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Configuration Tips


Making the computer faster and nicer - editor's choice.
This page needs to be revised, but some of it should still be okay.

Windows

Just got a major windows update and is missing various settings? Try this quickfix tool which can help you remove the 400 ms delay on all menus, make the minimize/maximize animation faster, show file extensions and disable the "Fast Start" which may cause various hardware devices to not be detected during start-up, and many other neat things.

More tricks, one by one:

  1. Windows 10 and later: Open an explorer window and go to the "View" tab and enable the checkbox called "File extensions". Leaving this off is a severe security risk.
  2. Right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Environment variables: set TEMP and TMP to C:\temp in both windows (and make sure C:\temp exists.) This will make it easier to clean up if your disk becomes full.
  3. If you wish to have support for symlinks, enable them using this command:
    fsutil behavior set SymlinkEvaluation L2L:1 R2R:1 L2R:1 R2L:1
  4. By default there's no sane way to enter "safe mode" when starting up Windows 10. You have to enable it first, which I recommend doing before the day you suddenly need it.
    bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

Windows Defender using too much PCU all the time

Set-MpPreference -ScanAvgCPULoadFactor 30
Uncomfirmed

Mac OSX

Is the mouse difficult to control or "feels weird"? This is because of "acceleration" which cannot simply be disabled using the control panel like you can on other operating systems. Here are some tricks that are supposed to disable mouse acceleration:
  1. The easiest method is to run the two lines below in Terminal, log out, and then back in.
    defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1 defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.trackpad.scaling -1
  2. Another way is to get one of these applications: LinearMouse (free), Mouse Curves or SteerMouse.
  3. I've also seen this solution suggested.

Apparently OSX hides file name extensions, which is a security risk. Always turn on the first checkbox in Finder Preferences:

Finder Preferences

Linux

Does the backslash key (between Shift and Z) give you a < character instead? Try this:
xmodmap -e 'keycode 94 = backslash bar'


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