Windows 10 has reached end of life, which means Microsoft has stopped supporting the operating system unless you opt in to receive extended service updates. If you've recently upgraded to Windows 11 and some of the changes are annoying you, here are some ways to quickly fix some of them.
Windows 11 brings a lot of visual changes, and not all of them are popular. Among least Popular is the new right-click menu, which replaces the classic right-click menu with one that's prettier but generally less useful.
You can always Shift+right-click to open the extended (old) context menu, but why click an extra button if you don't have to?
To restore the original right-click context menu, we need to use a registry tweak.
Editing the registry can cause problems if something goes wrong. To be on the safe side, you should consider creating a backup first.
Start by opening the Terminal. Click the Start button, find Terminalthen click on the first result. You can open Terminal as administrator if you want, butThis is not necessary for this to work.
Now copy and paste the following command into the terminal, then press Enter:
reg add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f
If everything went correctly, you will see “Operation completed successfully” in the Terminal window.
The change will take effect the next time you restart explorer. To do this, you can restart your computer or manually restart Explorer from the terminal since you're already there.
Copy and paste the following command into the terminal, then press Enter.
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe; start explorer.exe
You'll see your screen flicker briefly as you restart File Explorer, and then every time you right-click, you'll have the full right-click menu.
Microsoft also changed the Start menu layout when developing Windows 11. In many ways, it seems less useful than the basic Start menu design we've had since Windows XP. It takes up a ton of space and displays very little.
To make this more useful I use a program called Windhoekwhich offers a huge number of settings.
Disclaimer: Like many similar projects, these customizations are created by the community. WindHawk hasn't had any notable problems with malicious settings, but it's theoretically possible.
First download and install Windhawk from the website Windhoek website. Click the “Browse” tab in the top right corner, then click “More details” on the Windows 11 Start Menu Stylist card. If it's not there, just search start menu style and it will appear.
Click Install at the top, select Accept Risk and Install, then wait for everything to download.
Once complete, click Settings, select the theme you want from the drop-down menu, and click Save Settings. I chose Windows11_Metro10 because it maintains the overall aesthetic of Windows 11, but organizes everything the way it was in Windows 10.
The next time you open the Start menu, you'll see the new theme you selected.
I don't use desktop icons, so The main way to interact with the computer is through the command palette. or the Start menu. However, there is literally never a time when I want to use the Start menu to search. Bing. Fortunately, you can get rid of it with just one command.
Open the Start menu, find Terminalthen click “Run as administrator”.
Then copy and paste the following command into the terminal:
reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0
If everything goes well, you'll see an “Operation completed successfully” message and Bing will stop bothering you every time you search for something using the Start menu.
Get rid of the co-pilot
From simple apps like Notepad and Paint to the Microsoft Office suite, Copilot has it all, whether you want it or not.
You'll also find that after some major Windows 11 updates, a separate Copilot app is automatically installed.
When I use AI, I prefer to use one that is hosted locally, so I completely uninstall Copilot from my computer. To do this, find co-pilot from the Windows Start menu, then right-click the result and click Uninstall.
Just keep an eye out – maybe it will return after a major version update.
Get rid of OneDrive
OneDrive is Microsoft's cloud service that's pretty deeply integrated into Windows 11. Not only is it a nuisance, it's also buggy (or at least unintuitive) and can sometimes accidentally delete your files. As a result, I replaced it with a more privacy-focused alternative.
To make sure I don't accidentally save anything to OneDrive, I just delete it completely.
Before deleting OneDrive, be sure to make copies of any important files you want to keep, just to be sure nothing goes wrong.
To remove OneDrive, open the Start menu and search for it. OneDrive. Then select “Delete” on the right or right-click OneDrive and select “Delete.”
After deletion, you will most likely find that at least one folder has been removed from Windows Explorer.
However, it's hard to argue with the benefits of having cloud storage on your PC. At the very least, it makes backing up certain important data so convenient that I'm much more likely to do so than I would otherwise be.
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I've been using Proton for a long time without any major glitches. It even integrates into File Explorer, just like OneDrive does—without any errors when syncing files.
