Windows Setup for Beginners

1. Introduction: Hello everyone and welcome to this class on how to set up a Windows laptop. If you recently bought a new computer, or it's your first time using the Microsoft operating system class might be for you. I'm going to guide you through the initial setup process. You're going to learn how to remove unnecessary programs and apps known as bloat, where how to clean up the task bar and the startup menu. How to customize your browser focusing on productivity and minimalism, how to install a pop-up blocker. And last but not least, we're going to take a look at privacy settings. So you don't give away too much personal information and data to companies like Microsoft. So hopefully I'll see you on the other side, and thanks for joining. 2. Setup Wizard Settings: All right, So first things first we need to turn on our brand new computer. And the initial setup wizard is going to load. We're going to get a message with the different languages available. We have to choose which language layout. We want to use a non-computer. In my case, I have to select Spanish because I bought the computer and Spain. But in your case, if you're in another country, you would have, for example, English as the language to choose from. After selecting the language, computer is also going to ask for a region as well as the keyboard layout. Once again, select the language and keyboard layout that suits your own needs. And once that's done, you can also select a second keyboard layout. For example, like in my case, I'm going to use English and Spanish once you make your choice and the computer is going to ask you to connect to a Wi-Fi network. And I strongly recommend that you skip this step so it doesn't start downloading stuff in the background. This message is going to show up. So Microsoft is going to try to get you to connect to the Internet, but you can skip this step. You're going to get the Windows ten license agreement. So you can click Okay or next. Once that's done, it's going to ask you for a username. And after that, a password. In my case, I'm not going to use a password, but here is the place to write down a password. This window is important because it's where you're going to change the privacy settings for your Windows ten computer or any other Windows version. So in my case, I turn everything off. This is for tracking purposes, ad purposes, data purposes. You don't need this running in the background. So my recommendation is that you read each and every one of these bullet points, but I prefer to turn them off and I recommend that you do the same. Once that's done, you can click next and then the Cortana assistant is going to show up. I also click next because I'm not going to use Cortana. And later on I'm going to show you how to disable the Cortana assistant. And in my case, because I bought an Acer computer, I get these ASR ID registry options but dismiss them. So if you buy another brand, you're probably going to get these messages as well to try to get you to sign up. But I recommend that you dismiss them as well. Once you've unchecked those boxes and click Next, you'll have finished the setup wizard, and now we can move on to the next lesson. 3. Removing Unnecessary Apps: So once we finish the initial setup wizard, this is the main screen over our computer. And as you can see, there's many icons here, many more icons here, and a couple of icons here. So the first thing I like to do with every new Windows computer is to remove any program that I don't need or I'm not going to use. In the case of Windows ten, as well as Windows 11 or any other Windows version, there's always many programs that you're probably not going to use. So I recommend that you uninstall them as well. So how do we do that? We're gonna come down here to settings, and then we're going to come down here to apps, going to make this bigger. So you can see, and as you can see, we have 79 ups found. And obviously I'm not going to use even half of these. So what I like to do is sort by size and instead of a name, then I can see which apps take up more space. These two I am going to use because I'm screen recording with this program here, and this is my browser of choice. But aside from these two, I'm going to erase many of these other apps. Microsoft OneDrive, for example. I don't use this. I'm going to click on Install. I'm also going to uninstall Skype, for example. Obviously, if you want to use Skype Instead of Zoom, you can leave this on, but in my case I don't use either one of them. So uninstall, mail and calendar, I use Gmail so I don't need this app and so on and so forth. So I'm going to check each and every one of these 75 apps and uninstall all the absolute I don't need. Now, if you take a look and you see, for example, Microsoft Visual CC and all these numbers and you don't know what this means, what this is, you can always open up your browser and type in the name of the app or the program, and then Google will tell you what it is. You can decide if you need that program or not. Some of these apps are necessary for your computer to work properly, but many others aren't. And now we can move on to the next step. 4. Other Apps and Startup: As you can see, we had more than 70 apps in the beginning, and now I only have a 31. So we're going to continue to delete stuff that we don't need. We're going to come here to the left menu bar and we're going to select offline maps here where it says map updates, automatically update maps. We're going to turn this off because we don't want our computer to update the stuff in the background without us knowing. And also because in my case I'm not going to use Microsoft Maps. I only use Google Maps and I use them on my browser. Go. I don't need Microsoft naps on my computer. We can also come here to apps for websites and turn these two off. You can also check under default apps, which are the default apps that you're using on your computer. In my case, these are okay. My web browser is Firefox. If this says Microsoft Edge and you want to use Chrome, for example, you would click here and select Chrome instead of edge or whichever browser you're using. And the last thing we're going to check is the startup menu. By default, usually Microsoft Windows computers have Cortana enabled, but in my case, I don't use Cortana for anything. So obviously I turn it off and I can also turn off windows security notification icon or any other app that I'm sure I'm not going to use when the computer starts up. So if I want to open an app by myself, I'll do that. If there is a big list of apps here that turn on, they just make your computer runs slower when you turn it on and you probably don't need them. Now we can move on to the next lesson where we're going to clean the task bar and the windows startup menu. 5. Clean Taskbar and Windows Menu: Let's begin with these icons here. This one, I don't need this one, so I'm going to hide it. And I'm going to remove this icon here. I'm going to unpin from taskbar. Same with this one. So I'm going to right-click on pin, right-click unpin, going to right-click here. I'm going to hide the Task view button. I'm also going to right-click here and hide show Cortana bottom because I don't use it. Now this looks much better. Now let's move on to the Windows Start menu. And I'm going to right-click and unpin each and every one of these things because I never use them and I don't need them. When it comes to these apps here, I'm going to uninstall, or I'm going to unpin. Now the menu bar looks much better and I'm going to check one-by-one, each and every one of these folders or programs. And also again, see which one I can uninstall, remove, delete, or simply unpin from the menu bar. So I'm not going to use Booking.com. I'm going to click More Open file location. And I'm going to remove this quick axis icon, this one as well. And I'm going to keep scrolling down and remove everything that I don't need. And obviously some of these apps or programs can't be uninstalled with the uninstall or that comes by default on Windows, we're going to need external apps or what are known as scripts in case you're not sure how that works and you're afraid of breaking, let's say your computer, you can always right-click and then go into the app settings and simply turn off any kind of app permission that the app has by default. For example, if I come down here to your phone, I can't uninstall this program with a default on installer from windows, but I can right-click, then click More Apps Settings. Once again, come here and remove this background app permission. So I'm going to turn it off. Then I can exit this window. And I can come down here to Windows accessories, for example, drop-down menu and right-click here because I'm not going to use math input panel and uninstall. That action opens up this other window. And I'm going to remove the math recognizer by uninstalling. And I'm also going to do that with the Windows facts and scan. Or I can also remove Microsoft Quick Assist. And now I've removed these three apps that I'm not going to use. Let's exit this window. Now we can move on to the next lesson where I'm going to show you how to turn off background apps. 6. Background Apps and Privacy Settings: Now that we've removed all the apps that we didn't want, we're going to come down here to the search bar and we're going to type background apps, and we're going to choose the first option. This is in Spanish, but it also means background apps. So we're going to click here. And as you can see, we have quite a big list of apps that run in the background. So instead of turning off one-by-one, which is gonna come up here. And instead of letting apps running in the background, we're going to turn this off. Now. All of these apps do not run in the background. They're not slowing down your computer. Obviously, you can still use these apps, but they're gonna be turned on when the computer actually does need them, not all the time. And now we're going to come here to the Home tab. Click here. And we're going to come down to privacy. And we're also going to turn these off. So we're not gonna let windows track and we're not gonna let websites drag, and we're not gonna let anything suggests or use advertising ID. Nowadays, many companies want all of our data and we already give them enough data. So I strongly recommend that you turn off all of these settings and your computer will also run a bit faster. But now we can move on what I'm going to show you how I customize my browser. I'm using Firefox, but it can also be applied to Chrome or any other browser. 7. Browser Customization: That's fire up our browser. And as I said in my case, I'm using Firefox, but it doesn't matter. You can use Chrome, Edge, brave, whatever by default. In the case of Firefox, it's using MSN as the main website. And I don't want that. I'm going to come here to the right and look for the Settings tab. This startup menu you can choose if you want to open previous windows and tabs. Hi, leave it unchecked, but you do whatever you want. I do recommend always checking if Firefox or Chrome or brave or whatever is your default browser. Otherwise, many times when those who will try to use Edge as your default browser, if you use Microsoft Edge, then of course use that one. But if you're not, it's better to check if you're a browser is the default browser. And then on the left column, I also go to home, and I changed the homepage to google.com. But of course, you can also change this setting and choose whatever you want. I just recommend Google because it's cleaner. And then my case, I removed the shortcuts because I don't want sponsored the shortcuts and I only leave web search. Now if I open a new tab, this is what it will look like. I'm going to come here and I'm also going to remove these bookmarks. So right-click Delete, bookmark, right-click Delete, and right-click Delete. Going to close these windows here, I'm going to come here. Right-click, remove from toolbar. I'm also going to right-click here and remove from toolbar. And now I'm going to add an extension which is ad block plus. And it's available for every browser. It's not mandatory, but I do recommend it. It's free and it blocks almost every pop-up, Though, not only annoying ads in YouTube, for example, but also many different pop-ups that show up in different websites. Many of these popups actually track your activity on the internet and I don't like that, so I strongly recommend this add-on or extension. You just look here and get a book plus for Firefox or Chrome or brave or whatever. Let's add to Firefox. We click on Add. And now what's it's finished installing. We already have it up here in our browser. We can click anytime and turn it on or off for each and every individual website. And we can also come here and click on block element and select an element to block, we click book, and that's suddenly disappears, so it's very useful. And lastly, we're going to come back here, manage more settings. We're going to come to the left many war privacy and security. And we're going to scroll down to Firefox data collection and use. And we're going to uncheck these and this one as well. Because we don't want to send technical data nor install and run studies. Obviously, you can check this if you want to put in my case, I don't recommend it. 8. Disabling Cortana: As you may know, Cortana is a small assistant, a bit similar to Siri or Alexa, but it comes built-in with Windows, laptops and other Microsoft devices. In my case, I don't use it and it takes up resources from my computer. We're going to come down here to the search bar, and we're going to type G P edit, and then click here, and this window pops up. We're gonna make it bigger. So you can see on the menu bar on the left, we're going to look for administrative templates, Windows, components, and we're going to double-click there. And then we have to scroll down where it says Search click there. And as you can see up here, it says allow Cortana, we're going to double-click and this window pops up. And instead of not configured, enabled or disabled, we're going to select disabled. And now we're going to click Apply. And Okay, and once that's done, we have to close this window, and now we have to reboot RPC. 9. Other Classes: That's it for this class. I hope you found it somewhat useful and that your computer runs better at their following these steps. If you want to see more classes, feel free to follow my Skillshare profile. Once again, thank you for joining and I'll see you in the next one.