describes some of my recent experiences with Windows. The workarounds described here may be helpful to others. In the following text I'll abbreviate things along the lines of "Win10 21H2" means "Windows 10 Version 21H2". Over the years I have installed many Windows versions on many PCs. Below are listed the Win10 and Win11 versions I have tried and the initial install dates. Now that I am moving on to Windows 11, I have removed a lot of Windows 10 historical information from this file.
| Win10 | Install Date |
|---|---|
| 1507 | 7/29/15 |
| 1511 | 11/15/15 |
| 1607 | 8/02/16 |
| 1703 | 4/14/17 |
| 1709 | 10/18/17 |
| Win10 | Install Date |
|---|---|
| 1803 | 5/02/18 |
| 1809 | 12/12/18 |
| 1903 | 6/15/19 |
| 1909 | 12/13/19 |
| 2004 | 10/09/20 |
| Win10 | Install Date |
|---|---|
| 20H2 | 11/13/20 |
| 21H1 | 5/20/21 |
| 21H2 | 11/25/21 |
| 22H2 | 12/19/22 |
| Win11 | Install Date |
|---|---|
| 22H2 | 12/09/22 |
| 23H2 | 9/09/24 |
| 24H2 | 2/26/25 |
In many cases the installation was not done as a "clean install". Instead for each such system I installed the latest Windows version over an older Windows. Each system had many installed application programs. Also I had tailored Windows and the applications a good deal, so there were many settings that needed to be automatically transferred as part of the Windows update. To date the "dirty install" installation technique has not seemed to create any problems, although I often had to restore a few settings. I had kept a good record of the settings I preferred, so this was fairly easy.
Windows 11: For my three latest Windows 11 installations: Two were "dirty installs" over Windows 10 on older PCs. The other was tailoring a pre-installed Windows 11 on a new PC.
Most of the details below are things I originally found while using Windows 10, but they apply also to Windows 11. I'll highlight changes I have found for Windows 11.
Windows 11: I recently got a new laptop with Win11 pre-installed, so have configured it from scratch -- changing Windows settings, installing programs, etc. As expected, I was not happy with some of the design changes done for Win11. I also seem to have found some bugs. Here is a summary of the Win11 problems I have found so far.
A user interface can never be designed to please everyone. There are certainly parts of the Windows user interface which I do not like and for which Microsoft provides no workaround. Fortunately there is ameliorating software (and patches) available from non-Microsoft sources. Below I describe some of that software which I have installed. Of course since this software is not provided by Microsoft, it might cease to work at any time if Microsoft changes the underlying Windows software.
Microsoft in Win10 and Win11 has tried to reverse the poor decision they made in Win8 to remove the Start button, which was so useful in Win7. From my point of view, they have been only partly successful in resurrecting the Win7 Start button. Looking for something better, I long ago installed Stardock's Start10 (and now Start11), which makes the Start button be much more like I want it to be. In the following I'll use Start* to mean both Start10 and Start11.
If you ever want to temporarily bring up the Windows native Start button's display, it is easy to do with Start*, e.g., by just doing a Ctrl-left-click on the Start* button. However almost everything I do is done thru Start*'s button, so I seldomly bring up the Windows native Start button's display.
Later Windows versions have made some improvements (and regressions) to the Windows Start button. However I still prefer Start*'s format (compactness) and flexibility, so I'm sticking with it. Stardock has now released Version 2 of Start11, which adds some functions. I have now installed it on all my Win11-capable PCs. It also runs on Win10 PCs.
The most jarring thing for me in the original Win10 was that it obliterated the color scheme I had in Win8.1, which in turn was a step down from what I had in Win7. In the first release of Win10, all windows title bars were white and there was no visible border around a window. Also, there was almost no way to distinguish the active window from inactive windows. The active window had black text in the title bar; inactive windows had slightly less black (i.e., dark gray) text; the title bar was white in both cases.
Later versions of Win10 slowly made improvements in this area. Now at least you can again have a wide range of choices for the color used for all title bars, the task bar, the Start area, and the Action Center. However window borders are still almost invisible and there is no a way in Personalization to tailor that, or even (in the later versions of Windows) to do a registry patch to correct this flaw.
There is a registry patch that makes the borders wider, but invisibly (go figure!) So if your mouse cursor approaches from the outside of the window, the border is detected further away from its displayed position than if the default settings were used; this makes it easier to grab the border. In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics I set BorderWidth to -15 and PaddedBorderWidth to -120. The "-" is required; it doesn't mean minus. You need to reboot the PC for this change to take effect. Note that changing the BorderWidth value seems to have no effect. However changing the PaddedBorderWidth value does affect the invisible border, as described above.
In the later Windows versions you can do some limited color tailoring in Settings > Personalization > Colors.
I do the following in Win10:
"Choose your color" -> Custom "Choose your default Windows mode" -> Dark "Choose your default app mode" -> Light "Transparency effects" -> Off "Automatically pick an accent color from my background" -> uncheck Select some color, either from the standard table or via "Custom color" "Start, taskbar, and action center" -> check "Title bars and window borders" -> check
I do the following in Win11:
"Choose your mode" -> Light "Transparency effects" -> Off "Accent color" -> Manual "Recent colors"/"Windows colors" -> choose one from the limited table "Custom colors" -> "View colors" -> more choices than in the table Show accent color on Start and taskbar (grayed out for Light mode) "Show accent color on title bars and windows borders" -> On
There is a registry patch you can apply to color inactive window title bars. This adds the AccentColorInactive value and data to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM key. For example, see this Windows 10 Forums article. With this patch you also used to be able to color active title bars, but later Windows versions negated that ability.
I use Start* to tailor the appearance of the taskbar and Start menu. It is very flexible and works well in conjunction with the standard Windows facilities as well as the above registry patch.
Unfortunately in later Windows versions they removed the Display item from the Control Panel, which had the ability to make bold the text of a window's title bar. They did not provide any comparable facility in Settings.
Windows 11: In general, the above settings and registry changes seem to work in Win11. However in Win11 they removed the File Explorer title bar in order to add tabs capability. As a result you must depend on the color of the very skinny window border to detect whether a File Explorer window is active or inactive -- very bad.
You can change the size and spacing of desktop icons. Before experimenting too much in this area you should use something like ShellFolderFix or ReIcon (see next section) to make a backup of your current icon placements.
To change the size of desktop icons, hold down the Control key and move the mouse scroll wheel one way or the other to make the icons larger or smaller. This also will move them all over the place, so be prepared to rearrange them once you get the size you prefer. Then make a backup of the icon placements.
You can also change the vertical and horizontal spacing between icons. This also will move them all over the place, so be prepared to rearrange them once you get the spacing you prefer and then make a backup of the new placements. Changing icon spacings involves changing the Windows registry (and has the usual caveats that you can destroy your system if you aren't careful). Use Regedit to go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics. Doubleclick IconSpacing and enter the desired horizontal spacing. A "-" must precede the number (it does not mean "negative"; it's just a marker). The larger the number, the more horizontal space is allocated for each desktop icon. Similarly doubleclick on IconVerticalSpacing and enter a value for the vertical spacing. Exit Regedit and reboot your PC. The spacings are now in effect. If they still aren't what you want, you can repeat this procedure until the results are satisfactory. Then you can rearrange the icons and back up the placements.
Of course you can change an icon's image by right-clicking it, choosing Properties, and then "Change Icon...", which may be buried under Customize. There is a list of icon images in %SystemRoot%\System32\SHELL32.dll, the default list. You can browse for more, e.g., in %SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll.
Windows 11: All the above seems to work in Win11.
Some other Windows tailoring you can do is described in Windows Configuration and Use Notes.
Windows terminology change: In Windows 8, Microsoft renamed the "Windows Explorer" facility to "File Explorer". That remains the term (mostly) used in Win10 and Win11. It's still the facility that lets you look at the Windows file system.
When a File Explorer window is closed, all too often Windows forgets where that window was and how big it was. So when the same window is reopened, you often have to move it back to where it was before and resize it to the size it had before. The non-Microsoft tool ShellFolderFix corrects that Windows deficiency. The download is near the bottom of the ShellFolderFix web page; the one labeled "ShellFolderFix Installer" is probably the easiest for most people to install; just unzip it and run the exe file. ShellFolderFix also provides the ability to save and restore icon placement, which is useful since sometimes Windows scrambles icons. However I now use ReIcon to do this save/restore.
Note that this facility does not apply to application windows, e.g., a window opened by Excel or Adobe Reader. Such applications are responsible for remembering their own windows positions and sizes. Some do; some don't. ShellFolderFix deals only with File Explorer windows.
ShellFolderFix was originally written for Win7. It is no longer supported, but still seems to work pretty well in Win10 and Win11, although there are occasional hiccups.
To handle the desktop icon backup/restore for which I had used ShellFolderFix previously, I started using ReIcon in Win10 20H2 and have had no problems to date. Its advantage over ShellFolderFix in this area is that it can save multiple different backups. There is good documentation for ReIcon here. However that page previously had some download traps -- it was hard to find how to download ReIcon, but easy to mistakenly download other stuff you didn't want. So I ended up downloading from MajorGeeks.com.
Windows 11: Both ShellFolderFix and ReIcon seem to work in Win11. Given the big changes made to File Explorer in Win11, I would not be surprised if compatibility problems appear since ShellFolderFix was written for Win7 and is now unsupported.
See my "Windows File Sharing Notes", which has been updated for Windows 11. File sharing continues to work, although there are some glitches and things to watch out for.
The Backup/Restore, Partition Management, and Multiboot Programs page discusses some Terabyte Unlimited programs I currently use. It also discusses the "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" facility found in the Win10 and Win11 Control Panel. I no longer use the latter because the latest Terabyte programs now work on my newer (UEFI) PCs, where previously I had to use "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)".
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