Welcome back for our fourth week checking out some neat features that are available in Windows 10. According to most of the emails I have received these are new things that many of you have not heard of or tried before. Last week we looked at Fast Start-Up, the Hidden Start Menu and what you can do combining the Windows key along with the arrow keys on your keyboard.
Today we look at something that can really be helpful to your "boot" time, i.e., the time that it takes your computer to start up. It can also affect the speed of your computer performing functions once it is started. You need to control some of the apps that start when you start your computer. When you install applications on your system they want to be noticed and run from the get-go, or when Windows boots up. Over time many of them may like to start at the beginning and slow your system down. Also, if they are running and you do not use them each time your computer starts…do you really need them to be running in the background? The answer is, "No."
It is easy to find out what starts on your system startup. The first thing you do to find them is to right-click on taskbar and choose "Task Manager." Next, click on the "Startup" tab, see graphic to left. If you see something that does not need to run all the time like, "Send to OneNote tool" or "Skype" you can right-click them and choose, "Disable". The question I get most often about this is, "What program should I disable?" The answer is any of them. You can actually disable all of them, Windows will still start and run fine. However, you should probably leave anything mentioning a Mouse or your antivirus application, "enabled." However, many of the others are not that vital. If you need them to run later all you need to do is manually stat them using the start menu for that specific app.
Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts are my next tips today. Bye-the-way, as I mention Active Window in the following I mean the one that you have clicked in making it active. I will also abbreviate it as "AW". Do not fret as you do not have to memorize them all…only the ones that sound important to you and there are many more.
The F1 key is the one to press for most people new or inexperienced to Windows 10. When pressed it will almost always bring up the help screen for the AW. As with some of these shortcuts they do not work on every app but they can be helpful to try. In a browser press F5 to reload the tab if it locks up or does not load properly. Also in the browsers, F11 removes your tabs, menus, etc at the top of the browser and gives you more page space. Press it again to bring it all back. In most any window press and hold a control key (Ctrl) and scroll your mouse wheel up or down. The size of the text, pics or whatever you are looking at will get larger or smaller making it easier to see. In your browser if you do that you can also click Ctrl + 0 (zero not the letter O) to go back to 100% size.
We may cover a couple of other Windows shortcuts next week and possibly wrap up our Windows 10 Tips Series.
