Tools you use to augment your Windows install

[FAST6191]

Title says it all really. Still stock Windows is not a great thing so most will have a bunch of programs to help it along to greatness. I am going to ask for people to restrict it a bit -- I love notepad++ as much as anybody but it might be outside the scope of this thread.

Popular choices
http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/
Have dual monitors and no ultramon (or something similar like http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm ), you are missing out. Even modern windows does not have great support for such things.

TeraCopy (available on ninite)
http://codesector.com/teracopy
Windows copy got better, ish, as time went on. This adds pause, file checking, free space checking, a timer that does not lie so much and more to it all.

Everything (ninite as well)
http://www.voidtools.com/
Over the years various people, including microsoft themselves, have tried to improve the abysmal windows search function. Depending upon how you work this can do well, bonus is it can also set up a FTP or HTTP server to make transfers that little bit easier.

Revo uninstaller
http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html
I consider this more of a computer fixing tool, indeed it has saved me a lot of hassle on several occasions (mainly stupid car electronics programs that absolutely must have a clean windows install), but it helps uninstall programs and all the cruft that their uninstallers tend to miss.

For windows 8. Classic start ( http://www.classicshell.net/ , also available on ninite) is a must, though I probably should test out 8.1 properly before making that call a final one.

 

[Arras]

I can't live without F.lux. It's one of the first things I install.
http://justgetflux.com/

 

[ResleyZ]

I'm on Windows 8.1, which IMO is a huge improvement over Windows 7.

I love Fences, I hate it when there are clustered desktop's, and Fences is a amazing program to help with this.
http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

I also use Pokki StartMenu, which adds a Windows 7 like Start button, and has several other features, like a own 'app-store'.
https://www.pokki.com/windows-8-start-menu

The latest program I found, and is a must-have program in my opinion, is 7Stack. It's very easy to have, and works great.
http://alastria.com/software/7stacks/

Spoiler: Screenshots showing Fences, Pokki and 7Stack

Here's a screenshot of my desktop with Fences, you'll see that it's hard to see the icons and folders themselves, that's because you can change the opacity of each fence manually. You can also scroll inside the fences, which is a absolute god-like feature for me.


When I hover over a fence, the opacity removes.


When I scroll in this fence, I get to see my other programs


This works for all fences, so for all Office 2013 programs, I only use two 'spots'.

The Windows logo is the Pokki Start menu. When I click on it, it opens the menu.


You might already notice that I have 3 'folders' in my taskbar. That's 7Stack. When I click one on of those, they open up.

I also use Dropbox of course, got 50GB when I registered my Note 2. Did that on three accounts and linked the accounts together. Now I have 150GB of cloud storage.

 

[Damian666]

i use http://startisback.com/

and also http://qttabbar.sourceforge.net/

cant live without them xd

 

[FAST6191]

Never heard of F.lux before. An interesting program, not sure how useful it will be considering I usually pick my lightbulbs to have a sunlight style spectrum and some UV too (what sleep schedule?). I will give it a go though.

Fences... I really disliked that option in some of the linux DEs I used. Granted most of the time I use the start menu and most of rest of the time a web browser takes up one screen with some combo of IRC and whatever IM method is the hotness this month, my downloaders and thunderbird taking up the other (sadly my four monitor setup went away years ago). This then tends to leave the desktop as a wasteland from whatever program I could not be bothered to uncheck "make desktop shortcut" from.

On the taskbar thing... I normally disable those save for the start button (which will have a whole bunch of program pinned) as I prefer the space for the extra programs.

Edit.
Tabs in explorer you say... I might be able to find a use for that.

 

[Damian666]

yes, tabs work great man, i never understand why M$ did'nt do it themselfs >.<

 

[Duo8]

QTTab would be great without those toolbar buttons.

I'm using 8.1. Kinda miss the Aero effects so I have Glass8.
7+ Taskbar Tweaker because I always open Jumplist by mistake.
Also, HashTab.

Spoiler

Can't forget KMSPico

Other than that it's stock.

 

[PityOnU]

On Windows 8.1 Pro at the moment. It's turning out to be a little more of a pain than I expected (most of my issues due to poor driver support from third parties). Here is my routine:

Disable:

- UAC (also disables all modern apps and functionality)
- Windows Search (hogs system resources for very little benefit, especially now we have SSD's)
- Windows Homegroup (I'll just use NTFS file sharing features if I need similar functionality)
- AutoPlay (does anyone even use this?)
- Remote Assistance (not sure why it's enabled by default...)
- Hibernate (boot time is so quick I just shutdown, and sleep mode sips the power)

Uninstall:

- Windows Media features (DVD maker, Media Center, Media Player, etc.)

Install:

- VLC Media Player
- Adobe Acrobat Pro
- uTorrent
- CCleaner
- Office 2013
- Skype
- WinRAR

Configure:

Desktop
- 150% scaling to stop eyestrain
- Slim taskbar
- Never combine labels
- Boot to desktop (muscle memory at work, unfortunately)
- Windows key/start button open app list not home screen (search function behaves oddly, otherwise)
- Set start screen to share desktop image
- Show all hidden and system files, as well as file extensions (why is this not default?)
- Set power scheme to "High Performance"
IE11
- Clear history on exit
- Allow all pop-ups
- Use EasyList and Fanboy's TPL's
- Open everything in new tab
CCleaner
- Clean everything at startup
Services and startup
- Disable all services other than Microsoft services
- Disable all startup programs and scheduled tasks other than Microsoft ones


You end up with a lean, mean, and clean Windows installation that can do just about anything, boots crazy fast, and runs efficiently. The only thing I ever have issues with are Google services (they have begun to intentionally break everything for IE users) and some web stores, so I have a portable version of Chrome laying around just in case.

 

[Damian666]

QTTab would be great without those toolbar buttons.

there is a option to disable those ^^

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Holy shit, PityOnU's list is almost exactly what I do

But here are some of the differences:

I do install a couple extra things, like Chrome and Firefox.

Instead of slimming the taskbar, I change it to black and throw it on the top of the screen and then I only pin Windows Explorer (with shortcuts to My Computer, Downloads, and Documents), then Firefox, uTorrent, and then Chrome and that's
it. I like to keep the Notification area clean as well; I only show Dropbox, Sounds, and Networking on desktops and I add in Battery and Speedfan temps for laptops.

The Windows 8 desktop stuff doesn't apply, since I (so far) I have yet to switch to W8.

I don't bother with IE, sometimes I uninstall it or I just hide the icons/folders and forget about it. On Firefox I have it set to clear all cookies, cache, and history on exit and for Chrome I just sign in and let it sync all my bookmarks and stuff...

Other than that there isn't really anything super extra special about my installs, I like to keep things simple and clean and quick. On my desktop I installed a "Gamer Edition" of Windows 7 that gets rid of a lot of unwanted features and things I don't use. This does cause some problems with some standard stuff (no on-screen keyboard is a bit annoying at times >.<), but other than that I get great boot times and such. One of these days I'll have to time it and see exactly how quick it is...

 

[Satangel]

I can't live without F.lux. It's one of the first things I install.
http://justgetflux.com/

Yeah, same here, the difference is immense! Such a great program, I think it was you Arras that suggested it here before, a couple of years back. Thanks ^^

REVO uninstaller is an absolute must like FAST says, it's amazing!
And teracopy is very decent too, definitely if you're a Warez stockpiler like most pirates are.

 

[Duo8]

there is a option to disable those ^^

Where? I couldn't find it.

 

[DinohScene]

Also, HashTab.

/me high fives you.

Hashtab is the one extension I always install first before installing everything else on windows.
That and I disable "highlight newly installed programs" along with showing all hidden files.

 

[DSoryu]

Currently I'm on Windows 8.1

-AeroGlass8/8.1

http://glass8.berlios.de/

Adds the glass effect to the windows, identical to WVista/W7. It runs nativelly at start and it does minimal resources usage. The only complaiment I can say about this feature is that you have to donate in order to remove the desktop watermark and the pop-up message at every start.

Here an example:

 

[TyBlood13]

I can't live without F.lux. It's one of the first things I install.
http://justgetflux.com/

You don't know how much you improved my online life with that post

 

[DSoryu]

You don't know how much you improved my online life with that post

Same here, the color smothing is amazing and very relaxing to the eyes, thanks

 

[Damian666]

to Duo

rightclick on the toolbars, deselect the qtab standard buttons entree

 

[Kwartel]

Same here, the color smothing is amazing and very relaxing to the eyes, thanks

I haven't got the chance to test it out yet, because I haven't used my machine after dark after you posted that, but it sure looks promising!

 

[Foxi4]

Consider including myDefrag into your installations for all your defragmentation needs, alternatively there's Auslogics Disk Defrag, both miles better than the stock Windows tool.

 

[Pleng]

None