MS Windows 10

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Introduction

Windows 10, according to [ Wikipedia] “is a personal computer operating system developed and released by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released on July 29, 2015 [..]”

The purpose of this page is to write down a few configuration tricks, as well as some "essentials".

Note from the main author of this article. Personally I don't like any OS in particular and I do not care much. My big desktop machine runs Ubuntu. Otherwise I use Win 7, 8 and 10 on my laptops, Android and Ios on small devices.

Utilities

Things that I use frequently:

  • 7Zip, one of the best (un)archiving programs
  • Greeshot - A good free program to take and annotate Screen captures
  • Emacs (forever), a programming editor for experts
  • winscp, scp/ftp program (to transfer from/to servers)
  • Putty, ssh (remote terminal to manage servers)
  • Thunderbird, if you believe that your email only belongs to you.

Writing, Graphics, Design

  • Inkscape, a good but complicated vector drawing program.
  • LibreOffice, a free office clone. I like the Draw program.

Programs for advanced uses and users

  • Emacs. I have been using this editor for over 35 years and it is still the best. E.g. it allows for example editing these Wiki pages in an efficient way, i.e. directly through the API. It also can indent code which most editors that scrip kiddies like (e.g. Brackets) cannot do correctly.
  • QGIS, A Free and Open Source Geographic Information System. I use it to print 3D terrain models, e.g. the Geneva Region, Gran Canaria, Vulcano island.
  • Meshlab. A free and powerful (but complicated) mesh manipulation program. I use it merge 3D models and to make them smaller.

Software for makers

controllers and slicers for 3D printers

See Slicers and user interfaces for 3D printers

Free (close/open source, free/commercial)

  • Meshmixer to create custom support structures, to merge models and also to repair Meshes.
  • Netfabb
  • Repetier Host. Best open source 3D printer controller with 2 (or more) built-in slicers

Commercial

  • Simplify 3D. Overall, probably the best slicer. Also can control a printer.

Design

Trouble

Word 2016 will not install

With the message saying that "office 16 click-to-run extensibility component" should be removed. Of course, the system will not tell which program uses this component :(

To figure which program blocks you will have to find this information in the installation directory. A regular search for this component will not help.

  • Hit WinKey-R
  • Type "Installer"
  • Select View Tab, then click Add columns, then select "Choose columns" and finally add "Subject".
  • Make the column very wide !!

Now you should see "Office 16 Click-to-Run Extensibility Component". Do not uninstall the 64bit version of this. Take the one without mention, i.e. the 32bit version.

  • Now pray that you won't disable any other program that you installed and that you need
  • Right-click on the offending MSI and uninstall.

In addition there were five different Office 365 programs installed. Uninstalling these was easy but ate another 10 minutes. Cannot even uninstall by bundles. Also why the hell do they believe that I can speak Dutch and other weird languages like French or German ? (The Uninstaller cannot speak English).

I just wonder how normal folks can cope with this crap. This was experienced with a brand new high end Dell XPS 15 laptop just fresh out of the box... I always thought that Linux/Unbuntu was not very friendly in some situations, but getting this from Win10 was not expected and is not acceptable. Why can't Microsoft just propose to uninstall these useless things that came with the computer.

Cannot see WLAN (cabled net

If that happens after turning the power on, unplug the USB-C adapter and plug it in again.

Privacy

One main problem with Win10 is privacy. You may consider installing a tool,

Various sys admin

Working as admin

Many operation require admin privileges. Even if you have admin rights, you are not automatically an admin

To use a power shell in admin mode:

  • CTRL-X; Select Windows Powershell (admin)

To use the command promt (french: invite de commande) in admin mode:

  • Type cmd in the search box. Do not press return !
  • Then run it as administrator (click in the panel to the right). In french: "Exécuter en tant que administrateur".

Detecting the system UI Language

See also: TenForums

The system UI language defines default language for new users. It will not affect existing users.

Notice: One can see the UI language for a user in Settings > Time & Language > Language.

In the powershell: Get-WinSystemLocale

In the command prompt: dism /online /get-intl

To change the System Locale, type: Set-WinSystemLocale fr-CH (for example). This could be dangerous, if the languages are not installed.

Detecting and changing the UI language for a user

See also:

Detecting and setting the UI language through the settings panel (In french: "Paramètres")

  • Windows+X, Settings > Time & Language > Language (In french: Paramètres, heure et langage, langage)

Using the powershell:

  • Run it as admin. E.g. type powershell in the search box, the in the right panel, run as admin
  • get-Culture | Format-List -Property * will show the current language settings for the current user, i.e. UI language (e.g. fr-CH) and the keyboard (e.g. 4108)
  • To retrieved installed languages, type Get-WinUserLanguageList. The first item in the list the one that defines the default UI language.
  • Another Get-WinUILanguageOverride command shows an override, but that was not set in my system.
  • Set-WinUILanguageOverride -Language de-DE overrides the current settings, but we do not understand what that means. I does not seem to affect UI settings. Set-WinUILanguageOverride will reset it. Example:
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-WinUILanguageOverride

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Set-WinUILanguageOverride -Language fr-CH
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-WinUILanguageOverride
LCID             Name             DisplayName
----             ----             -----------
4108             fr-CH            Français (Suisse)
  • Changing the UI language list: read this first, then do something like the following:
PS C:\> $OldList = Get-WinUserLanguageList
PS C:\> $OldList.Add("fr-FR")
PS C:\> Set-WinUserLanguageList -LanguageList $OldList

Setting language in Office applications

Seems to be impossible (except for proofing which is not good enough, one ought to be able to work from start in another language).

  • Solution (?): The display language of Windows must match the default proofing language of Office.
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