Windows 10 Issues
- Ted Palsson
- Mar 12, 2016
- 4 min read
I've been using Windows 10 for a few months now. There are some features I like about it, and a few things that have me stirred up.
What happened to Safe Mode?
The first and most important thing that Microsoft did away with in Windows 10 is the ability to go into Windows Safe Mode by pressing F8 when you first start or reboot your computer. They sacrificed the Safe Mode for a little more speed in the startup process.
Well, the first time you run into trouble and need to reboot into Safe Mode so that you can troubleshoot the issue, you're gonna miss it too. What were they thinking?
After some time, I came across a work around. One that will restore the ability to press F8 to get into Safe Mode. I found it in this online article (scroll down to Step 4) and instantly tried it. Voila! I now have the ability to go back into Safe Mode! I could have used that last week (more about that below).
The instructions easy to follow but if you are not comfortable with doing that, just let me know.
Critical Error: Your Start Menu isn't working. We'll try to fix it the next time you sign in.
Say What? Yes, the second issue I have with Windows 10. I kept getting the same error no matter how many times I signed out and signed back in or even rebooted, the problem still existed. It took a couple of days of research and countless attempts of trying various solutions until I finally determined that the only way I was going to recover from this problem was to perform a System Restore. I did the version of System Restore where it preserved all of my data files.
The only thing I wasn't able to recover were the browser Favorites that I had added since the last time I had saved them into an exported file. I was confident about the system restore and not worried about all of my data because I routinely perform backsups onto two different storage devices (just in case one of them fails, I still have the other).
You never know when something like this is going to happen, so please make sure you are backing up your data regularly. A note here about your programs: You can't really back them up. You must reinstall them everytime something happens to your computer. They won't work by simply copying the files over.
Disabling the TracPad on my laptop
If you're anything like me, you keep accidentally touching the tracpad with the heel of your hand as you're typing and suddenly the cursor ends up in a different section of your document or whatever you are typing in and now you have to edit what you just inserted into the wrong location and retype it in the proper location at the end of your document.
I love my laptop (this one is an HP Envy 360 in which the monitor can flip over and become a giant tablet computer). The problem is that there isn't a mechanical switch or button to turn off the TracPad. It is always on.
Now Windows 10 has a feature in which you can turn it off by clicking on the Windows Start button, clicking on "Settings", clicking on the "Devices, Blue Tooth, Printers, Mouse" button, clicking on the "Mouse & touchpad" button, clicking on "Additional mouse options", and checking the "Disable internal pointing device when external USB pointing device is attached" box. Then of course click on the "OK" button and then close the Settings window.
Now this may work if you are using a corded mouse, but since I use a Logitech M325 wireless mouse, Windows doesn't recognize the dongle that comes with the mouse as being an external USB pointing device. This causes me to have to go through the process of disabling the TracPad every time I restart Windows 10.
So my next laptop must have a manual switch or Function Key (F key) with the ability to toggle the TracPad on or off. There used to be one of those on my last laptop but apparently the designers decided we didn't really mean to disable the TracPad. Grrrrrr!
And Dear Microsoft: Add the ability to permanently disable the TracPad. I have a touchscreen laptop so if I don't have my mouse with me, I can always use the touchscreen to navigate through and enable the TracPad again (like I did with Windows 8).
A couple of things to consider when purchasing a new computer:
Can you easily disable the TracPad?
Is there a Break key? If you write code, you know how important the Ctrl-Break function is when your code gets hung up in an infinate loop. The newer computer/laptop keyboards no longer have the Break key. I recommend you keep looking until you find one that does.
This is the short list of likes or dislikes or issues with Windows 10. More to come later.
コメント