MS "Hacks" that make life better

[Jimmy Higgins]

One of my most raging complaints during the Remote Desktop era, in part due to Covid, in part due to our office being cursed is Windows' insane issue with needing to transparency windows while Alt-Tab'ing or scanning through the Start Bar to find what window I want to reopen. I usually have a good deal of stuff open because working on lots of stuff.

But the transparency thing hogs down the Network because it is doing a completely unnecessary graphical pretty. And it took me about this long to see if I could turn that off and make things faster.

And you can. And my goodness, Remote Desktop is much better now. And I'm a bit more happy. I mean, this isn't a "hack", just an option, but these options should be a bit more upfront.

 

[steve_bank]

I found a couple of things slowing down Windows.

I disabled the file index function. It costly scans the drives maintaining a table for faster file finding. It means when I go to the D drive it takes a few seconds to display the directories.

I disabled the services that monitothe system in real time making changes that are supposed to improve performance and 'experince'.

I disabled the data collection and reporting system.

I keep the Windows update sevice dispabled, it periodcaly turns it back on.

There wrer a few others. Overall computer speed and internet speed improved. Startup is also faster, no more of the annoying rotating circle.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah, some of those things slow down Windows for whatever reason. And I found it useful to make mods like that at home.

My computer at the office is a juggernaut, so it isn't slowed down by that stuff. My issue was unnecessary graphical pretty window transitions that were clogging up the bandwidth, when all I needed was to preview windows, not see them fade in and out.

 

[steve_bank]

There should be a way to change trasparency.

 

[bigfield]

One of my most raging complaints during the Remote Desktop era, in part due to Covid, in part due to our office being cursed is Windows' insane issue with needing to transparency windows while Alt-Tab'ing or scanning through the Start Bar to find what window I want to reopen. I usually have a good deal of stuff open because working on lots of stuff.

But the transparency thing hogs down the Network because it is doing a completely unnecessary graphical pretty. And it took me about this long to see if I could turn that off and make things faster.

And you can. And my goodness, Remote Desktop is much better now. And I'm a bit more happy. I mean, this isn't a "hack", just an option, but these options should be a bit more upfront.

I remote into my little WIndows PC over an RDP connection. I was having a problem with weird ghosting that looked like the after image of a window-minimise animation. Turning off animations seems to have fixed it. I also turned off transparency while I was at it.

So big thanks!