I recently got a job at some company and yeah, they are using Windows 10. I want to try to like this OS, but there are so many little things that irritate me that add up to an overall bad experience. I've tried using Google to figure out all of these minor things, but haven't made a lot of progress. I figured that this thread could be a general help thread for those of us who aren't able to figure out what is what since Windows 10 apparently changes every 6 minutes so that it's impossible to find up-to-date information.

I haven't used Windows for years, and the last was v7. Granted, 7 wasn't perfect, but it didn't feel like it was outright fighting power users, forcing you to use the mouse more than you ought to, or just doing random things. I'll just list the issues in Q format.

How do you get ctrl-shif-s to be "save as" in Excel 360?

When I am trying to upload a file to a website, if I put my mouse over a possible file, the file opens up in a full window even though I NEVER clicked on the file. I expect to click the file and upload the file, but now it's a 15 step process to upload files.

Shut down used to be Winkey arrow enter and done. How can I shutdown / restart without having to mouse around and wait for stupid animations?

Speaking of stupid animations, why does every action in Excel have a stupid animation? Why does ctl-d have a slow animation? Why is there a slider that pops out? I just want to save a file, have that little window open, and move on with my life, typing the file name, not clicking around all over stupid icons and animations.

What is this cloud thing and why does it finally decide to load up 5 minutes after I turn on the machine, interrupting my work? It isn't used for anything.

Where is the real startup menu? They redirect you to the system manager or whatever and that doesn't even stop startup. It doesn't matter because most things I want to stop (like that stupid cloud thing) to not start up. Is it in the system manger??? No.

I hate this OS. I'm finally admitting it after 3 weeks of using it.

As far as startup goes, win+r, shell:startup, or ctrl+alt+del has a startup section I believe.

Classic Shell for Windows to get the start menu back.

Save As thing is an Excel thing. Windows version uses F12 to "save as". Apple+shift+s is a thing for Macs. This is actually because MacOS assigned F12 to something and Microsoft had to come up with another keyboard shortcut.

I envy those with Windows 7. I have been stuck with Windows 10 as well.

I was considering making a guide to making Windows 10 suck less. I never got around to it, but I'll share a few things.


Let's begin with the start menu. The startup menu should be in the lower left hand corner of the screen. It isn't like the previous versions of Windows, but you can still use the search. You can use the search by just typing after you click the window icon. When you click on the startup menu you will notice these weird apps such as "Candy Crush", "Minecraft", "X-box", and a whole bunch of other stuff that you may or may not use. These are your "pinned tiles". If you right click on these you can then select "unpin from start" and they will disappear.

On the upper left hand side of the start menu there should be 3 bars. If you click on this it will expand the icons on the left telling you what they are. Next to the 3 bars it should say "Start". Underneath it there is "Pinned tiles" and "All apps" (These may already be opened by default, so "Pinned tiles" and "All apps" may not be listed). "All apps" is basically the Windows 10 version of "All Programs" used in earlier versions of Windows. All of the apps are listed in alphabetical order. For things you use often, you can right click them and select pin to put them into your "Pinned tiles". I personally have Calculator, Paint, Notepad, and Internet Explorer (I have my reasons).

A good thing to do is to go to the start menu.

Click Settings >>> Personalization >>> Start

This is where you can decide what you want in the Start menu and what you want to eliminate. I turned everything off.

Next try this:

Settings >>> Personalization >>> Taskbar

Here you can edit the taskbar. "use small taskbar buttons" is good if you want to make Cortana less visible. Cortana is basically like a Siri that doesn't work that well.


You probably have noticed that when you hover over certain things on your taskbar that a miniature window pops up even if you don't want it. I made sure not to combine stuff on my taskbar. Maybe you like this, but I don't so I got rid of it. Also, I believe I had to go into regedit to get rid of it. You can't completely get rid of it, but you can set the time interval at such a great length of time that it basically won' happen anymore. Careful in regedit though, because you can really **** up your computer. I forgot what I did, you can search YouTube for it though.

I don't have Excel 360. I just have Excel. I'm not sure if you have that option. I haven't used Excel 360 so I can't help you there.


Sometimes when clicking on the startmenu it doesn't work. This can be especially frustrating if you want to shutdown your computer. An alternative that bypasses this is to right click on the startmenu. This brings up some other stuff you may find useful as well.

Shutdown. Use Alt + F4 repeatedly to close out all the applications running or minimize the applications so that you are viewing your desktop. Use Alt + F4 + Enter to shutdown your computer. If you are at the desktop Alt + F4 will open a window with different options of shutting down the computer. (I had to edit this since Ctrl + D, doesn't bring you to the desktop anymore).

If you start getting weird messages about running out of memory when you know you actually have a lot of memory. The solution is with virtual memory space. I forgot how I solved it, but the messages stopped popping up and I remember it had something to do with removing virtual memory.

Good luck.

I forgot about this thread, but then finally had a conversation with Microsoft as we were renewing our Office 360.

I asked how to stop OneDrive from starting up on each boot, and they told me to change it in startup. I already did so, so they had me go into the registry to be sure it was off. It was.

I start up Office, and once again OneDrive is up and running. I ask them what the deal was and they told me that OneDrive automatically starts up when I load Office. Is there any way to turn this off? No.

I then ask about switching over the username on the computer. No, there is no way to do that, sorry. So, now I have a computer with a username that isn't me, a OneDrive I can access or delete, and yet one more OneDrive I can use (that I don't use at all).

It seems that Windows is no longer yours, but a system you are simply renting from MS.

Thanks for the f12 "save as" tip. It's strange to use, so I continue to navigate the silly animations to save documents. CTL-Shift-s used to work with Win7. I don't use Apple, though after using Win10, there is zero way I'd ever use Windows on a personal computer again.

If you don't want to use OneDrive, can't you just uninstall it?

It's a work computer. I'm scared that removing OneDrive can cause some other issues. What if removing OneDrive removes the meta data to the user name, or even worse, ends up deleting the Office subscription?

Onedrive has a very simple option in the preferences, that you can untick to prevent it from starting up with your computer.

It sounds as though part of the issue here is that it's a work computer. Obviously it's possible to change the user account associated with a Windows machine. Can't you talk to your IT people?

I can only speak from personal anecdote, but when I've removed OneDrive, all that happened was OneDrive was removed. When I re-installed, I had to log in again and select which folders I wanted to sync and that was it.

I don't work at places with an IT department.

The problem is that it's not my computer. I'm not sure how important OneDrive is. Granted, I can't access anything on whomsoever's drive, but it's weird. I also followed the instruction of MS themselves... I suppose they wouldn't encourage removing OneDrive, but it seemed like it could cause an issue.

i don't use any version of excel on this computer, but i have onedrive totally uninstalled on it. it just backs up files, if you set it to, i don't see how removing it can mess anything up. from googling, only certain versions of windows 10 can remove it completely? maybe it's baked in with office 360 or windows 10 pro or something.