Checking the system drive for errors is an essential task when you want to resolve various issues with the operating system and the file system. If you face some drive read or write errors in Windows 10 or performance issues when doing disk operations, it is a good idea to check your system drive for errors.
Category: Windows 10
Prevent Windows 10 from resetting your default apps
Windows 10 is well known for resetting apps which the user has set by default. After various updates and build upgrades, Windows 10 resets the default browser back to Edge, the email app back to the Universal Windows Platform Mail app. The same happens for Photos, Groove Music and so on. If you are getting annoyed by having your file associations reset to default Metro apps after certain updates, here is how you can try to prevent it.
How to stop an automatic repair loop in Windows 10 and Windows 8
Recently, we covered how to disable the automatic repair feature that starts during the boot process in Windows 10. Our readers asked us what to do if the PC has entered an automatic repair loop. Instead of starting normally, the operating system starts automatic repair every time you start it making it impossible to recover from it. Microsoft has not made it easy to exit this process due to bad changes in Windows 8. Here is what you can do to exit it.
The list of error codes for Windows 10 setup
During the upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8, to Windows 10, many users see cryptic error codes. Windows 10 setup does not give much detailed information about the error code. In this article, we will see the most common error codes which the Windows 10 Setup program shows to the end user during an upgrade or clean install.
Change the Chkdsk timeout at Windows 10 boot
In early Windows versions, if your hard drive partition was marked dirty due to an improper shutdown, or due to corruption or bad sectors, Chkdsk ran while Windows was booting to fix any drive errors. You had a choice to cancel the disk check and continue to boot Windows, before it started scanning and fixing errors. In Windows 10, the Chkdsk timeout is set to 0 by default so it no longer allows you to cancel the disk check. Also, the automatic repair mechanism kicks in by default which we showed can be disabled. In this article, we will look at how to set the timeout before Chkdsk starts so you get time to cancel the disk check.
How to disable automatic repair at Windows 10 boot
During its startup, Windows 10 executes the automatic repair feature which tries to fix booting related issues automatically. If your PC crashes twice consecutively or fails to boot, it will launch the automatic repair procedure and will try to fix the issue which caused the crash. It runs chkdsk and also runs System File Checker (sfc.exe) to restore any corrupt files.
While this feature can be useful for the average user, in some situations, this automatic repair can annoy you very much. Sometimes, it has also been known to get stuck in a repair loop. So it's better in such case to not let Windows do any automatic repairs.
Let's see how we can disable automatic repair in Windows 10
How to disable Automatic Maintenance in Windows 10
When you are not using your PC, Windows 10 performs automatic maintenance. It is a daily scheduled task that runs out-of-the-box. When enabled, it performs various tasks like app updates, Windows updates, security scans and many other things. Here is how to disable Automatic Maintenance in Windows 10 and why you might want get rid of this feature.
How to see if TRIM is enabled for SSD in Windows 10
TRIM is a special ATA command which was developed to keep the performance of your SSD drives at peak performance for the duration of your SSD's life. TRIM tells the SSD controller to erase invalid and not used data blocks from the storage in advance, so when a write operation happens, it finishes faster because no time is spent in erase operations. Without TRIM automatically working at the system level, your SSD performance will degrade over time unless you manually use a tool which can send the TRIM command to it. So it's always a good idea to check if TRIM is correctly enabled for your SSD in Windows 10 and enable it, if it is disabled.
Windows 10 got a new Release Preview ring for Windows Insiders
Yesterday, Microsoft introduced a new "ring" for participants of the Windows Insiders program. It is named the Release Preview Ring and is different from the Fast and Slow rings previously available for Insiders. Here is what you can expect if you switch to this ring.
How to fix apps that look small on high DPI and high resolution displays
Today, many PCs ship with very high resolution displays even if the PC form factor is smaller for example, an Ultrabook or a tablet. Or you may have a desktop monitor with 4K resolution. At such resolutions, Windows automatically turns on DPI scaling so everything on your screen becomes larger. However, there are some third party apps, which don't render properly on high DPI screens. They look too small for the screen resolution. Let us see how to fix them if Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 does not scale them properly.