10 advanced Windows 10 tips and tricks. Updated for 2020.
This video is the ultimate compilation of advanced Windows 10 tips and tricks to enhance your skills
using Microsoft Windows. It contains more advanced techniques to monitor, diagnose issues, and use
Windows 10 for the experience Windows 10 user. For the complete list of contents please refer to the
description of this video. Let's get started. #1 Advanced Startup Options. If your Windows
10 system is not working correctly, especially at startup, you may need to use the Advanced Startup
Options to correct problems with drivers, display settings, boot devices, or even do a Windows
restore or reset in extreme cases. There are several methods you can use to get to this menu.
One method is to go to Start, into Settings, Update and security, and select Recovery from
the list. Choose this Advanced Startup and click the button to Restart Now. An alternative is to
come down to the Start button, go to Power, hold the shift key down and select Restart.
If you're not able to get into Windows at all because of issues with the startup then
you can hit F11 or some other key to get into this menu when you're booting your computer.
It's dependent on the type of motherboard and system that you have so you'll have
to look up what key it is to get you into the Advanced Startup Options. And finally,
if you're not able to get into the startup option with any other method you may need to
create a recovery boot disk that can be loaded from a USB or DVD drive. You'll have to download
and create this disk from another computer if you can't get into Windows on your own system.
Follow this link for more information and I'll put this link in the description of the video.
Once you get to the Advanced Startup Option menu you'll see options similar to this where you can
continue back into Windows or turn off your pc. You'll also have an option to Use a Device
which brings up the menu to boot from USB, DVD, network, or any other devices detected on boot up.
Back at the main menu you have the final option to Troubleshoot. Under Troubleshoot you can Reset
this PC which gives you the ability to reinstall a clean copy of Windows while choosing to keep
or remove your personal files or you can go into Advanced Options if you're not planning to rebuild
your entire Windows system and you just want to fix something that broke. Then choose Advanced
Options. Here you have a number of options depending on the issue you're trying to resolve.
If you are having problems with a device or program that prevents Windows from starting
properly then try the Startup Repair. Windows will detect and fix any issues automatically.
This is the simplest solution. If you need to resolve startup problems manually then choose
Startup Settings and restart your system in safe mode with many options disabled. This can get you
back into Windows where you can reinstall drivers, disable programs, and debug the issues by hand.
You can also go to the command prompt and attempt to run commands directly. If problems begin after
recent Windows updates then you can Uninstall Updates. This lets you select and remove the
latest updates or remove a full feature update and hopefully return you to a working system.
If you have a newer pc then you'll have a UEFI firmware settings option on the menu. UEFI is an
enhanced version of the system BIOS that controls all the settings for your disk drives, memory,
CPU, display, and other hardware devices on your motherboard. This option takes you to the UEFI
system menu where you can make changes to these settings or update the firmware. And finally,
you can do a System Restore if you have created a system restore point previously. This reverts
your system back to that previous point in time without affecting your personal files.
#2 Windows Sandbox. If you have pro or enterprise versions of Windows 10 with a high-end pc
you can use Windows Sandbox. Sandbox is a virtual, disposable environment that allows you to run
applications in isolation. Once the sandbox is closed all the software, files, and other data you
created in the sandbox are permanently deleted. To find out if your system can run Windows Sandbox
come down here to the search bar and type in System Information. Select it from the menu
and come down to the bottom here where it says Hyper-V virtualization enabled in firmware.
If this says Yes then your system will run the Windows Sandbox. If it says No then you probably
need to go into your UEFI configuration and make sure virtualization is turned on at the hardware
level. The system does require 64-bit, a UEFI BIOS mode, and at least 4GB of RAM and additional cores
in order to run this virtualization. So if your system is not advanced enough you may not have
this option. Once you meet this criteria you can close that window. Come down here again.
Now in the search bar look for Turn Windows Features On or Off and select it from the menu.
Scroll down to Windows Sandbox. Check this box and hit OK. It applies the changes and requires
a restart. Go ahead and select that to reboot your system. After a reboot if you come to the
Start menu and scroll down you'll see Windows Sandbox in the list. Now click on that to open
it up and you'll have a virtual environment that is completely disposable by closing the window.
Anything you do within this environment will get thrown away. You can see that there's a 40GB drive
that's been created and it really contains nothing other than the basic Windows setup.
Even your documents folder is empty and there's no applications installed other than basic things
like Microsoft Edge. Let's open Edge. Now let's do a search for Google Chrome. Let's download that
and after it's installed it opens up Chrome, creates a desktop icon, and if you look on the
C drive you'll see under program files there's a Google Chrome folder. Any applications that
you install in this environment are meant for testing purposes with a throwaway environment
as soon as you close the window. So now let's go ahead and close this window. You'll see that
it prompts you with Are you sure you want to close. Once Windows Sandbox is closed all of its
content will be discarded and permanently lost. Hit OK closes that Windows sandbox and if you
were to go back into the Windows Sandbox again you'll see that the Google Chrome icon is gone
and the program files for Google Chrome are missing as well. This is a completely new
environment. This gives you an opportunity to test out applications and not affect anything
else in your Windows environment. It's completely isolated. #3 View File Extensions. Normally when
you're looking at a list of files the extension is hidden. If you're looking at the detail you'll
see the type and that gives you an idea of what the file extension is but if you want
to view the extension along with the file name you can change that setting. Go to the View tab,
click on Options, go to the View tab on here, and uncheck this box where it says Hide Extensions for
Known File Types. I also recommend to check this box to Show Hidden Files and Folders if you want
those listed as well. Hit OK and now you can see the file extensions on each one of your files. #4
Pause Updates. Sometimes the Windows updates come at the wrong time and you can control that now
with the newer version of Windows. Go into the Windows Updates and you'll see now there's an
option here to pause updates for seven days. You can also come down here to the Advanced Options
and you can choose which dates to pause until if you want it shorter than seven days.
If you want to enable it again just come back here and resume those updates. This gives you
the ability to control those Windows updates so they don't install at the wrong moment.
#5 PowerToys. PowerToys is a utility that adds additional features to Windows 10.
You can install it by going to github.com/microsoft/powertoys/releases.
Github is a site that's now owned by Microsoft. Find the latest version and then scroll down here
to the powertoy setup.msi. When you install that it creates an icon on your desktop for PowerToys
and shows you a menu of the utilities available within that tool. Snap Assist
lets you take Windows and spread them around your screen in different locations.
Fancy Zones adds a new utility where you can make custom layouts to snap to. File Explorer lets you
manage additional features for your Windows file explorer. Image Resizer lets you change
the size of images in bulk. Power Rename lets you rename files in bulk using search and replace.
There is a shortcut guide that shows you all of the Windows shortcut keys. Window Walker lets
you switch screens similar to Alt-Tab but it uses text based switching. Let's take a look
at a couple of these now. Fancy Zones lets you edit the different zones you want to snap to.
You can set different shapes and sizes or do a custom. Let's pick this Priority Grid. you can
choose to have spaces around each zone but we'll turn that off for now. Hit Apply and now when
you grab a window and hold the Shift key down it shows you the zone that you can copy it to.
It's like Snap Assist but in a custom format.
The Shortcut Guide is as simple as hitting the Windows button and holding it down.
That shows you all the shortcut keys that you have available in normal Windows but this just gives
you a guide. You get the idea of how PowerToys works as an added utility. Microsoft plans on
adding additional features into this tool so you'll see more items that come up on the menu.
#6 Custom CMD Prompt. If you're an advanced Windows 10 user then you probably already use the command
prompt but did you know that you can customize this for your own liking?
Come up to the corner here on a command prompt and click this menu. Go to Properties and here you have
a variety of different options. You can change the screen background color and this gives you
a window of what this will look like when it's complete. You can change the text color as well.
You can come over here and change the layout including the window width and height.
You can change to a different size font or a different font style.
Under Options you can choose a different size for the cursor. Let's make it a large cursor and hit OK.
Now you see the different color codes with the large cursor here. Let's go back in. Back into
Options. This command history allows you to keep track of how many commands that you can scroll up
and down to see what you've previously typed into your command line. When you set up multiple buffers
that allows you to have multiple command Windows that it records these individual command histories.
There's also a variety of editing options here with line wrapping and changing it
to a legacy console setting if need be. If you're using a terminal within a command
prompt there's some options here that you can control the size and shape of that as well.
Hit OK and all of your changes will be saved. The next time you run a command
it's going to be in that color and format. #7 Nearby Sharing. Windows 10 allows
you to share documents, photos, links to websites, and more with Nearby Sharing. You can enable it
by going to the Start menu, Settings, System, Shared Experiences, and then enable Nearby
Sharing. You can share documents and other items with everyone nearby rather than just my devices.
Once that's set you'll be able to see in your notification area nearby sharing where you can
turn it on and off. Once it's turned on you can go into a link for a web page
and click the share. It shows devices nearby and when you select one it sends a notification to
receive the document or link. You can also share photos and you'll see a share option
in the upper-right corner. Select that device again and it sends a prompt to accept the photo.
As someone receiving a document or link you get a prompt
and you can choose to save and open it or decline that share.
Share Nearby works great if you have bluetooth enabled on those devices.
#8 Cloud Reset. Normally when you reset your pc and you do a full install of Windows to
clean it up it does the install from local files on your C drive but there is an option where
you can do a cloud reset and install files from Microsoft servers. Click on Start, go to Settings,
Update and Security, and Recovery. Here's the option to do the reset of your pc. You have your normal
choices where you can keep your files or remove everything. Let's keep my files and now you have
two choices. You can do a cloud download or you can do a local reinstall. If files get corrupt
on your local machine you need to do the cloud download. This will download and reinstall Windows
and it does require some additional disk space to be able to do that. If you go to Change Settings
there's options here where you can choose Yes to download and reinstall. There may be other setting
options here as well. We're going to confirm that and when you hit Next this will do a reset of your
pc from a Microsoft server copy of Windows. That's all there is to it. #9 Advanced Refresh
Rate. Some monitors have a higher refresh rate than the default that's set up in Windows. You can take
advantage of that by changing it to that higher refresh rate setting. Go to Start, Settings, System,
and under the Display Option, scroll down to the bottom and select Advanced Display Settings.
Here you'll see the refresh rate is set to 60 hertz. If you have a higher setting choose that one
and if it looks good keep those changes. The higher refresh rate gives you a smoother image at the
expense of a little additional power but you'll get a better quality image with your monitor.
So check that setting and see if you have a higher refresh rate option.
# 10 Troubleshooter. Windows 10 comes with built-in troubleshooting tools.
You can find it by going to Start, Settings, Update and Security, Troubleshoot. There is a recommended
troubleshooting tool that runs in the background and notifies you when it detects any problems.
You can set it to one of these three settings to run automatically or
warn you before it runs but you can also come down here to Additional Troubleshooters
and see a list of common problems with different devices on your Windows 10 computer. For example,
if you have a problem with your Internet connectivity run this troubleshooter. It
scans and detects any problems and gives you some recommendations of how to fix it.
There are many different tools available for the different devices
in Windows so if you have any problems with any of those particular devices come in here
and run the manual troubleshooting tool and you may be able to correct it yourself.
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