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10 tricks to get (and keep) Windows 10 Creators Update running smoothly

If you’ve installed Windows 10 Creators Update, version 1703, take a few minutes to make sure you’re getting the most out what Microsoft offers.

With Windows 10 Creators Update — version 1703 — now officially declared worthy of installation on business machines, it’s time for Win10 customers to get with the system and get Creators Update installed. For those who have already moved to the latest and greatest — and those who are just starting with a Win10 machine — here’s a handful of steps you can take right now to keep Windows demons at bay, or at least minimize their hold on your machine.

winver Woody Leonhard/IDG

Trick 1. Run Windows Update manually

If you’re working with a machine that just installed Creators Update, you should start by running Windows Update manually. People seem to think that new-out-of-the-box machines and freshly upgraded machines will have the latest version of Win10 installed as a matter of course. Sometimes, they do not.

It’s easy to check. Click on the “Start” button (the Windows logo in the lower-left corner of the screen), then on the Settings icon (a gear with eight sprockets). At the end of the list of Settings applets, click Update & Security. Then, on the right, click Check for Updates.

check for updates Woody Leonhard/IDG

If updates arrive and you have to reboot your machine, go back and check for updates one more time. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Trick 2. Check for driver and app updates

Once Windows itself is up to speed, it’s wise to make sure your drivers and apps are similarly up to date.

Updating Store apps should be automatic, but you might want to check and make sure they’ve been handled properly. Click the Store icon down in the taskbar — it looks like a shopping bag — then click on your icon next to the Search box, and choose “Downloads and updates.” Recalcitrant apps should stick out.

Updating drivers is tricky. You can’t always trust Microsoft’s drivers — we’ve had numerous occasions recently when drivers distributed through Windows Update carried crazy side effects. The best general advice for getting drivers is to go to your PC manufacturer’s website and follow its instructions. Dell, for example, has the ability to scan your system and tell you exactly which drivers you need (screenshot).

drivers Woody Leonhard/IDG

Once you have drivers installed to your satisfaction, it may be difficult to keep Windows’ mitts off of them — although the boorish behavior should’ve been fixed by now, Windows Update has a bad habit of installing its drivers on top of anything it finds. If you discover that your drivers are getting blown away by Win10, follow these instructions to keep them firmly in place.

Trick 3. Switch to a local account

Microsoft wants you to use a personally identified Microsoft Account and sign into it every time you log into Windows. You may want to use a Microsoft Account — doing so will bypass an additional step when using OneDrive, Skype, the Store, Groove, Mail or Office 365. But for many people who understand the implications, the additional benefit just isn’t worth the privacy hit.

(In order to sync Edge settings, you have to log into Windows with a Microsoft Account.)

If you’re a bit prescient, or sufficiently skeptical, you may have originally set up Windows with a “local” account (a “local” account is anything other than a Microsoft Account). If you’re already using a local account, skip to the next trick. But if you’re using a Microsoft Account and want to get off that particular merry-go-round, it’s easy.

Step 1. Click Start > Settings, then click on your picture at the top of the stack of small icons at the far left. Click “Change account settings.” You get the “Your info” pane shown in the screenshot.

your info Woody Leonhard/IDG

Step 2. Click “Sign in with a local account instead.”

Step 3. Type your Microsoft Account’s password to verify that it’s really you, and click Next.

Step 4. Type in a local account username of your choice, password and password hint. Click Next.

You’ll be signed out of your Microsoft Account and then given a chance to sign in with your new local account. That new account will be an administrator account, and you’ll be able to use it to control your machine.

Trick 4. Check your privacy settings

When you initially installed Windows 10 Creators Update, you had an opportunity to make wholesale changes to your privacy settings. If you’re concerned that you might have made some bad choices, not to worry. You can review all of those choices — in a far more granular way — by going into the Privacy applet in Settings and tweaking to your heart’s content. Just click Start > Settings > Privacy.

As you’re going through all of the options, make sure you dwell on the Privacy pane called “Feedback & diagnostics” (screenshot).

diagnostics Woody Leonhard/IDG

There are two particularly important settings there:

  • Basic vs. full diagnostic and usage data
  • Use diagnostic data to tailor tips and recommendations (read: ads)

Back in April, I ran through the details of the basic diagnostic setting. In short, if you choose “basic” here, Windows collects 1,966 separately identified pieces of information about your machine every day, sending the snooping trove to Microsoft’s servers. If you choose full, we have no idea at all what Microsoft collects or sends. I can’t imagine why anyone would go with full.

As for using diagnostic data to serve up ads — gag me with a RAMDAC. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I tend to think of diagnostic data as being information used to fix problems. Diagnostic, eh? I don’t want Microsoft using my diagnostic data to snoop on me, or to serve up ads, “tailored” or not.

Trick 5. Manually throttle ads

While you weren’t looking, Microsoft slipped ads into all sorts of nooks and crannies of Windows 10. At this point there are three separate ad clusters you’re likely to encounter, and a few that only apply in certain odd situations. You have to run around to three different locations in order to quash them.

Ad 1. Turn off ads on the Start menu. Microsoft calls them “suggestions,” not ads, and they appear sporadically at the top of the app list on the Start menu. To do so, click Start > Settings > Personalization, then on the left choose Start. Slide the entry “Occasionally show suggestions in Start” to Off.

Ad 2. Turn off ads in File Explorer. I haven’t seen any ads there lately, but the hooks are all in, and you’d be well advised to clobber them now. Microsoft calls them “sync provider notifications,” and supposedly they serve a legitimate purpose, notifying you of the status of your data sync with cloud providers. In practice, at least so far, it’s just an advertising hook. To turn off the ads, start File Explorer, click View, then Options, then on the View tab (screenshot), uncheck the box marked “Show sync provider notifications.”

folder options Woody Leonhard/IDG

Ad 3. Turn off ads on the lock screen. Microsoft calls it “Windows Spotlight,” and it serves no known purpose other than to get you to click on some clickbait such as “Like what you see?” To throttle these ads, click Start > Settings > Personalization. On the left, choose “Lock screen.” In the Background box, choose anything other than Windows Spotlight.

There are other ads in the Notification (“Action”) center — Start > Settings > System. Choose “Notifications & actions” on the left, then pick and choose. And there are ads on the Windows Ink workspace, if you use it. Click Start > Settings > Devices, then on the left choose “Pen & Windows Ink” and slide Off “Show recommended app suggestions.” There are also ads in the Share dialog, but if you use the Share dialog you’re too far gone anyway.

And of course, the advertising icons on the Start screen drive many people nuts. Just right-click on anything you find offensive (Candy Crush Soda Saga, anybody?) and choose Uninstall.

Trick 6. Set up File Explorer

No doubt you know how to gussy up the File Explorer interface — drag folders to the Quick access list, rearrange them by dragging and dropping, navigate with the up arrow and by clicking on folders in the navigation bar at the top. That’s beginner stuff.

More importantly, though, if you’re beyond the Windows toddler stage, you really need to make File Explorer show you filename extensions, those usually three- or four-letter suffixes such as .DOCX and .JPG and .MP3. You should also have File Explorer show you “hidden” files (which just have a bit flipped that says “don’t show this to noobs”). Doing so is easy:

Step 1. Down in the taskbar, click on the File Explorer icon.

Step 2. At the top, click View. See the screenshot.

file explorer Woody Leonhard/IDG

Step 3. Toward the right of the ribbon, check the box next to “File name extensions” and the box next to “Hidden items.”

That’s it. Windows — and some other programs — will start showing you filename extensions, and it’ll show you all of your files, hidden or not.

Bonus tip: If you’d rather have File Manager open to This PC — the way it used to, instead of Quick Access — just click File, then Options. Under the General tab, change the value for “Open File Explorer” from “Quick Access” to “This PC.”

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Trick 7. Delay updates

Quite likely the single best new feature in Windows 10 Creators Update, the ability to easily defer Automatic Updates is reason alone for installing version 1703. Unfortunately, this easy method is only available to those using Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise — not Win10 Home — and if you’re attached to a Windows Update server, your admin has control over the entire updating process, so this trick won’t work.

Using an administrator account in Windows 10 Creators Update Pro or Enterprise, click Start > Settings > Update & security. Click the link marked “Advanced Options.” You can see the “Choose when updates are installed” pane in the screenshot.

delay updates Woody Leonhard/IDG

Microsoft has changed the terminology several times in the past couple of months, but choosing “Current Branch for Business” in the first drop-down box should assure that you won’t be upgraded to the next version of Windows (presumably, version 1709) until Microsoft says it’s ready for widespread adoption. By choosing CBB, you’re avoiding the four-month-long unpaid beta-testing phase, where those with Windows 10 Home and others who choose “Current Branch” get to install and test the new version of Win10 as soon as it’s available. Unpaid cannon fodder.

While you’re here, you should also postpone “quality updates” — what Microsoft usually calls “cumulative updates.” That leaves you up to 30 days to decide if you want to install a particular cumulative update, a process that gives you time to see if the latest Automatic Update is causing widespread panic.

With settings at CBB and a 30-day deferral on cumulative updates, you’re unlikely to want the “Feature update” deferral (top number box) — when in CBB, it’s unclear whether that setting actually does anything. You’re also unlikely to want to Pause Updates because the CBB and cumulative update deferral handle most cases. (Generally the Pause is good for 7 or 35 days, and it isn’t clear to me why some systems max out at 7.)

If you’re using Windows 10 Home, you have many fewer options. Arguably the best way to keep the Automatic Update wolves at bay is to tell Windows that you have a metered connection. To do so, down in the system tray, click your internet connection and choose “Network & Internet settings.” Choose “Change connection properties.” Then in the section marked “Metered connection,” move the “Set as metered connection” to On. That should keep Windows from downloading any large files, including cumulative updates and version changes.

Trick 8. Set Active hours

Nobody likes to have their machine reboot at the wrong time. Windows-triggered reboots are supposed to be few and far between, and they aren’t supposed to be destructive, but any experienced Windows user knows the frustration of sitting there, staring at a circling “Installing updates” spiral that accomplishes exactly nothing. More than a few know the frustration of losing work as Windows goes down for the count, then resurfaces.

The Active hours setting in earlier versions of Windows 10 didn’t work very well. With 1703, it works a little better. And we can finally give Windows an 18-hour, uh, window where we don’t want to be disturbed.

To set your Active hours, click Start > Settings > Update & security. Click the link on the right that says “Change active hours.” Windows will begin its reboots after the End time and before the Start time (screenshot). At least in theory.

active hours Woody Leonhard/IDG

Trick 9. Have Windows create restore points

If you’ve used Windows 7 or earlier, you may have stumbled upon the System Restore feature. Windows 10 has full support for System Restore and restore points, although the feature isn’t turned on by default. A restore point contains Registry entries and copies of certain critical programs including, notably, drivers and key system files — a snapshot of crucial system settings and programs. When you roll back to a restore point, you replace the current settings and programs with the older versions.

Realize that restore points aren’t entirely reliable. Microsoft would much rather have you use “Reset this PC” or “Start fresh” (both options under the Update & security applet’s Recovery section), neither of which have the quirks of restore points. Reset and Start fresh are sledgehammers. Restore points are scalpels.

Even if they don’t work all the time, restore points have saved my butt more than once, and they may save yours as well. All it takes is a few clicks and a little bit of hard-drive space.

The terminology is a bit convoluted. To turn on restore points in Win10, you have to enable System Protection (Windows 7 did it by default).

To enable System Protection, and start taking restore points automatically, follow these easy steps:

Step 1. In the Cortana search box, type restore point. Click Create a restore point.

Step 2. In the Protection Settings box, look for your important hard drives and make sure they’re set to Protection On. If any aren’t set up, click on the drive, click the box marked “Configure…,” and in the following dialog box, click “Turn on system protection.” Click OK and you’re done.

restore points Woody Leonhard/IDG

You can futz with the settings by clicking on the Configure button, but there’s rarely any reason to change the defaults.

Trick 10. Personalize

I don’t spend much time customizing the Windows user interface. To me, Win7 had the best interface options, and it’s all been downhill ever since. Win10, though, has one significant interface setting you should know about: Dark mode.

As originally conceived, Win 10 settings boxes appeared with black text on a boring white background. With the latest versions of Win10, you can switch your Settings boxes (and other Microsoft apps, including Mail, Calendar, and Windows Store) to show white text on a black background. I vastly prefer this “Dark mode” to the old way. Cue the Darth Vader theme.

To get the Dark mode, click Settings > Personalization. On the left, choose Colors. On the right, scroll down and click the button under “Choose your default app mode, Dark.”

personalization Woody Leonhard/IDG

Dark mode doesn’t work everywhere — notably, it isn’t implemented in File Explorer — but to me it makes a big difference when rooting through the Win10 infrastructure.

You can poke around the Win10 Personalization applet’s Background and Colors sections and knock yourself out — change accent colors, use a different wallpaper (er, background picture), and the like. But they’re all pretty pedestrian compared to Dark mode.

For those of the f.lux persuasion, the Creators Update Night light changes the hue of your screen later in the day and on into the night, reducing blues and making it easier to sleep. (The original f.lux from Michael and Lorna Herf has long been a free Windows program, but in Creators Update, Microsoft put the capability into Windows itself.) To turn on Night light, click Start > Settings > System. On the right, click Night light settings and set your schedule and temperature.

Bonus: Don’t forget the Troubleshooters!

If something heads south, Microsoft’s Troubleshooters offer a good first line of defense. To see all of them, click Start > Settings > Update & security and on the left click Troubleshoot.

troubleshooters Woody Leonhard/IDG

Bonus: 30 top free apps

When you’re up and running, be sure to take a look at our Top 30 free apps for Windows 10. They’re all Creators Update-friendly.