Ok, I admit I use Windows all day everyday.<\/p>\n
I started with Windows when it was version 1 on 5.25″ floppy drives and took 6 hours to install on a 80286 computer…\u00a0 (yep, that old !)<\/p>\n
The pain of Windows Me, further failure of Vista, and numerous ‘do not update until Service Pack 1 is tested by others’, the grief with UAC, etc. However, the pain of Windows 8 makes all of that pale into insignificance.<\/p>\n
Stupid tiles on a desktop corner settings that require the precision of threading silkworm threads through pinholes, and the assumption that we like the iPad therefore we must like Metro.<\/p>\n
Bah, humbug!<\/p>\n
Ok. So I have my new Toshiba Kira notebook with touch-screen but I really prefer the old-school desktop. Shades of XP with Windows 7 but not Metro.<\/p>\n
So today I embark on ridding myself of the Windows 8 settings that irk me.<\/p>\n
First up, the extra picture lock screen that I have to dismiss to get to the login screen on start up.<\/p>\n
For this there is a simple group policy edit setting.<\/p>\n
1. The group Policy option: from the Start screen (the tiles screen) type ‘gpedit.msc’ (ignore the No apps found message as you type – it will come up when the full filename and extension is complete) and press Enter to run it.<\/p>\n
2. Select Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Personalisation<\/p>\n
3. In the Setting list is ‘Do not display the lock screen’, just Enable this Setting option and Apply or OK.<\/p>\n
4. Close the gpedit application and the lock screen will no longer appear.<\/p>\n
Next I want the desktop to be my default screen with the task bar at the bottom with the apps I need constantly. I might be being old-school but the Start screen with bulky icons is not useful for me. So desktop view, menus, a Start button all led me to Stardock Start8<\/a> which installed in 20 seconds, configured in less, and only costs $4.99!<\/p>\n Not sure what I’ll find next that needs fixing in Windows 8 but with these items done, I think I can get back to real work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ok, I admit I use Windows all day everyday. I started with Windows when it was version 1 on 5.25″ floppy drives and took 6 hours to install on a 80286 computer…\u00a0 (yep, that old !) The pain of Windows Me, further failure of Vista, and numerous ‘do not update until Service Pack 1 is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/howden.net.au\/thowden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/howden.net.au\/thowden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/howden.net.au\/thowden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howden.net.au\/thowden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howden.net.au\/thowden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/howden.net.au\/thowden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/howden.net.au\/thowden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howden.net.au\/thowden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howden.net.au\/thowden\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}