Windows

Windows 10 Technical Preview Review and Features

Windows 10 Technical Preview is now released and is available for download. If you want you can download and install Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Microsoft has skipped a number in there naming scheme and completely missed Windows 9. There is a few different rumours about why Microsoft decided to skip the number 9 but really it doesn’t matter why because it is the same thing either way, Windows 9 is Windows 10.

For Windows 10 Desktop and Laptop users

It seems there was a lot of people that did not like Windows 8 and 8.1. Windows 10 will be a very important release for Microsoft as it will give them the chance to fix what many people think was wrong with Windows 8.

The Start Menu

So a few years ago when Microsoft released Windows 8 they wanted everybody to use the metro interface where the start menu is full screen and they said that it was just as good for touch screen users as traditional mouse and keyboard users. With Windows 10 they have melded the old style start menu and the metro into one. On the left is the traditional menu and on the right is a tiled menu.

If you do like the Metro-Style start menu there is an option to enable and disable both start menu options, I think they should have had this option in Windows 8 and is very good to see that the option to change to your own preference is very good.

windows 10 start menu

Virtual Desktops

In Windows 10 you have the option to use Virtual Desktops. If you are familiar with workspaces in Linux you will feel quite at home with Windows Virtual Desktops. Instead of just having one desktop per monitor you will be able to switch between multiple virtual desktops.

Improved snapping

The Snap function is also being improved, this allows windows to be easily tiles and snap into place.

Metro Apps in Desktop Windows

Rather than Windows forcing you to run your apps in full-screen mode in Windows 10 you are now able to run Metro apps on the desktop in a normal window. So now theoretically more Windows users might use Metro apps from the store. This may get more developers to make apps for the Windows Store for both Windows and Windows phone.

Improved Command Prompt

You will be able to paste using short-cut keys in the Windows 10, this is pretty good for the “geeky” people that like to get their hands dirty with scripting and stuff.

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Hardware

USB Drive Letters Keep Changing – How To Fix

I had a problem with a USB drive that the default letter kept changing.
Even when the USB drives letters were set using the disk management.
Disk management usually works so you can try setting the USB drive’s letter using that.
Follow these steps to allocate the drive letter:
Open the device manager by pressing the “windows key” and “r” at the same time to open the run box and type “diskmgmt.msc”
Right-click the USB drive that you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Click Change, click Assign the following drive letter, click the letter that you want to use, and then click OK.

Then test the changing the USB drives to make sure the drive letters stay the same. If that doesn’t work follow the steps below.

How To Fix USB Drive Letter Changing If Disk Management Doesn’t Work

To actually stop the USB drive letter changing there is a nice little utility that is quite cheap called USBDLM that allows you to set default drive letters.
To use USBDLM to allocate default USB drive letters just follow these steps.

Download USBDLM zip file from their website
Extract the zip file to C:\
Open the folder C:\USBDLM\
Open the file USBDLM_sample.ini
Add the drive letter you want to the USB Drive setting part
Save the file under in the same folder as USBDLM.ini
Run the _install.bat file as an administrator

You will then get a message saying that USBDLM will be running as a service. Allowing USBDLM to run as a service lets the utility run automatically at startup so it can assign the correct drive letter.

I have found that sometimes card readera can affect the reliability of this. If you have a card reader that puts heaps of drive letters in when nothing is plugged into the USB card reader than you will need to set some drive letters for them too, or remove the card reader.

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