9 Windows settings EVERY user should change NOW!

so whether you just bought a brand new computer or you've had one for years there's a handful of Windows settings that you need to change right now some of these are for privacy some are for security some are to enhance your PC performance and some are just to make your life a little easier let's get started coming in at number 10 you want to change your Microsoft account to a local account in truth there really is no actual benefit to having a Microsoft account as your primary account on your computer if your account ever gets hacked you might not be able to log into your computer plus it's just an inconvenience and it kind of takes over everything so it's easy to turn that off and change it back to a local account so what you're going to do is you're going to go into your settings you're going to go into accounts and then right underneath your login information change it to sign in with a local account instead it's going to ask are you sure you want to do that go ahead and click next on the next screen you're going to have to confirm your Microsoft account that you've already created and now you can create a new username for your PC with all your existing documents and settings and everything else exactly the same go ahead and create a new username put in a password if you want and click next sign out and finish and it'll take a few seconds and it'll be done now when you sign back in you'll see your new username and you'll have your computer back up and running without all the Microsoft stuff breathing down your throat forcing itself onto your desktop if you go back into accounts you'll now see that you have a local account and there's a link to sign in with a Microsoft account instead that's it number nine you want to turn off that immediate restart after a Windows update now with this option what we want to do is in the search box type update and then click check for updates and then click Advanced options under Advanced options and then uncheck get me up to date which will restart your computer almost immediately after Windows updates are done this could be a problem if you have open documents that you need to close that you haven't saved yet so number eight let's synchronize our browsers so we can use them across multiple devices this one's more of a personal preference but I like all of my browsers on all of my devices to synchronize and have the same passwords and bookmarks across each now I prefer Firefox Chrome has this option as well as do most modern browsers generally all you have to do at the top is either click create an account on whichever browser you're using as you can see here I'm already signed in but if you've never done that before you'll generally have an option to create an account or to sign in at which point you just create an account attach it to your email now your bookmarks passwords all your individual settings if you save them in your computer will be synchronized across all your devices for me I have two cell phones and an iPad and a PC and this makes my life so much easier number six we want to disable Windows fast startup the reason this is important is because when you shut down your computer you don't actually truly shut it down a lot of what you have running is stored in cash that's why you want to disable this option to get your computer when it restarts to give you a fully fresh functional windows so from the search bar you would just type power select choose a power plan so you want to click on choose what the power button does from here you'll see everything is grayed out and you can't make any changes but if you click change settings that are currently unavailable now you can make those changes uncheck turn on Fast startup and then save changes number five we want to match user account control settings to your level of experience now number five which is user account control is important especially if you are a novice user if you're more advanced then I would recommend turning this off but I'm going to show you how what you're basically doing here is telling Windows how much in control you are as far as program changes and system registry changes and things like that so it is a built-in defense mechanism which you can adjust the levels based on your comfort level so you want to search for UAC and then click change user account settings now as you can see for me I have mine set to never notify but for a novice user you want to set it up higher closer to always notify and this way anytime something happens on your computer that you may or may not know exactly what that is you're going going to get a pop-up on your computer from Windows letting you know that A change is about to be made adjust that according to your own personal Comfort level obviously the more advanced you are the less notifications you need but it's a good protection measure regardless number four we want to adjust all the windows privacy and security settings to match your comfort level by default in a Windows installation there are a lot of privacy and security settings that Microsoft leaves enabled that most people don't think about but here's how to change that click on your start button and click settings and then you're going to want to go into privacy and security click on privacy settings and then uncheck any box that you feel uncomfortable with read through these individual settings and you'll see that there are a lot of things in there that Windows does including advertising and privacy settings and things like that turn off anything you don't want same thing for Windows 10 you'll click on your start button go to settings click on privacy and look through all the individual options including General privacy settings location settings which apps have access chew your information or your location all of that is in here and just simply uncheck anything that you don't want coming in at number three we want to remove any unnecessary Windows startup items now this next item is number three on the list because I see this a lot and this can cause a lot of problems especially if you don't know what you're doing you've installed programs in the past and they end up loading themselves in your startup so you will notice your computer getting slower over time because a lot of these things are running every single time the computer starts so here's how to fix that so in Windows 10 all you're going to do is right click on the taskbar go to task manager and then you want to go to Startup anything that you don't recognize just simply right click and disable it it's not going to delete anything it's just going to prevent that item from running when the computer restarts in Windows 11 you can click startup apps in the search box and then just simply go through and uncheck each of these items the same way again it doesn't remove anything it just prevents these items from loading every time the computer boots which means it's going to to be a little bit faster for you each time number two we want to turn off Windows hiding your file extensions by default and if you don't think that one's a big one ask Linus Tech tips about hidden file extensions that's how his Channel with over 21 million subscribers got taken down a few weeks ago now this one is one of my biggest pet peeves for some reason windows by default disables file extensions for most people they're like who cares but this one little feature that Microsoft turns off by default led to Linus having his channel hacked change this setting right now so there's two settings you're going to want to change the first thing we're going to do is enable file extensions but two we're also going to enable showing hidden files so unless you have files to hide you need to uncheck this option so you want to go into options and Under The View tab you want to uncheck height extensions for known file types you want to show hidden files and folders make sure that's checked click apply and then ok now you will see the actual file extensions with every single file on your computer so we finally reach number one the thing that every single computer user needs to make sure is enabled for some reason system restore which is a utility that's built into windows that allows you to restore your settings back to a previously working time period is disabled after Windows updates and sometimes right out of the gate what we need to do is we need to enable system restore and we need to create a restore point and we need to make sure that we have plenty of storage space to do so here's how we do that so in the search box just type create and you'll see create a restore point option now I have my enabled but by default if yours is disabled you would select here on the drive C and it'll say protection off you would click configure and then turn on system protection that will enable system restore from that point just choose the amount of drive space that you want usually I say anywhere from three to five percent is a decent amount of space for restore points what I would recommend is click on create to create a new restore point and call it 100 working if your system is working correctly click create Windows is going to go create a current restore point as your computer is right now with the settings and registry and all that when it's done now you can go back to system restore and when you click next you'll see you have a new restore point so now you can go back and restore your computer if in fact you have any problems with it booting up this is one of the biggest issues I see is trying to repair a computer and they have no restore points and I have nothing to go back to so I literally really have to sometimes completely wipe the computer because I have nothing to restore it back to one of the most important things you might not even know about so there's a handful of things right there that every computer user can do to make their computer safer more secure more customizable and faster let me know down in the comments which computer tweaks you like the most so if your computer's been a little sluggish lately you might want to check out this video right here I walk you through downloading a simple program that's going to completely deep load and clean your computer like you've never seen it before

Channel: Ask Your Computer Guy

Views: 154,500

Keywords: computer settings to change, computer settings to change windows 10, computer settings to change windows 11, windows safety, windows privacy, windows 10

Id: j70UOLVO4I4

Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023