How to set up your new Windows computer the right way

Whether the computer is newly purchased or if you already had it before, there are certain settings that will make everything work more smoothly in Windows or at least be simpler and more functional.

With these changes that we are going to propose, the experience working with the computer, whether it may be, playing, browsing, or working, will upload whole stories, making the fluency much more noticeable.

There are a number of default Windows settings that slow you down and limit your productivity, so this is something we need to change. In addition, there are others that, by changing them, will make use easier and make life easier for us.

We’re also going to make some tweaks that make your Windows computer faster than you remember.

the start sound

As you well know, Windows 11 emits a sound every time it starts, something that may not convince you, since you often turn on the computer in places where you have to keep as quiet as possible, such as a library, to give you an example.

Well, we can make this sound disappear, and thus make it easier for us to use the computer, one of the reasons for this article.

• The first thing is to search for System Sounds in the taskbar and click on the top result.
• Then, we uncheck the Play Windows Startup sound box and click OK.

Uninstall pre-installed programs

Any type of pre-installed software, either because it comes from the brand of the computer or one that already comes with Windows itself, should disappear, unless it is useful to us, something that usually does not happen.

Even if this software does not bother us or we see that it takes up little storage space, it may be that it is using system resources, which can mean that, if we add them all up, we are losing more memory than we expected.

To get rid of those that are pre-installed as normal programs, we just have to go to Settings> Applications> Installed applications and from there, click on the three horizontal dots at the end of the name of the application to delete, then click on Uninstall.

graphics driver

You must always have the latest driver for your graphics card installed on your computer.

Having the newest driver usually means better performance in the latest games and fewer bugs, even if you already have a good graphics card.

It may be that Windows itself downloads the latest graphics drivers for us, but if you have, for example, an Nvidia model, it is much better that you do it through its own program called Nvidia GeForce Experience.

Full context menus

To make it easier for you to work with Windows 11, you may welcome the recovery of the context menu that Windows 10 had instead of continuing to press, every time you want more features such as the Properties of a file, the time Show more options.

To get the menu that we had in Windows 10 and earlier, but working in Windows 11, you have to do the following:

• First, we click on the Start button, type Regedit and click when it appears.
• In the Registry Editor window, we navigate to this key: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\CLSID\
• We right-click in the blank area on the right side of the window and select New > Key. We put this {86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2} as the name of the key.
• Next, right-click {86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2} in the Registry Editor sidebar and select New > Key. We then name the new key InprocServer32.
• Next, we double-click the Default key under InprocServer32 to open it.
• Next, we close it without making any changes by clicking OK.
• After that, we close the Registry Editor and restart the computer.

dark mode

Many users prefer the dark mode to the light one since it is easier on the eyes and lighter in what is the display.

The truth is that something very simple to achieve, since we only have to go to Settings> Personalization> Colors and select Dark under the Choose your mode heading.

Keyboard shortcuts

It may be that for some operations that we carry out every day, there is a much faster way than using the mouse and going screen by screen until we get what we need.

We can create keyboard shortcuts to our favorite applications and thus start them by pressing a key combination.

To create keyboard shortcuts we must do the following:

• We open the Command Prompt symbol, write it in the taskbar, and select the one that comes out.
• Then we must write in the explorer shell: AppsFolder and press Enter.
• A window then opens with icons for all your installed apps.
• We must click on one of them with the right mouse button and select Open File Location.
• After that in the new window, we do the same, right-click, click Show more options and select Properties.
• Now, in the Shortcut tab, we will be able to a combination of keys that we want in the Shortcut key. It only remains to Apply and Accept.
• From now on when you do that combination, that application will open.

Lock screen

When the computer is locked, Windows 11 and 10 show us a lock screen with the time, a wallpaper, and perhaps some notifications.

If this window is not to your liking, because you consider that it does not paint anything, you will always be able to remove it.

• We open the Windows Registry by pressing Win + R and in the Run tab write Regedit.
• We navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_Machine\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
• We create a new key called Personalization if it doesn’t already exist, right-clicking on a blank space on the right, clicking New, and then (in the folder that appears on the left) giving it the name we’ve said.
• Within the personalization key, we right-click again on a blank space and select the DWORD (32-bit) value calling it NoLockScreen.
• We click twice on NoLockScreen and on the screen that appears we put 1 in Value information and then click on OK.
• We restart and see how it will have already taken effect.

Close apps on shutdown

It has happened to all of us that we are going to pay for the computer and we leave, waiting for it to turn off and when we return it turns out that it has not been like that because there are applications that have not been closed.

Maybe we just had an almost empty notepad document or an image in Photoshop that we didn’t want to save and because of that, the system didn’t shut down, since we were forced to click Shut down anyway.

To solve it we must:

• Go to the Registry as we have already indicated in the previous case and navigate to \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
• Now create (if they aren’t already) String Value by calling them AutoEndTasks and set to 1, WaitToKillAppTimeOut and set to 2000 and finally, create HungAppTimeOut and set it to 2000 as well.

restore points

If there is something that makes the computer not work well and crashes continuously, it is best to return Windows 11 to its previous state.

The best way is to perform a system restore to a previous working configuration.

The feature that creates restores points that you can go back to may be disabled and we can’t do it right now.

In any case, we are going to activate it by writing Restore Point on the taskbar and clicking on the one that comes out.

We select our boot drive (usually drive C), press the Configure button, and then Turn on system protection. We recommend setting the maximum disk space usage to at least 5 GB.

storage sensor

For everything to work correctly, we must have at least 2 GB on the SSD where we have the operating system.

Windows 11 has an optional feature called Storage Sense, which automatically deletes files you no longer need to free up space.

To enable Storage Sense, go to Settings > System > Storage. Then we activate the tab next to where it says Storage sensor if it is not.

Now your Windows 11 will behave in a better way, it will go more smoothly and you will get it to behave in a more comfortable way.

Tell your experience with all these tips on Windows 11 in our social networks.