make Windows great again
MAKE WINDOWS GREAT AGAIN
Microsoft has made many unwelcome and unnecessary changes to Windows 10 and 11. Robert Irvine reveals how to reverse all the ways it has messed up its operating system
WHAT YOU CAN DO
• Restore the Windows Start menu to its ‘classic’ design.
• Restore useful tools Microsoft removed from the taskbar.
• Safely reinstall the original version of Windows Movie Maker.
• Remove the Bing Chat button from Windows 11 search.
• Expand the Windows clipboard to store up to 500 items.
• Add tabs to File Explorer windows in Windows 10.
• Stop Microsoft showing ads in different areas of Windows.
MICROSOFT HAS NEVER been guided by the principle of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. Over the years, it has made many pointless and controversial changes to Windows for the purposes of innovation.
Notable blunders include the botched introduction of User Account Control in Windows Vista, which constantly asked for your approval to perform the simplest of tasks; the ill-advised scrapping of the Start menu in Windows 8 in favor of a touch-optimized Start screen; and its strict system requirements for Windows 11—plus more messing around with the Start menu.
In fairness to Microsoft, it often backtracks on its decisions when enough users complain and now actively seeks the feedback of members of its Windows Insider programme (tinyurl. com/bdf3k8bw) before it makes ‘improvements’. However, there are still plenty of things that annoy us about Windows, from unnecessary changes to useless tools Microsoft has forced on us and useful ones it has removed.
In this feature, we explain how to solve these problems and take back control of your PC. As Windows 10 won’t receive any more updates (apart from security patches), it’s up to you to apply your own, while Windows 11 remains a work in progress that keeps finding new ways to irritate us. We start by revealing the 10 worst changes Microsoft has made to Windows, and how to reverse them.
10 WORST CHANGES MICROSOFT HAS MADE
1Messing up the Start menu
The Start menu is the most frequent target of Microsoft’s tampering. It was ditched in Windows 8, then restored in 8.1, but bloated with live tiles that carried over to Windows 10. In Windows 11, Microsoft moved the Start menu from its traditional home in the bottom-left corner of your screen, and replaced its list of programs with a grid of pinned and recommended apps, which now includes ads for its products and services.
HOW TO FIX IT
The easiest way to restore the Start menu to its former glory is to install Open-Shell (tinyurl.com/mr2rdhh2). This free tool changes the Windows 10 Start menu to a classic, compact list, which gives you easy access to your programs, recent items, Windows settings, shutdown options, and more. You can then customize it using different layouts and skins.
In Windows 11, because Microsoft has put a Widgets button where the Start button used to be, you first need to open Open-Shell’s Menu Settings, click the Start Menu Style tab, and tick the ‘Replace Start button’ box (see screenshot above right). Choose your preferred button design, and the Start menu will be restored to its rightful place in the bottom-left corner. To hide the Widgets button, right-click the taskbar, choose ‘Taskbar settings’, and switch off Widgets.
Alternatively, you can keep the Windows 11 Start button and menu, but place them in their traditional position, bottom left. Select ‘Taskbar behaviors’ in ‘Taskbar settings’, then click the ‘Taskbar alignment’ dropdown menu, and change the setting from Center to Left.
2 Forcing its Edge browser on users
The Chromium version of Edge is a great browser (especially compared with Internet Explorer), but with so many other options to choose from—including Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi— not everyone wants to use it. Microsoft annoyed many Windows 11 users by making it difficult to set anything other than Edge as your default browser, and though it’s now rectified this blunder, it still won’t let you uninstall Edge.
When you try to remove the browser through the Apps section of the Settings app in Windows 10 or 11, or through ‘Programs and Features’ in the Control Panel, you’ll find that the option is grayed out or unavailable. Microsoft says this is because Edge is “an essential component of our operating system”, but we beg to differ.
HOW TO FIX IT
Even powerful uninstallers such as BC Uninstaller (www.bcuninstaller.com) and O&O AppBuster (tinyurl.com/bpasarhb) can’t remove Edge from Windows 10 or 11. The only method we’ve found to work involves running a batch script created by a GitHub developer called AveYo.
Visit the Edge_Removal.bat page at tinyurl.com/39e5dyhv and click the ‘Copy raw file’ icon in the top-right corner of the script—this looks like two overlapping squares. Open the Notepad app on your PC, and paste the batch script’s code into it. Click the File menu, choose Save As, and select All Files in the ‘Save as type’ dropdown menu. Enter a name for the file, and type .bat at the end—for example, Uninstall_Edge.bat— then click Save.