Turn off Windows updates in Windows 10

Although I do not recommend this and strongly against turning off Windows updates, I am writing this to the people out their who know what the impact is by disabling Windows updates.

Windows updates is the feature which helps your computers and devices to stay up to date with hot fixes, patches and more importantly with security updates. As an when a loophole, a backdoor or any issue is found, it is through Windows update the patches and solutions are sent by Microsoft. Furthermore, with Windows 10, new features and new builds of the operating systems which are tested by the Windows insiders are also sent through Windows Updates.

The previous versions of Windows, had an option for the users to select to disable Windows updates through the control panel. This option is not available with Windows 10. Windows 10 by default does not allow any option to disable windows update. But there are a few workarounds for this.

Option 1

Setting the network connection as a metered connection. Refer this article to see how to set a network connection as a metered connection.

Option 2

Disabling the Windows update service

Open run => Services.msc => double click Windows Update service

Drop down the startup type and select disabled and click ok

Option 3

Use group policy

Open run => type gpedit.msc => Computer Configuration => Administrative templates => Windows components =>. Windows update => double click Configure Automatic Updates

You may select the necessary settings accordingly and enforce the group policy

Once again, although these options are available, my personal opinion is that Windows updates should be enabled and computers and devices should be updated.

Change the default search engine in Microsoft Edge

With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Edge a new browser. Edge has many new functionalities embedded along with it.

Today, people have changed the way on how search is being done. Many of us rarely go in to a search engine and enter our search query. Instead, we type the search query in the browser address bar which in turn will provide the results in the default search engine set by the browser. By default the Microsoft edge browser is configured with Bing as the search engine. lets look at how do we change this to an alternate search engine like Google.

Open Microsoft edge and click on settings

  

Scroll down and click view Advance Settings

Scroll down and select change search engine

Select the search engine you prefer and click set as default

Outlook 2016 doesn’t fully synchronize your Exchange mailbox

Recently I reinstalled Windows 10 on my computer and on top of Windows, I installed Microsoft Office 2016.

When I setup my email on Outlook 2016, I noticed that only part of my emails which is on my Exchange mailbox had synchronized with my Outlook. This was not the case before where all my mails use to synch and due to this the search operations especially on older emails were a bit slow.

After some research I found out its due to the fact that Outlook has a behavior where it limits the emails to be synched considering the hard disk space when you are setting up a cached Exchange mode mailbox.

In order to increase this;

Open Outlook => File => drop down Account settings => select Account settings => Under email select the email account and click on change.

Move the slider according to the timeline you require and click next and finish.

 

Once done, your emails will start to synch and download.

Windows 10 Privacy for displaying user name

With the release of Windows 10, it enabled users to log in using their Microsoft accounts. This gives a has a privacy issue where, in the lock screen of the computer which is accessible by anyone can view the email address that is used to log in. This could lead to unsolicited SPAM emails and other unwanted risks.

By default there is a setting in the sign-in options to turn on or off to show the account details (eg: email address) on the login/sign-in page. By default this option is switched off and the account details are not displayed.

If this option is turned on, your account details will be displayed on the sign in page to the computer when it starts.

Installing Windows Live Writer on Windows 10

I have been using Windows Live Writer to compose and publish my bog for almost for the past 4 to 5 years. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that Windows Live Writer has gone end of support on January 10th 2017 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18614/windows-essentials

But if you still like to use like me then you may find it difficult to install Windows Live Writer on your Windows 10 computers.

Below are the steps article published on TechNet blogs on how to install and it works.

1. Download Windows Live Writer installation files from http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe
2. Save wlsetup-all.exe file in a folder. Example: c:\temp
3. Open command prompt (cmd.exe)
4. Navigate within command prompt to location where you saved wlsetup-all.exe file.
   Within the command prompt type: cd c:\temp (if that’s the location where you saved the wlsetup-all.exe file)
5. Type: wlsetup-all.exe /AppSelect:Writer /q /log:C:\temp\Writer.Log /noMU /noHomepage /noSearch
6. Hit enter

Reference: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/stefan_stranger/2015/07/23/installing-windows-live-writer-on-windows-10/

Windows 10 Metered Connections

It’s a known fact that this is a digital era where internet is something equivalent to oxygen we breath. The first thing we do when we go to a new place is search for mobile data connectivity or WiFi connectivity. Internet has become an important aspect to people as well as organizations. But on the other hand, many ISP’s around the world have introduced data caps on the bandwidth consumption by the consumers.

Considering this Microsoft Windows 10, which is designed for a world with internet, comes with a setting called metered connections. By enabling this setting or feature, Windows 10 will limit the bandwidth usage and will stop auto downloads of Windows and app updates, disconnect some applications which use internet heavily, some live tiles my stop getting updates, etc.

Usually you would enable this feature on internet connectivity which has a bandwidth cap, mobile data, or any other connectivity option which is slow and has a limit.

To enable;

Click on properties of the WiFi network connected

 

Enable Set as metered connection

Similarly any number of networks connected could be set as a metered connection by following the above steps.