Some Notes on the Machines

There’s an automatic “backoff” feature of Windows Indexing from Vista onward, which causes it to slow down and stop depending on other load. This can prevent Indexing from working altogether when load is high and/or searchable datasets are very big. To fix this, change this registry entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\Gathering Manager\DisableBackoff

to a numeral 1. You will probably have to change the owner of “Gathering Manager” to Administrators in order to do so. After this change is made, restart Windows Indexing.

These packages bundle configurations, even domain joins, and other items. Native to Windows 10:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/provisioning-packages/provisioning-create-package

The amazing Joe Busby showed me a number of things today. First, we remove all sorts of gaming bits which eat resources, and we also remove the built-in Mail and Calendar and BingNews, in administrative Powershell:

Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxApp" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxGameOverlay" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider"  | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxSpeechToTextOverlay"  | Remove-AppxPackage 
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.WindowsCommunicationsApps" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingNews" | Remove-AppxPackage 
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingWeather" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingSports" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingFinance" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.Advertising.Xaml" | Remove-AppxPackage

There is an optional -allusers option for both Get-AppxPackage and Remove-AppxPackage, the following appears to do some good:

Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxApp" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxGameOverlay" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider"  | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxSpeechToTextOverlay"  | Remove-AppxPackage  -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.WindowsCommunicationsApps" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingNews" | Remove-AppxPackage  -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingWeather" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingSports" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingFinance" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingSports" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.BingFinance" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.Advertising.Xaml" | Remove-AppxPackage -allusers

Another item. Search for “Background apps”. Open it up, and choose which apps run in your background !!!!! None is an option!

And a third. The Edge browser is reloaded by the operating system at boot and after it is closed. Turn it off with registry settings (this is in Powershell):

CD HKCU:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\
mkdir MicrosoftEdge
mkdir MicrosoftEdge\Main
CD MicrosoftEdge\Main
New-ItemProperty . -Name AllowPrelaunch -Value 0 -PropertyType "DWord" -Force

CD HKLM:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\
mkdir MicrosoftEdge
mkdir MicrosoftEdge\Main
CD MicrosoftEdge\Main
New-ItemProperty . -Name AllowPrelaunch -Value 0 -PropertyType "DWord" -Force

And a fourth. “Game Mode” is something which sits in the background eating resources. Its purpose is to semi-automatically record as a digital movie, everything that happens on your screen. It tries to detect and do this automatically, and it gets it wrong a lot, slowing things down, and sometimes, a lot. But Game Mode can be shut off globally. Turn it off with a registry setting here:

CD HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\
mkdir GameBar
New-ItemProperty . -Name AllowAutoGameMode -Value 0 -PropertyType "DWord" -Force

CD HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\
mkdir GameBar
New-ItemProperty . -Name AllowAutoGameMode -Value 0 -PropertyType "DWord" -Force

When you encounter a user account that spins forever trying to sign in on a computer that already has a local copy of their profile, here is a few steps to resolve the issues quickly without either data loss or the need to create a new Windows profile:

1. Sign in on an account with Local Administrator rights
2. Navigate to “C:\Users”
3. Locate the profile folder of the user unable to sign in.
4. Rename the folder (Usually I add “.old”)
5. Sign out
6. Sign in as the user who’s profile has not been working
7. While signed in on this temporary profile, navigate back to “C:\Users”
8. Rename their profile folder back to what it was originally
9. Sign out
10. You should now be able to sign in normally to that user with their profile intact.

Contributed by the excellent Joe Busby.

This command:

wmic product where name="Application Name" call uninstall /nointeractive

appears to do it. Put the whole long name from the software list in Control Panel, within those double parentheses. This works in at least some cases where msiexec /x does not. And it is not version-specific.

To change it in local policy:

Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration >Windows Settings > Security Settings > Network List Manager Policies >[properties of the the network name in question] >network location tab then pick your Location type.

An excellent tool from The Windows Club. Found by the excellent Joe Busby.

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-4-windows-10

If your Active Directory dates back to Server 2003, you may have “Internet Explorer Maintenance” items in GPO. These are obsolete IE control specifications which can not be edited on newer servers. To delete these items:

support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2722241/policy-reporting-tools-indicate-empty-internet-explorer-maintenance-po

Tested under Windows 10 only, this works well for non-OEM:

(Get-WmiObject -query ‘select * from SoftwareLicensingService’).OA3xOriginalProductKey

and this appears to be good for OEM/sticker:

(GCIM SoftwareLicensingService).OA3xOriginalProductKey

Updates are being distributed to Windows 10 via peer-to-peer methods, in addition to cloud-to-PC. This will be essential to handle the big build files, 4 gigabyte plus, at many sites.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-delivery-optimization