dotfiles/windows

Windows Setup

• Make a system restore point after a fresh install.

• Disable Windows Platform Binary Table

  • This is a system Windows made for hardware vendors to inject firmware to the OS drive, running it at boot time. It's a huge security hole! Vendors can do things like download software, auto update the mobo firmware, etc. In 2023, Gigabyte was caught using this to download exe's from their server over an http connection! (keep in mind that they're corporate systems have been hacked multiple times in the last year). Anyway, this feature is fucking dumb and you can be sure that all mobo vendors are using this stupid shit. I don't blame them though since Microsoft built this for them. There's no way to stop this from happening other than to disable the platform entirely.
  • Run disable-windows-platform-binary-table.reg and reboot.

• Change PC name and reboot

  • Open settings -> System -> About -> Rename this PC

• Disable the annoying Windows alert sound that plays when doing things like using a terminal, hitting tab to autocomplete and it has no match.

  • Open C:/windows/media
  • Find Windows Background.wav
  • Right-click -> Properties -> Security -> Advanced -> Change Owner from TrustedInstaller to your user account -> Apply
  • Back in the previous Security tab, click Edit to change permisisons -> add your user account and grant all permissions
  • Now you can delete the file or rename it.

• Disable Enhance Pointer Precision:

  • Mouse Properties -> Pointer Options -> Motion section

• Laptop: change touchpad sensitivity to medium or high in order to prevent mouse movement when palm touches the pad while typing.

  • If using a Lenovo then disable touchpad lock in the Lenovo Vantage app.

• Map caps key to left-ctrl

  • If the keyboard supports remapping at the hardware level (e.g. like the Keychron keyboards) then map it there and this should cover all use cases, including Steam Link which for some reason does not respect the various remapping setups (except for PowerTools - see below).
  • For software based remapping, there are two options:
    • Use SharpKeys for a simple config change in Windows. You don't have to run any software at startup to get the remapping. The downside is that this doesn't work over Steam Link.
    • Use Bill Microsoft's PowerTools. Install it and then go to the key remapper tool in the settings. This works over Steam Link but it requires you to run the program to get the remapping. If you go down this path then be sure to go through the settings and disable the various tools that you don't want.

• Download O&O ShutUp10 and disable things.

• Download InControl to stop Microsoft from pushing Windows 11.

• Disable Corana: group policy -> Administrative Templates -> Search -> disable the "Allow Cortana ..." settings.

• Install Open-Shell to restore the start menu to the sensible Windows 7 style.

• Pin "This PC" to taskbar

  • In Win 10 start menu, search for "This PC", right click top result and pin to taskbar

• Configure Explorer's options

  • Open file explorer, click on File menu then options or "Change folder and search options"
    • General tab
      • Open File Explorer to: This PC
      • Uncheck Show recently used files in Quick access
      • Uncheck Show frequently used folder in Quick access
    • View tab
      • Check Show hidden files, folders, or drives,
      • Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types

• Disable reopening apps on startup

  • Windows settings -> Account -> Sign in options -> Privacy section: turn off Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting up device

• Disable window suggestion when snapping a window

  • Windows settings -> System -> Multitasking -> uncheck "When I snap a window, show what I can snap next to it"

• Desktop: turn off hibernation

  • Open admin cmd prompt: powercfg.exe /hibernate off

• Disable power throttling:

  • winkey+r -> gpedit.msc.
  • Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Power Management > Power Throttling Settings
    • Double-click the Turn off Power Throttling policy.
    • Select Enabled.

• Disable reserved network bandwidth

  • winkey+r -> gpedit.msc.
  • Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > QoS Packet Scheduler > Limit reservable bandwidth
    • Enable it and set the % to 0.

• Enable ultimate power plan (alternatively make a new plan and set the min/max processor speed to 100%)

  • Open cmd as admin, run powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61
  • Can now select the ultimate power plan in power options.

• Create a power plan for software benchmarking

  • This will disable turbo boost and general lock the frequency to base-ish clock. This can help keep CPU temps stable (hot temps affect clock) and it avoids variable clock changes.
  • AFAIK this only works for Intel CPUs; not sure how to do the same thing on AMD.
  • In the power plan set the processor min/max speed to 99%.

• Disable UAC screen dimming

  • Open User Account Control settings
  • Drag the slider down to the notch that doesn't dim the screen.

• Disable remote assistance

• Disable Windows error reporting dialog so that when stuff crashes you can get to a debugger faster.

  • Open an admin cmd prompt and run the file disable-windows-error-reporting-dialog.bat from this directory.

• Disable the WinSAT task which is used to figure out your Windows performance score. It eats up processor time and is generally useless.

  • Open task scheduler.
    • note If you see an error about a selected task {0} no longer existing then you'll need to repair the task scheduler. See https://www.thewindowsclub.com/the-selected-task-0-no-longer-exists-error-in-task-scheduler
  • Go to Local\Microsoft\Windows\Maintenance and disable the WinSAT task.

• Disable the Windows Customer Experience Improvement program via group policy https://web.archive.org/web/20200131202352/https://www.ghacks.net/2016/10/26/turn-off-the-windows-customer-experience-program/

• Increase TDR setting for GPU Driver

  • TDR determines the length of time that a GPU can hang on a computation until the OS restarts the driver. By default this is set to a few seconds so you can experience app crashes when using GPU intensive software, like 3D modeling or texturing. To increase the duration, follow this guide: https://web.archive.org/web/20191107173337/https://docs.substance3d.com/spdoc/gpu-drivers-crash-with-long-computations-128745489.html

• Optional: disable Windows Defender real-time protection:

  • This can speed up compilation times since Defender will scan every file written to disk. I was able to shave off ~2-5 seconds in a particular project.
    • If you'd rather keep real-time protection active then you can add specific files or folders to the Defender exclusion list in the Windows Security settings, however I did some testing and didn't see any speedup when excluding a project folder.
  • Go into the Windows security settings and disable Tamper Protection.
    • winkey+r -> gpedit.msc.
  • Can now disable either with a policy or some custom batch files.
  • Policy:
    • Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Microsoft Defender Antivirus -> Real-time Protection
      • Double-click the Turn off real-time protection policy.
      • Select Enabled (you may have to restart PC).
      • If you want to re-enable then change the policy to Not configured and re-enable tamper protection.
  • Batch files: in dotfiles/bin run antimalware-service-disable.bat then restart. Reenable it with antimalware-service-enable.bat

• Enable/disable various Window features:

  • Go to Add/Remove Programs -> Turn Windows features on or off
  • Disable:
    • Windows hypervisor platform (can break Virtualbox)
    • Internet Explorer 11
    • Legacy Components - DirectPlay
    • Media Features - Windows Media Player
    • Microsoft Print to PDF
    • Microsoft XPS Document Writer (and any other XPS components)
    • Print and Document Services - Internet Printing Client & Windows Fax and Scan
    • Windows PowerShell 2.0 (current version is 5+ as of 2021-03-05)
    • Work folders client

• Restore classic Windows Photo Viewer app (the default Win10 photos app is fucking awful):

  • Run photo_viewer.reg from this folder.
  • You'll need to change the default app for the various image extensions. Don't change gif types though because photo viewer doesn't support animations.
  • Now run disable-are-you-sure-you-want-to-open-with-the-default-program-dialog.reg to stop it from occasionally asking if you still want to use photo viewer.

• Add custom hosts file

  • Run notepad as administrator
  • Open C:/Windows/System32/Drivers/etc/hosts
  • Add contents of the hosts file from this directory
  • Restart PC
  • Note: Windows Defender is going to alert you about the change. Tell it to ignore. Also, POS Windows will periodically reset this file to the default state so you'll want to check it every so often.

• Install the Windows SDK https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk

  • Will install to c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10

• Setup a symbol server:

  • Right-click My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced Tab -> Environment Variables
  • Add a new System Variable called _NT_SYMBOL_PATH
  • Set the value to SRV*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols, replacing the first path to where you want the symbols to live.

• Configure crash dump storage location for projects via the registry.

• Disable various web trackers using browserleaks.com as a guide.

  • e.g. disable WebGL, canvas fingerprinting, geolocation, font fingerprint, etc.

• Turn off various startup processes

  • ctrl+shift+esc -> startup

• Disable unneeded services

• Do a pass over all Windows setting screens for anything obvious that wasn't covered here.

• Open the Windows settings Apps & features and remove bloatware that isn't visible in the control panel add/remove list, e.g. OneDrive