I am sure most of you are familiar with the beautiful Aero Glass interface in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, with a fancy blur effect and transparent window borders. But in Windows 8 and later versions there is no Glass and no transparency. The operating system has no style, and the design is increasingly repulsive. Well, there is good news for all transparency funs - BigMuscle, the person who had revived the Aero Glass effect for Windows 8 using DirectX, has plans to get his project working on Windows 10!
Tip: Enable or disable submenus inside the Start menu in Windows 10
The very first implementation of the Start menu in Windows 95 was based on the concept of cascading submenus. But since Windows XP, Microsoft has constantly changed the behaviour of the Start menu, added new features and a new look. The most recent version of the Start menu which we have now in Windows 10, combines the Start menu ideas from Windows 7 with the Start screen of Windows 8. It includes live tiles as well as classic menu items. You might be interested in disabling submenus for the Start menu so that items won't be expanded automatically when you hover over them with the mouse. Here is how to enable or disable those submenus.
Add Hibernate to the Start Menu in Windows 10
In Windows 10, it is possible to add the Hibernate option to the power button menu inside the Start menu. Using that command, you can easily use hibernation instead of the shutdown command and your PC will still be powered off. The hibernation mode in Windows is very useful and time-saving as you don't have to close your open documents and apps before powering off the system. You can resume your work the next time exactly where you stopped. Here is how to add the Hibernate command to Start Menu in Windows 10.
How to turn off and disable UAC in Windows 10
User Account Control, or just UAC is a part of the Windows security system which prevents apps from making unwanted changes on your PC. When some software tries to change system-related parts of the Registry or the file system, Windows 10 shows an UAC confirmation dialog, where the user should confirm if he really wants to make those changes. Thus, UAC provides a special security environment for your user account with limited access rights and can elevate a particular process to full access rights when necessary. However, many users are not happy to see these UAC prompts and prefer to use Windows 10 with the classic security model, i.e. by creating limited and administrator accounts like in Windows XP and earlier. If you are one of those users, here is how to disable UAC and get rid of its popups in Windows 10.
Task View is a virtual desktops feature in Windows 10
Windows 10 comes with a brand new feature - virtual desktops. For users of Mac OS X or Linux, this feature is not spectacular or exciting, but for casual PC users who have used Windows only since eternity, it is a step forward. The ability to have multiple desktops exists in Windows since Windows 2000 at the API level. Several third party apps have used those APIs to provide virtual desktops, but Windows 10 has made this feature available out-of-the-box in a useful way. To manage virtual desktops, Windows 10 offers the Task View feature. Here is an overview of the multiple desktops feature called Task View.
Add Run to Start menu in Windows 10 on the left or right side
Unlike the good old Start menu in Windows 7, the Start menu in Windows 10 do not come with an easy option to add the Run command. Many users prefer to have a clickable item to open the Run dialog. Personally, I love and always use Win + R keyboard shortcut, but for mouse and touchpad users who really miss the Run item in Windows 10's Start Menu, here is a very simple way to get something similar to Windows 7's Run command.
Start Windows 10 in Safe mode
Windows 10 inherited the boot options from Windows 8 and comes with the same graphical environment for various recovery related tasks. Due to this, the Safe mode is hidden by default in favor of the automatic repair engine shipped with the new OS. If Windows 10 fails to boot, it starts the automatic repair mode and tries to analyze and fix startup problems on its own without your help and without asking you what actions it is going to take. If you feel you need to run Windows 10 in Safe mode, e.g. to troubleshoot some issue with drivers and apps, here are instructions on how you can access Safe Mode.
The command prompt has been further improved in Windows 10
Microsoft has released their brand new Windows 10 for public testing. The Technical Preview build comes with a set of experimental options for the command prompt (cmd.exe) and other console-based tools such as PowerShell which can improve their usability. Here are the notable improvements.
Windows 10 allows you to reinstall the OS and uninstall updates from Troubleshooting options
Troubleshooting options are part of Windows Recovery Environment. They allow you to repair your Windows installation, remove unwanted drivers, enter Safe Mode and so on. In Windows 10, Microsoft has added additional options which allow you to reinstall the OS and also remove unwanted updates.
How to access recovery and troubleshooting options via reboot in Windows 10
Along with a new Start menu, Windows 10 introduces a new way to access the troubleshooting and recovery environment. It can be useful if your OS does not work properly, or does not boot at all. In this article, I would like to share the new way to access the recovery environment and reboot Windows 10 to access troubleshooting options.
