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Can't you use Shift-Delete or right-click on the recycling bin and disable it? I always put My Computer in the corner and the recycle bin, even though I don't use the latter.

7+ Taskbar Tweaker is essential. I've now configured the taskbar to look like Windows 2000. I have muscle memory to go for the Show Desktop button on the toolbar to the left instead of near the clock. Disabled all button dragging, and disabled pinning. Dragging is too easy to do accidentally. Somehow on my Windows 2008 computer a window somehow rarely still gets pinned. Once a week or so. Well, I installed Server, which is clean of the main Apps by default. No Cortana, etc. But there are still unnecessary SystemApps that have augmented the shell. If I hide the search bar to give more room, SearchApp still runs. There is a new tiny character map (WinKey+Period), which is always running. And of course Settings, the analogue of which have been deleted from the Control Panel. For the Settings alone, I need to keep Metro-enabling services. Now RAM use is down to 900 MB.

Is there a gentle way of stopping background Metro apps other than removing the exe file? Like is there a service responsible for launching them? I took ownership and renamed StartMenuExperienceHost.exe and SearchApp.exe. I think whoever launches them is now trying to find those files again and again. The Start menu is a pathetic shadow of the real thing and takes a few dozen MB of RAM. There is no need for it with Classic Shell. A fresh install is not so bad speed-wise. Still starts up with 1 GB of RAM used. Now there are no proceses of Edge, of which there were half a dozen or more on the existing installation. The first message I got was that "the administrator" had enabled required disagnostics sent to Microsoft. I wonder how they have disabled control over certain services such as Windows Defender Firewall. They seem to still be stoppable in the registry. Some things cannot be taken ownership of by the Administrator.

I don't see how this offer provides value to an individual consumer. To him it might look similar to the technical support scams. I wouldn't install their updates or Defender if I was paid $30. They take up disk space, are known to sometimes bring anti-features. The exception being something that is actually useful for interoperability, like new SSL certificates (forced upon us by other companies) or a new USB generation, or another technology that happens to be refinement stage about now like the Vulkan thing. But these probably won't be made as part of "security" support.

What is the different purpose for daniel_fix vs 3_USB3x_fix ? I don't know the history. The Daniel_fix driver works. To install it on Windows 2003, the section labeled NTx86.5.1.1 must be renamed to 5.1. The last digit indicates workstation, and server finds no drivers in it.

I see some talk about USB3 in this thread. Is there now a working driver for Intel USB3.0 for Windows 2003?

Yes, I switched to another cable to get an L-connector. It works fine in AHCI mode, which I would try to use anyway. Something is very suboptimal in the "translation" stage. I opened the disk in WinHex and it was obviously laggy when dragging the scrollbar, and the read speed in HDTune was only 3 MB/s. I've since put 3 Windows on it.

I resist installing NET Framework, and only use at most version 2, which comes with NT6. More and more software is built in NET these days. In the past it was mostly enthusiast programs like nLite, CueTools or gaming mods. This is the driver that came up first in my search and is about the same size as another from 2013, so nothing is lost to bloat. I see that there is nothing of value in that control panel. I do not believe that driver upgrades are necessary and don't do them in general. Usually older drivers are smaller. No need for such language. Many people on this forum seek answers about old computers and software. Look, there is an XP and Win98 section. I have two PCs on Intel 7 series and they work fine without bloated software.

What is the copy "Mode" listbox with entries for Wimboot and Compress. I don't see a help-file that describes them. I can see that some would enable compression, which is much extra work for the computer, and that the default choice is blank. And they have traffic signal indicators. It's a big lousy that the latest version is x64 and requires NT6, meaning I can't launch it from an XP boot CD to install Windows 10. I must first install Windows 7 to use it.

I have read mixed opinions about the mode of the disk controller. The prevailing thought is it makes no or very little difference in practice outside of synthetic tests. The IDE compatibility mode came first and works with more software. But here I have a computer with an Intel H77 PCH (Intel DH77KC) with a Western Digital WDS120G1G0A-00SS50. It is connected to a SATA 6G port. When the computer is in IDE mode set in BIOS, the speed to this memory drive is about 3 MB/s (three megabytes). In AHCI mode it is normal over 100 MB/s. When I saw this, I though the drive was broken. Another SSD is connected to a SATA 3 gigabit port and works normally. I can't swap them now to further investigate because of tight cable management.

I only install updates that are known to be useful. There is a sheer volume of them, and I don't trust them. I heard there was one that slowed down the computer for Spectre and Meltdown, but I don't know which one is it. Installing KB4490628 and KB4474419-v3 allowed the driver to load. The control panel extension (Gfxv2_0.exe) still crashes, but it is not immediately required. It is a NET Framework program. I could have looked for an older display driver, but I wanted to understand this problem in case it comes up again. There is a Windows Root Certificate Authority from 2010 and signature from 2020. I remember there was a protest about driver signing, and it died very quickly.

I am trying to install the display driver for Intel Graphics on Ivy Bridge. It is a new version 15.33.53.5161 for Windows 10. But apparently also supports Win NT 6.1. This driver appears to be signed with a new certificate, and is not recognized. After installing a few possibly related SSL updates and running the certificate updater for Windows XP (I do not know of an updater for Windows 7), the certificate is recognized while installing. But not when the device driver needs to be started. Is there a "legit" way of getting past this? Most sites link to this new driver. Certificates keep coming up again and again as a waste of time.

ZIP downloads now ramp up to over 6 MB/s. The browser might have a smaller receive window (socket buffer). I remember not long ago the normal speed was 400 kB/s, which was of course better than nothing, and at most you needed a 1 meg old driver file or something like that. And very slow to initialize, as if they had to spin up a disk in the headquarters. Young members of Reddit suddenly couldn't download Windows because Archive Org was the only place they were willing to go. It was hillarious. As if the Cloud had dissipated.

With WDM drivers (I think even in Windows 98 if you didn't use a VxD driver) you automatically got a "Sound Blaster" emulation without a sound card providing it, or setting anything in autoexec.bat. But in my experience DOS games usually stuttered when played like this. Maybe the sound was continuous, but the input was jagged. I understand that the question about these DOS games. They are usually relatively small in size that disk access and SSD wouldn't make much of a difference. It's more about how the DOS program is stopped to yield to multitasking. The buffer for passing the data to the actual sound card has to be small for interactive games. DOS games were probably not seen as important enough anymore when XP came out. DOSBox is always accurate. It has a high overhead as everything is emulated, but the speed will be consistent, and today you can obtain a fast enough computer to run it.

I think the word "gamer" implies a significant enthusiasm and investment into the hobby. One can play computer games and not be a gamer. Similarly, not everyone who listens to music is an "audiophile" in the typical sense of the word. I might describe a flashy styled PC component with LEDs "gamer's" or "gaming" (the latter seems more about what is directly touched to manipulate the game). One of the main culprits of the sluggishness of Windows 10 turned out to be the service SysMain. Of course, I knew about the Prefetcher, but had forgotten the service's technical name, which gives the impression that the service is central to functioning of the system. The disk activity is down after disabling it. I stumbled upon passionate articles in defense of the superfetch service (and other aspects of Windows). Their authors seem to think that Microsoft can do no wrong, and experts who disagree are without merit. Upgrade the PC and then it will work fine (and won't be needed anymore).

You seem to be coming from Western culture of plenty that demands constant growth in consumption and never have enough. It's not the first time that you've told someone that an item that is ten years old is completely unusable, like a GT 1050 video card, or left a smug comment about vinyl. Because of people like you, people like me sometimes get free stuff. Yes, the cables are made of aluminum and work fine. They don't corrode without water. They don't need to be repeatedly bent while attached to a wall and therefore their risk of breakage is irrelevant. I can run two big appliances simultaneously. When they are decently built, like an electrolux vacuum cleaner, they have a slow start. Inside the computer HDDs are often built to start staggered. I don't own a dishwasher. I can't imagine it needs to spin a big load. Describing someone else's home as "barracks" is uncalled for. The cables of this PSU are bendy. Probably copper. It is a Xilence XP730R8. But I've never had a practical issue with stiff cables as everything in the computer has moved to low power for heat, costs and greenwashing. You can read online that Inrush Current is a common problem. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/how-we-test-psu,4042-7.html It also occurs with smaller units like the brick that I use for my Opus battery charger.

No, I only play sometimes what my computer allows. Gamers continuously spend to get NASA performance.

Is WinReducerEx similar nLite? Do you have to pay for it? The marketing language is quite lengthy on WinReducer.net and it's not clear what it actually does (use an IDE to build plugins, sounds like it adds your own app to Windows). What I have is a year 2022 edition. Would you say that 23H2 is slower than earlier versions?

I got a free power supply that looks really nice. It was in a gamer system and is nominally 730 watts, a real beast. But it trips my circuit breaker with inrush current half of the time. When I flip the switch on the back there is a mighty spark. I have a 10A circuit breaker that is fine for normal uses and a good match for the wiring. I don't want to replace them because the hope is that they will trip first rather than 16A, which is before the smart meter and de-energizes the whole apartment and harder to reset. Have you encountered this issue? Could the thermistor be replaced with another nominal from a smaller power supply? It seems to be inside a tubing, and I can't see what the current markings are. I've found some reviews on gamer sites where they apparently rate them in this category among others.

Yes, I usually prefer to go over and disable services according to my needs. Are there any mature free tools similar to nLite for removing parts of modern Windows? Turns out it won't let me customize the taskbar because Windows is not activated. That's an odd punishment, considering that the number of tweaking options is very limited.

I have acquired a barebones recycled computer and have my first experience with Windows 10 Enterprise 22H2, which so far I didn't need to use. But since it is here, I can learn something about it. The computer has an Intel motherboard with an Ivy Bridge core i3 and 8 gigs of RAM with nice shiny heatspreaders. The system is installed on a laptop harddisk. There was also a working SSD with a game. After a boot it keeps thrashing the disk for a couple minutes, and the system is not responsive. Activity is on various services, such as Cryptographic Services. There are about 120 processes running. My current computer with a lot of applications has 55. On first successful bootup it proceeded to install cumulative updates that were apparently downloaded some time ago in 2023. That took more than an hour. Windows Defender qurantined a few files on my diagnostic flash drive, which I think meant that they were deleted, but could be restored. Thank you. Amazing. The system is not activated because I didn't connect it to a network and it can't reach a KMS. I used DefenderRemover and Sledgehammer to remove Defender and Windows Update. Boot is still slow. Classic Shell and 7+ Taskbar Tweaker were installed. I couldn't find how to give taskbar buttons labels like on Windows 2000, or make a quick launch toolbar. The Start menu is a shade of its former self: still takes up the whole screen and displays little. Most other UI elements are too big and spread out. They have ripped out even more pages of the Control Panel applets. Classic Shell is really a must. The previous owner must have been misguided installing Windows 10 on this computer, when Windows 7 would have been a better match. I wonder if it is at all possible to strip Windows 10 down to the level of Windows 2008 R2, where it wouldn't have so much load on the hard disk, and which would be the best basis: an older build, LTSC or Server 2022. The PC has an Intel Visual BIOS, where UEFI boot can be unselected. As long as it is ticked, the PC proceeds to boot into Windows 10 seemingly ignoring the menu where CD-ROM and USB are higher up.

I don't know anything about Chrome. But there are many forks of it out. Is support for old plugins something they could easily add back in? Or has Google put hurdles in for that?

If the CPU fits in the same motherboard, then it is roughly the same generation of CPU and directly compatible. The motherboard contains all the components that need drivers configured. With Windows you can have a single CPU kernel exe installed if you upgraded from a single core CPU, which would then only use one core but continue working.

Was Device Manager ever part of the control panel directly? I think it was always called up from "System", properties of "My Computer" or Administrative Tools, which can be added as a directory to the control panel.

Do you want to install winXP onto an external drive? There is a set of instructions on how to boot WinXP from a USB disk. I have followed them personally to hide software at work. They were made when SP1 was current, and may still work with later SP, but I haven't tried. They involve changing the order at which USB drivers load. You need to install Windows on the disk while it is directly connected to the motherboard. When the Archive Org come back, you can read it here: http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176 In the meantime, you can read my copy: http://j7n.sytes.net/misc/xp_usb_msd/