Windows 8 Miscellany

[buzzy]

I may give potential fixes and workarounds for crap in Windows 8. Feel free to do what I say, but you're ultimately responsible if you screw something up. With that, here's some miscellaneous stuff:

• Backup and Restore on Windows 8: One of the things I use on Windows 7 is the Backup and Restore feature, that way I don't need to shell out money. It works well enough for me. In Windows 8, it's been replaced with File History, which only backs up four user folders and their subfolders. In other words, it's completely useless for restoring applications and their settings. Backup and Restore is still around, but has been deprecated, so it'll probably be yanked out by Windows 9, when the backup system will probably require writing a batch file using XCOPY or Robocopy. Since the guts of Backup and Restore are still present, it will still run if you want to use it. I'm assuming that Windows 8 Pro and Enterprise will have the ability to create a system image, while the plain version will just backup user files (i.e., what File History does). To get to the now hidden Backup and Restore, hit Windows key+R and type "sdclt" (no quotes) in the box and hit enter. It's called "Windows 7 File Recovery", but it appears to have the same functionality. Unfortunately, the overhaul of Windows Explorer didn't include the Previous Versions feature, so that's gone. That's a feature I'll miss.
• Automatic Maintenance: This is kind of a pain in the butt because it runs a defragmenter that's different from the one I usually use...and it runs it every day (thanks for prematurely wearing out my hard drive). You can't disable the automatic maintenance, and the best you can do is move around the time. If you schedule it for a time when your computer isn't on, it'll just run it anyway when you turn it on. You can't disable it, even if you're running under the Administrator account. You can disable the "Idle Maintenance" and "Regular Maintenance" tasks, but the "Maintenance Configurator" will just re-enable them later. The Configurator is also the one you can't delete or disable. I managed to disable it using RunAsSystem. All you do is start it, run "mmc" (no quotes), then open "C:\Windows\System32\compmgmt.msc". Then go nuts disabling tasks. If you disable the maintenance tasks, you can't run it manually; nothing happens when you try. Feel free to use your own defragmenting program. Some tasks you can disable (some may require that RunAsSystem program):
  • Application Experience\AitAgent
  • Application Experience\ProgramDataUpdater
  • Autochk\Proxy
  • Customer Experience Improvement Program\* (everything)
  • Defrag\ScheduledDefrag
  • Diagnosis\Scheduled
  • DiskDiagnostic\Microsoft-Windows-DiskDiagnosticDataCollector
  • Maintenance\WinSAT
  • PI\* (everything, probably not a good idea if you have a Trusted Platform Module/use Secure Boot)
  • TaskScheduler\Idle Maintenance (This and the next two are the maintenance ones)
  • TaskScheduler\Maintenance Configurator
  • TaskScheduler\Regular Maintenance
  • TPM\* (probably not a good idea if you have a Trusted Platform Module/use Secure Boot)
  • UPnP\UPnPHostConfig (probably not a good idea if you have UPnP devices)
  • WindowsBackup\ConfigNotification (the notification doesn't show up since Backup and Restore is deprecated)
  It also looks like the trigger for disabling the Windows 8 Release Preview is in the ServiceProtectionPlatform\SvcRestartTask, since the day corresponds to when the Release Preview is supposed to be disabled. Speaking of disabling stuff, you may want to disable some services. (Caution: Ads)
• A new screenshot hotkey: Hitting the Print Screen key takes a screenshot of your entire screen and hitting Alt+Print Screen takes a screenshot of the current window. Both put these in the clipboard, so you can paste them into a program. What if you want to take a screenshot and save it to a file without having to paste it? Now you can hit Windows+Print Screen, and the screenshot goes to your Pictures folder as a PNG file. You can't do Windows+Alt+Print Screen to get a saved screenshot of the current window because the instant you hit the Alt key, the Start Screen shows up.
• Reading challenge: When I had the window color set to Automatic, it changed the taskbar colors so they're white on a really light grey. I could read it for the most part (because I knew what programs were running and I had the icons as a clue), but some people may have to tilt the monitor to read it if that happens.
• Command line shutdown: The command line shutdown.exe (if you want to shutdown the computer in a batch file, for example) now has a /hybrid switch. If you shut down using the GUI (Windows+C, Settings, Power, Shut Down), it does the same kind of shut down by default. (The hybrid shutdown is a bit like logging off, then hibernating instead of a full blown shutdown.) I assume that the existing /s switch does the old shutdown procedure.

And that's pretty much all I can stand as far as being in Windows 8. Back to 7...