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.
15 reasons to use Classic Shell’s Start Menu in Windows 10
Classic Shell as almost everyone using Windows knows is the gold standard of Start menus. It firmly entrenched itself at the top place by bundling an amazing level of customization and features. Although Microsoft returned the Start Menu in Windows 10, they have been generally taking out functionality, simplifying things instead of keeping them powerful. Let's see today why a free app like Classic Shell is still worth using in Windows 10, Windows 8.1 or even Windows 7.
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.
Download Disable Automatic Maintenance registry tweak for Windows 10
Disable Automatic Maintenance registry tweak for Windows 10.
Using this tweak, you will be able to disable the Automatic Maintenance feature in Windows 10
Get classic Microsoft Plus! themes for Windows 10, Windows 8 and Windows 7
If you have been using Windows since Windows 95 or Windows 98, you might remember Microsoft Plus! and the wonderful extra themes which were available as part of the Plus! pack. Today, you can get those themes in modern Windows versions like Windows 10, Windows 8 and Windows 7. You can get genuine wallpapers, cursors, sounds, icons - everything except screensavers from those themes.
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.
Automatically mute inactive tabs in Google Chrome
When you are browsing the web, you may be opening multiple tabs and it is very annoying when a tab which is in the background starts playing audio suddenly without even it being focused. While you can either completely mute your system volume, it is not convenient to do so and unmute it every time you need to listen to something. While you can mute only the tab playing the audio, you still have to locate it and then mute it. A Chrome extension instead handles this automatically muting all background tabs and keeping the active tab's audio unmuted.
