I hate clutter. My house is full of it and it drives me nuts on a daily basis. I try to keep that clutter from affecting my PC but it creeps in.  If you wanted to keep your apps separate from your OS in pervious versions of Windows OS it was a bit of a task to remember to change the install directory and sometimes you couldn’t!  That drove me nuts-er…

In Windows 10 all you have to do is navigate

1. Setting
2. System
3. Storage
4. Save locations
5. Select the drive that “New Apps will save to”

If the app is already installed you can move it too!

1. Setting
2. System
3. Apps and features
4. Click the app,
5. Click move
6. Select the new location
7. Click move (to confirm)

Note that this only applies to Store Apps but it is nice none the less 🙂

Happy cleaning!

Ballmer may have been right.  Ugh, he had a vision (one OS for all devices) and it was not ready in time and Windows suffered for it.  It really suffered – and we (MS fan boys)all bore the brunt of it.  But, (there is always a but), the vision was admirable and I clung to that for dear life amidst ridicule, scorn and pariah-ism (ok , I’m playing the victim card here a bit).  But now there is a new rumor. Cshell: One OS on all devices.  Sounds familiar, right?  Well maybe the tech is there now and maybe MS will wait until it is ready to released until they release it (what a concept!)

Composabe Shell (cshell) will scale to the device and performance of the hardware.  Hand held devices running full blown W10 installs on ARM could be coming. Combine this with a folding screen patent and we really could be onto something here 🙂

Rumors and patents and tech – oh my!

Using external media is more popular than ever.  It can become a bit confusing to look at “This Computer” and see 5-6-7 drives listed. Here is a tech walk through on how to customize the icons and labels for removable media:

1. Connect the device
2. In the root add a new text document and name it autorun.inf (use Windows -> view -> file extensions if this is not working
3. add this text as the contents
   [Autorun]
   Icon=icon-name.ico
   Label=drive-label
4. Copy the icon file you wish to use to the root directory as well
5. The name “icon-name.ico” needs to match the icon file name in 4. above
6. The label is what the drive will be called
7. You can make this hidden file if you want

Here is the second part of an article I started a few months ago.

We were talking about how to turn off all the telemetry data that W10 sends back to Seattle.  I had shown you how to do this via the registry in this post (http://gorling.ca/blogs/?p=470) so in this section I will show you how to do it via GP

1. Launch gpedit.msc
2. Navigate to: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Internet Communication Management > Internet Communication settings
3. double click on “Turn off Windows Customer Experience Program” and enable the policy
4. reboot

Again, this should turn off most of the data flow.  Let me know how it goes 🙂

Okay, so, Christmas has come and gone and lots of us gamers have no room left on which to install our shiny new games.  Woe is us 🙁  In the past it has been very hard and you needed some serious hardware skills to increase your storage capacity (as well as a strong stomach once you void the warranty) but on the XBO it is really easy – scary easy actually.  All you need to do is install an external drive.  That’s it.  Done. Xbox One should tell you it detected a drive and will format it for you (so make sure the data from the disk is not needed) and this is a great way to re-use older hard drives you have laying around from past projects.  The only 2 catches I have seen so far are:

1. The drive must be at least 256 gigs in size
2. The enclosure has to run on USB 3 (this is to ensure a good gaming experience)

You can have 2 external drives installed at the same time so there is an easy (and cheap) way to get tons of storage

As a personal point I do recommend building you own enclosure for a number of reasons

1. it is very easy.  Connect 1-2 conectors and screw/lock the drive in place.  Voila! Fini!
2. You get to pick the drive that goes in the enclosure. These days there are huge speed differences so you can select what you want (read as “can afford)
3. Its cheaper. By a lot.  Some research shows me 20-50% cheaper  – which could mean 100$ plus of savings – not bad for all of 15 minutes work

So there you have it – have fun with your IT project and more fun with your increased storage space for games

Mmmmm….games….ahhhh

How often have we said this. Well,  say it again. A recently reported MSpoweruser.com points to a possible double screen phone. Its a phone AND a tablet – without breaking your thumbs.  Similar tech has been demo’d before and did not seem to get very far but as times advance we will have to see.  I am reminded of the old tablets PCs from the early 200s – they were clunky and mostly just used to show off ones e-peen.  But now – they are the form facto of choice. Hopefully MS can do the same for a dual screen device.

They seem quaint and boutique-y. Is that a word?  Either way, it seems like yes and Microsoft is entering the e book market.  While not the tried and true paper and ink variety, e-books are still very popular.  With the release of build 15014

Books can be downloaded from the Windows store app.  Once downloaded they can be accessed via the downloads section or from within Edge itself (use the Hub and you will see a new icon there).

Seems like there is some good content so far but it is locked to WIndows 10 devices which is a bit limiting…

Here is a quick way to clear the Live Tiles when you reboot

1. Go into the registry
2. Go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\
3. Right click the Windows folder and create a New Key.
4. Name it Explorer
5. Select the Explorer folder and in it create a new DQORD 32-bit
6. Name it ClearTilesOnExit
7. Make sure it is on (1 not 0)
8. Reboot.

Tiles will be blank on initial reboot and will update as new data comes into them