Tag: operating systems

Windows 10 Start Menu–not your father’s old station wagon

Windows 10 Start Menu

Start Menu in Windows 10 – the pop-up look from Windows 7 with the tiles from Windows 8

Windows 7 and its predecessors had a traditional pop-up start menu with an option to see all the programs or the frequently-used programs on your computer. This was presented in a list rather than a cluster of icons or tiles.

But Windows 8 headed down a totally different path with a dashboard-style layout hat has all of the programs or a user-defined set of programs represented as tiles. This had thrown many computer users off the operating system and caused some unnecessary worry.

The Start Menu

Windows 10 brought back the pop-up Start Menu that looks like a combination of the traditional Start menu and Windows 8’s tile-based look. This includes the famed “Live Tiles” that are always updated with new content thus working like a dashboard.

In the early days of your experience with Windows 10, you can mess around getting that tile-based Start Menu area looking how you want. If you run Windows 10 on a touchscreen laptop or a computer with a touchscreen monitor, this menu style can work just as well for you.

Getting it right!

You can organise your tiles in to groups by dragging them in to the space between two groups to create a group or dragging them in to a group to have them part of that group. This can be done in both the traditional pop-up view and the Tablet Mode view mentioned later on at the end.

Then you can name each group by right-clicking or “dwelling” your finger on the group name then typing in the name you want to give it.

Browsing for that program

Windows 10 Start Menu - All Apps highlighted

Looking for that program – click All Apps on the Start Menu

This will be a situation for those of you who have held out with Windows 7 or its predecessors, where you will be wanting to know where all of your programs have gone even though they aren’t on the Start Menu or Taskbar.

Browsing for that particular program? Click on “All Apps” to see a list of all programs on your computer. Then, click on any of the letters to bring up a list of alphabetical letters. Subsequently, you just need to click on the first letter of the program’s title to be sent straight to a list of the programs beginning with that letter.

You then have two options to have your program readily accessible. One is to “pin” your program to the Taskbar so it is always accessible and this setup may remind you of the station-preset buttons on your car radio. On the other hand, you could “pin” your program to the Start Menu where it will appear as a tile which you shift around until it is in the right place for you.

Tablet Mode

Windows 10 Tablet Mode

How Windows 10 looks when you use Tablet Mode

The Tablet Mode gives you a view that is not dissimilar to how you have operated your Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 computer. It is automatically selected if you detach a keyboard from your detachable-style “2-in-1” tablet or fold over a convertible notebook so the screen becomes a tablet. But you can manually select this mode on any Windows 10 computer.

Windows 10 Notification Menu buttons wiht Tablet Mode highlighted

How to select Tablet Mode manually

As I have said just before, this doesn’t just those of you who work with tablet computers or 2-in-1 devices. You can use it with a laptop or desktop computer and it doesn’t need a touchscreen to benefit from this function. Rather you would use your mouse or trackpad to navigate around the screen and a scroll-enabled mouse earns its keep by allowing you to scroll downwards. In the Notification Menu, you have a button labelled Tablet Mode which you can use to toggle between this mod and the regular Desktop Mode.

I would recommending having your screen in the Tablet mode if you are trying to sort out the Start Menu groups after an upgrade because you can use the whole of your screen’s real estate to do this.

Search Bar

There is an always-visible Search Bar on the Taskbar which you can fill in your search requests for local or Web-hosted resources. This works with Cortana which is the personal digital assistant in the same vein as Siri or Google Now.

Here, ordering a search is as simple as clicking or tapping on the search area and typing in what you are after.

Conclusion

Anyone who has worked with any of Windows’ incarnations will find the Windows 10 Start Menu as something that doesn’t daunt you but allows you to get more out of the operating system.

Making it easier to safely remove that USB flash drive in Windows

Safely Remove Hardware icon in Notification area

Notification area space where hidden icons exist – click on Customize to determine how they will appear

You may want to be sure you are doing the right thing when it comes to properly and safely removing that USB flash drive, external hard disk or SD card but it may be hard to find the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon in the Notification bar at the bottom right of your screen.

What tends to happen if you haven’t been doing anything regarding removable storage is that icon becomes sidelined and available behind the up-arrow on the Taskbar. This is more so if other applications have claimed space on the Notification Bar and seldom-used icons exist behind that up-arrow.

Notification Area Icons customisation screen - when you click on Customize

Notification Area Icons customisation screen – when you click on Customize

There is a way to work around this problem by customising the Notification Bar icons to make sure that certain icons appear always.

To do this, click on the up-arrow at the left of the Notification Bar to pop up all of the icons. These will appear in a white square and you will also see the word “Customize”. Click “Customize” to see a list of the icons with each icon having its own drop-down box that determines how and when it will appear.

Options available for each icon in the Notification Area Icons customisation screen

Options available for each icon

The different modes are:

  • Show icon and Notifications. This will have the icon appear at all times and “pop up” any notification messages. Here, you may want to have the icon always visible and accessible especially if you instigate tasks from that icon.
  • Hide icon and Notifications: The icon won’t appear at all in the Notification Bar even if there is a relevant notification or it changes state. This may be useful where you find an icon always popping up messages
  • Only show notifications. The icon pops up when there is a relevant notification and will show that notification. In some cases, this icon may appear if it changes state. It may apply to “sentinel” icons that appear to crowd out the Notification Bar even though they seldom yield a notification or change state.
Preferred seting for Safely Remove Hardware And Eject Media icon

Preferred seting for Safely Remove Hardware And Eject Media icon

Here, having the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon set to “Show icon and Notifications” means that while there is a USB storage device connected to the computer or an SD card inserted in the computer, this icon will appear. This will make it easy for you to know what to click when you need to remove the USB hard disk USB memory key or memory card.

You may also find this of us with other Notification Bar icons where you are always instigating tasks from or needing to keep an eye on incase they change state like the Skype icon.

Why do you need to safely remove or eject removeable media?

USB memory key

USB storage device

As you use a computer, you will have to get in to the habit of removing or ejecting external or removeable media safely and in a proper way rather than just unplugging the device or pulling out the card.

What is this about safely removing or ejecting removeable storage?

Mainframe and similar large computer setups required the operating system to logically mount a tape or disk pack after the system operator installed the medium in the appropriate drive. This procedure makes the files on the medium available to the operating system and computer programs

USB external hard disk

USB hard disks are more critical with this procedure

Then when the medium was finished with, the system operator had to logically unmount the disk or tape which forced all files to he written back to the medium and the operating system to deem the files on the medium to be unavailable. This procedure was also simplified when the tape and disk-pack drives used electromechanical readiness detection like sensing when a lid or door was closed or a tape was past the heads to let the host computer know that they had media on board and were ready to work with it. It would then require the operator to logically mount the medium and make it available to the system’s programs, typically by typing a special “mount” command.

Desktop operating systems like MS-DOS did away with this to simplify the operating procedures for most people especially as they were used just by one user compared to the previous mainframe systems that were used by multiple concurrent users. It also allowed the use of low-cost disk and tape systems on these computers.

Here, these operating systems immediately wrote back all file changes to the disk when a file was created, modified or deleted. As well, if a program was after a file, it would perform a directory search to determine if the file was there on that disk and the operating system didn’t cache the removeable medium’s directory structure in to the host’s memory. In a lot of cases, the act of closing the disk drive’s door or inserting a 3.5” floppy disk cause the operating system to start reading the disk’s directory in to memory.

But the Apple Macintosh maintained a similar operating requirement to the larger computer systems where you had to logically remove a floppy disk or CD from the system typically by dragging the disk’s icon to the Trash before the computer ejected the disk. This was facilitated with these computers having floppy drives that implemented electromechanical load-eject mechanisms and no hardware “eject” button ever since the platform was created.

This was carried through with Zip drives and other similar removeable-media drives that used any form of electromechanical load-eject mechanisms. The presence of an eject button on these drives typically worked as a way of telling the operating system about an intent to remove the medium so it is logically unmounted and was also implemented with newer iterations of the MS-DOS / Windows operating system along with driver programs for earlier iterations of that operating system.

Similarly, those of you who have used the MiniDisc format, especially with an MD deck or a music system that has an integrated MD recorder, may notice this taking place when you are recording to these discs. What will happen with these decks is that a message will flash up on the unit’s display screen that it is writing all the changes to the disk when you press the eject button or power off the unit before the disk is available or the unit switches off. This makes sure that all of the recording and editing activity is properly committed to the disk and is intact.

Why was there a need to tell the operating system that you were intending to remove the medium

If removeable media is removed by surprise, there can be problems with the quality of the data that is written to the medium because the operating system and applications think that certain files on the medium are available to be worked with.

This can lead to corrupted files because all the changes to the file being worked on haven’t been written to the medium completely. There are also issues with the files being locked by programs that are writing back the necessary changes so that other programs can’t interfere with this process, and if a program hasn’t released these locks or committed all of the changes, the files may not be available for other programs to work with. In the worst cases, your computer can go in to a headspin if it is working with a file that exists one minute and doesn’t exist the next.

How do you safely remove USB removeable media?

Windows Explorer (File Explorer) eject option

Eject option in Windows Explorer

With a computer, you make sure that you have closed the files you are working on if you were using a program to work with them. Then you perform a safe-removal procedure that is dependent on your operating system.

Macintosh users simply drag the icon representing the removeable storage to the Trash icon at the bottom right of the Desktop screen. Then there will be a message to say that it is safe to remove the medium.

Windows users can do this in two ways. They can open Windows Explorer (File Explorer) or My Computer and right-click on the removeable storage which will be represented as its own drive letter. They then select the “Eject” option to begin safely removing the storage device.

Safely Remove Hardware icon in Notification area

Safely Remove Hardware icon in Notification area

The other method requires you to click on the Notification Area on the Taskbar and right-click on the “Safely Remove Hardware And Eject Media” icon. Here, you are presented with a list of USB storage devices that are connected to your computer. Click on the one you want to remove to begin safely removing it. In some cases, a physical device may represent two or more logical volumes (drive letters) because it has been partitioned as such. Here, you select the physical device’s name to safely remove that device.

Safely Remove Hardware devices list

Devices available to remove

USB-based removeable-media adaptors like floppy-disk drives, Zip drives and memory-card readers have the ability to safely remove a particular medium or the whole device. Here, you can click on the medium to remove the card or disk or click on the physical device name to remove the device before you unplug it.

Safely remove hardware devices list

Two logical devices in one physical device – the one that is written clearly is the one to remove

This is more important with those devices that handle multiple media types like some multi-slot memory-card readers or devices that have a combination of fixed and removeable storage options like some digital cameras and camcorders that have internal storage along with an SD or microSD card slot. In the latter situation, these devices would have fixed storage greyed out while the removeable storage is written in black.

I have prepared a PDF reference sheet about the procedure needed to safely remove your removeable media from your Windows computer. Download and print this and keep it by your computer if you or others need to know how to do this properly.

Android users would go to the Storage menu and select the “Unmount SD Card” option for the SD card or “Unmount Mass Storage” for storage devices connected to their mobile devices via USB “On The Go” connectivity.

Safe to remove notification

It is safe to remove

For other devices like A/V devices that write to an SD card or USB memory key, you would have to go to the device’s menu and select the “Unmount”, “Remove” or, more likely, “Eject” option. This process would be analogous to ejecting a tape, CD or MiniDisc so you can work with another medium.

Of course, powering off the equipment properly such as selecting a logical shutdown option would prepare any media or removeable devices attached to the equipment for safe removal.

Conclusion

Once you know how to properly and safely remove media or detach USB storage devices from your computer or similar device, you can avoid situations which can place your computer’s reliability or the data on that medium at risk.

Moving those games to another hard disk without breaking them

Article

Windows Explorer (File Explorer) - two or more hard disks

Two or more hard disks or partitions on your computer may make you want to move games to the larger disk

How To Move A PC Game To Another Hard Drive (Without Re-Downloading It) | LifeHacker

New Information

How to Move Microsoft Store Games To A Different Partition | Next Of Windows

How to Move GOG Games to Another Drive or Computer | iFindSoft

My Comments

You may have two hard disks in your tower-style desktop computer, or the main hard disk is partitioned in to two spaces and you want to move your games to the secondary disk or partition. Or you are running a laptop with a small hard disk and want to use a USB external hard disk for your games.

External hard disk

An external hard disk could be useful for offloading games from your laptop

This may come across as being very difficult for games based on game managers like the Steam or Origin systems, or the Microsoft Store; which typically put all the software on the main disk or partition i.e. Drive C: . But how can you move an existing library out to the other disk or partition or to an external hard disk?

Steam startup screen

Steam – one of the most common games managers

One way is to use a utility like the “Steam Mover” utility to move the files and create symbolic links (system references) to them.

Another way would be to use the game manager to logically move the games across to the other storage location. This is simply by redefining where the game library should be for each of the games.

Steam

  1. Steam - Settimgs - Downloads menu

    Steam – Settimgs – Downloads menu

    In Steam, you use the “Add Library Folder” option in Settings>Downloads>Steam Library Folders to create the new library folder on the disk or partition you are moving your library to.

    Library Folders list in Steam

    Library Folders list in Steam

  2. Then you would need to add a “steamapps” folder to that folder you created in the previous step and insert in to that a “common” folder using File Explorer (Windows Explorer in Windows 7 and earlier). Then you copy the game folders using File Explorer from the existing steamapps\common folder to the newly-created steamapps\common folder.
  3. Using Steam, you then right-click on the game and select “Delete Local Content” to logically uninstall the game at its old location, then click the Install button to logically install the game at its new location. This routine is about creating new logical references to the game’s new location.

Origin

  1. In Origin, you just create a folder in the new location for the games using File Explorer then copy the games over to that location.
  2. Then you start Origin and go to the “Application Settings>Advanced” menu and update the Downloaded Games option to reflect the games’ new locations. This step tells Origin where to download games files for newer games purchases.
  3. Then you would have to go to the My Games view and tell Origin to re-install the games by clicking “Download”. Here, the games aren’t being drawn down from Origin’s servers but are having logical changes to point to the new location.

Microsoft Store

  1. Click on “Settings” which is the “gear” icon within Windows, then open “Apps And Features” or “Apps” depending in how old your Windows 10 build is
  2. Find the game you want to move and click the “Move” button. You will see a list of volumes you can move your game to.
  3. Select that volume to begin the software move process.
  4. Beware not all games offered through Microsoft Store will offer this simplified software-move experience

GOG Galaxy

Most games installed through GOG Galaxy will be simple to move if you are familiar with the Windows Explorer or similar file managers.

  1. Use Windows Explorer to create a folder on your destination hard disk called “GOG Galaxy”. Then, within that folder, create another folder called “Games”.
  2. Again use Windows Explorer to “copy and paste” the game folder from “C:\Program Files” or “C:\Program Files (x86)” folder to the “GOG Galaxy\Games” folder you have created on your destination hard disk or partition. You will find the game folders in the “GOG Galaxy\Games” within the abovementioned Program Files folder..
    It will be more likely for those of us running a 64-bit Windows computing setup to have these games in the “C:\Program Files (x86) folder due to them being written for 32-bit Windows computing setups.
  3. Run the GOG Galaxy software and  reimport the games you have moved to the secondary hard disk. Here, you click the “gear” icon at the top right of the GOG user interface. Then you select “Add Games And Friends”, then “Scan Folders for GOG Games”.
  4. You will be asked to find the folder where you moved your game to. Once you select this folder, you will find that GOG Galaxy will integrate the data that is in the new location.
  5. On the other hand, you may then have to run GOG Galaxy and enter the “Add Games And Friends” menu. Here, you would select “Add Game Manually”. Then you select the game’s title and be required to look for and select the game’s primary executable file which has the game’s title.

Different game installers may use different methods for shifting the logical position of your game library or allowing to move games between one or more libraries.

A problem that may surface with this kind of routine is that if Windows decides to allocate a different drive letter to your removeable storage device every time you connect it, you may end up with unreliable operation. Here, you may have to run the “Download” or “Install” routine to logically update the game manager to the current drive-letter location.

This situation could be easily redressed by integrating library management functionality in to game-manager or app-store software so you can determine where to shift games or other programs. As well, the game manager could reference volumes by volume-names as well as drive letters.

Similarly, game managers or app stores focused on games could simplify the process of setting up games to run entirely from USB memory keys or USB hard disks in a manner to facilitate portable play. This could include installing a copy of the game manager on the medium, managing multiple titles on one medium along with storing the state of play on that medium.

Update:

15 December 2020

Added information for Microsoft Store and GOG Galaxy

An operating system rewrite may make it run smoothly on older hardware

Article

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultrabook

After a few versions, operating systems on computing equipment will need to be reworked

Apple iOS 9 upgrade could make old iPhones feel new again | The Age

My Comments

A common practice that takes place when an operating system is being written for a computing platform is that extra code is bolted on to the existing code to give it more functionality or cater to newer hardware. This happens due to newer peripheral types or connection methods being available to the computing platform or these devices being improved; along with security and stability questions that are raised through the software’s lifespan being answered.

But after a succession of releases, the operating system’s software-footprint becomes increasingly larger and ends up being slower to run. In the case of battery-operated equipment like smartphones, tablets and laptops, this same situation places a strain on the amount of time you can run this device on its own batteries.

This is more true when the operating system is partnered with older hardware that can be slower or not have enough storage capacity. It then comes to a tipping point in the operating system’s life that the software has to be rewritten from the ground up for improved performance and to have the newer abilities factored in to the software’s codebase.

This had happened with Windows when the security enhancements that were added on to Windows Vista made that version of the operating system become too slow and unwieldy. Microsoft subsequently rewrote the Windows codebase to provide for a highly-stable highly-secure operating system in the form of Windows 7.

It also happened with Android where version 4.3 Jelly Bean and 4.4 Kitkat became unwieldy with certain functions like handling Bluetooth or security-related functions. Android 5 Lollipop had a lot of this functionality written in to its codebase rather than being tacked on thus making for an operating system that was more stable.

Now it is happening with Apple’s operating systems – the iOS mobile operating system and MacOS X operating system. Both these operating systems will be undergoing a rewrite with minimum emphasis on new functionality but more to iron out the bugs. The Age article highlighted the fact that iOS 9 will work more “tightly” on older iPhones like the iPhone 4 Series, giving some sort of freshness to these devices.

A reality that can happen after one of these major overhauls is that as the computer scene changes and the operating system undergoes further revisions to accommodate the new changes, it could end up being bloated again. Again, this is the time that one of these major rewrites would have to take place in order to keep devices of that platform running smoothly.

Pre-baked operating systems to be the norm for the Internet Of Everything

Article

Google reportedly building an OS for the Internet of Things | Engadget

My Comments

As part of developing Windows 10, Microsoft released a variant of the operating system for small-form embedded devices such as what would represent the “Internet Of Things” or “Internet Of Everything”. Now Google has fronted up with a similar operating system that is pitched for the same purpose.

But why these operating systems? Designing a device that is to be “connected” typically requires the manufacturer to shoehorn a task-specific operating system for this device and typically these devices require one that has a small storage, memory and power footprint.  There is also the expectation that the device will have very limited user interaction capabilities, perhaps only a switch and LED.

These operating systems won’t require the manufacturer to reinvent the wheel for functionality like communications or power management. Rather they can concentrate on what the device is all about and build the code necessary for its functionality. This may also allow them to concentrate on differentiating the device they build from the “rest of the pack” and make it more compelling.

But could this bring forth a level playing field for the “Internet Of Everything” which assures connectivity and interoperability along with devices that are secure by design?