By Mark W Swarbrick
Make Windows 10 as Good as Windows 7 (Almost)
Windows 10 is an atrocious operating system. Microsoft reached near perfection with Windows 7, but since then they have gone downhill. Fortunately, it is possible to correct many of the issues with Windows 10 and make it much more like Windows 7. What are some of the issues with Windows 10? It has so many drawbacks it would take pages to enumerate them, but here are a few of the major ones:
- System Restore: System Restore is set to 0 percent by default. Unless you change it, you have no restore points in case of disaster. A really dumb idea by Microsoft.
- Windows Updates: It runs Windows updates whenever it wants to, not when you want to. You can be in the middle of work, perhaps you reboot to increase performance or deal with a misbehaving app, and low and behold, you can’t use your computer for 45 minutes because it is doing updates. And if the update blows up your computer, too bad. With Windows 7 you could adjust this so that you did updates on your schedule and after you have made a good backup or restore point. Windows 10 took away that choice.
- Internet Bandwidth Theft: If your neighbor down the street has Windows 10 and it needs to update, Microsoft has decided they have the right to transfer the update files from your computer to his, without your knowledge or permission. This slows down your Internet speed.
- User Account Control: That irritating window that pops up every time you run a program is called the UAC prompt. It is supposed to protect against spyware but all it really does is slow things down. Consequently every time you run a program you wait an extra 10 seconds. It was easily disabled in Windows 7. If you disable it in Windows 10 many applications cease to function.
- Spyware: The fine print of the Windows 10 license agreement says, “We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content, such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders…”
Yes, you read that right – Microsoft thinks they have the legal right to actually take anything from your computer they want to.
Today information is money. It’s all about collecting demographics for advertisers. Companies and governments pay big money for this. Microsoft is collecting your personal information and selling it to the highest bidder. Personal data that is copied from your computer would include anything concerning your life style, religious beliefs and your political positions.
All your private family photos, your documents, writings, emails, messages, your address; every personal bit of private personal information on your computer is made available to the world and to the federal government. All without your knowledge and express permission.This is an egregious violation of the spirit of the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects…”
Passively accepting our personal information flowing into government hands and to unknown persons without due process is to give up important constitutional rights that our forefathers fought and died for. Windows 10 will spy on nearly everything you do with your computer, tracking your location and online behavior and probing through your messages, calendars, search history, web history, cloud drive, purchases, contacts, emails, documents, software, music and movies. Microsoft sells this information to third parties so that companies can target your cell phone, browser, Facebook, search engine and other programs with commercial ads that are in line with what the data shows you might be interested in buying.
If any unlicensed music, movies or programs are found it will turn this information over to law enforcement. The license agreement specifically says, “we may refer the matter to law enforcement.” In other words, your personal home computer is being searched every day, without a search warrant. Are you absolutely sure you can prove all your software, and all the software anyone using your computer has downloaded, has a valid license and can you prove it? Has your browser ever accidentally gone to some weird website you didn’t intend to visit? That activity is monitored and recorded and on file and perhaps turned over to the police. Windows 10 even has a key logger that causes every keystroke to be recorded for Microsoft’s data bank. Every credit card number, phone number and social security number you type is being recorded by Microsoft.
- Start Menu: Another problem with Windows 10 is the Start Menu. The Start Menu in Windows 7 was perfect. They took it away completely in Windows 8. Windows 10 brings it back, but it is dysfunctional and not user friendly.
- Ugly Interface: Windows 7 had the beautiful Aero Glass transparent desktop that was beautiful to look at it. Windows 10 takes that away and gives you a flat non-transparent simple and boring desktop.
- No F8 Key Access: If something went drastically wrong with Windows 7, you simply hit F8 when it boots and you are taken into a menu system that has several repair options, including system restore. Not so in Windows 10. You can only access these from inside Windows 10, which does you no good if Windows 10 will not boot up.
- Unstable: Windows 10 is not nearly as stable as Windows 7. It has numerous bugs. If you have upgraded to Windows 10 from a previous version it can be particularly problematic. On some machines the processor stays pegged at 100 percent, making the machine very slow.
- Popups: Windows 10 has adware built in. It is designed to allow advertisements to pop up in the lower right corner of the screen. A real nuisance.
There are countless other irritations to numerous to mention, but these are some of the more serious problems with Windows 10. The good news is that there are fixes or work arounds for most of these issues. The problem is that it would take a knowledgeable technician a few hours to correct them all.
However, I have written a program that makes all these adjustments in seconds at the click of a button. Additionally, I have identified numerous services and settings that typically have to be adjusted to cure typical Windows 10 issues and performance problems and I have included these in the program. The program is called Fix10 and is easy to use. Here is what it does:
- Sets System Restore to 10 percent of drive so that it will function properly.
- Creates a System Restore Point so that system can undo all changes of this program if desired.
- Sets UAC to minimum so that UAC prompt does not appear, yet programs will still run.
- Disables Windows Update Service so that Windows 10 will not update automatically.
- Copies shortcuts to Desktop so you can manually update Windows 10 when you want to.
- Disables Windows Error Reporting and Problems Report and Solutions services. These services are known to cause problems and are not usually needed.
- Disables the irritating Smart Screen Filter.
- Disables the useless Security Center and Action Center Notifications.
- Enables the Aero Glass Theme.
- Disables the useless Windows Defender.
- Disables 14 unneeded background services.
- Walks you through creation of a System Repair Disk and a Recovery Drive – needed since F8 doesn’t function anymore.
- Installs a Windows 7 style menu system.
- Installs Spybot Anti-Beacon to prevent Microsoft from spying on you and taking your stuff.
- Disables Microsoft from using your bandwidth to send update files from your PC to your neighbors.
- Disable the built-in pop up feature of Windows 10 that lets them popup advertisements in the lower right corner of the screen.
Countless people have suffered the abuse of Microsoft updating their Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers to Windows 10 automatically, entirely without their consent. Microsoft knew the only way to get people to swallow the Windows 10 pill was to give it away for free, and if that didn’t work, force the upgrade on them in the middle of the night.
If you are of the opinion that your computer is really your computer and not Microsoft’s, then Fix 10 can take your computer back into your control. Unless you make these changes to your Windows 10 computer you are risking data loss, a crashed system, and perhaps even legal problems from their unethical spying.
To have someone make all these changes would normally cost a couple hundred dollars labor, and many hours of work, but I can run my Fix 10 program on your computer and insure that everything is adjusted correctly. I can connect to your computer remotely over the Internet and do it all for you. For only $79.99 it is totally worth it. If you are stuck with Windows 10 call Mark now and make your Windows 10 almost as good as Windows 7 was.
Call Mark at: 480-430-7780 or visit CertifiedOnlineComputerRepair.com