Chapter 12
Customizing Windows with the Control Panels
In This Chapter
Understanding the two Windows control panels
Altering the appearance of Windows
Changing video modes
Installing or removing apps and programs
Adjusting your mouse
Automatically setting the computer’s time and date
Most science fiction movies include a close-up of a smoking control panel, ready to burst into flames. If that happens in Windows, grab an extra fire extinguisher because Windows contains two switch-packed control panels:
Settings app: The easily accessible Settings app is full of oversized buttons. Windows 10 expands it quite a bit from the one seen in Windows 8 and 8.1. It’s now packed with so many buttons that you may never need to leave it.- Control Panel: The Control Panel from earlier Windows version lives on in Windows 10, but its most frequently used switches now live in the Settings app. The Control Panels’ remaining switches live on mostly for techies.
Although separate, the two clusters of switches occasionally join forces. Sometimes a click on the Settings app whisks you back to the Control Panel of yesteryear for you to flip the final switch. Likewise, some Control Panel options push you back to the Settings app to complete the job.
But no matter which bank of switches you face, they both let you customize the look, feel, behavior, and vibe of Windows. This chapter explains the switches and sliders you’ll want to tweak, and it steers you away from the ones that are prone to causing fires.
One word of caution: Some settings can be changed only by the person holding the almighty Administrator account — usually the computer’s owner. If Windows refuses to flip a switch, call the PC’s owner for help.
Finding the Right Switch
Windows 10 adds more controls than ever to the Settings app, but the older Control Panel still holds the reins for a few settings. That means it’s still difficult to know which spot holds the switch you need to flip.
When dealing with two control panels filled with nesting menus, you’ll rarely stumble randomly across the setting you need. So, instead of clicking aimlessly at menus, tell Windows to find the switch for you.
Follow these steps to find the setting you need:
Click the Start button, tap in the adjacent Search box, and type a word describing your desired setting.
When you type the first letter, every setting containing that letter appears in a list above the Search box. If you don’t know the exact name of your setting, begin typing a keyword: display, mouse, user, privacy, or something that describes your need.
Don’t see the right setting? Press the Backspace key to delete the letters you’ve typed and then try again with a different word.
The Search box, described in Chapter 7, also lists other matches for your keyword: files on your computer, apps from Windows Store, and even items found on websites.
Click your desired setting on the list.
Windows takes you directly to that setting on the appropriate control panel.
When searching for a setting, always try the Search box first. Spending a few minutes at the Search pane yields better results than scouring the hundreds of settings stuffed in the two Windows control panels.
Setting the Stage with the Settings App
The newly enhanced Settings app in Windows 10 contains many more settings than before. You can find most of your settings there now, sparing you a trip to the old Control Panel from previous Windows versions.
To open the Settings app, click the Start button and click the word Settings near the bottom of the Start menu’s left pane.
The Settings app appears, as shown in Figure 12-1. In fact, the Settings app looks nearly identical whether you’re viewing Windows 10 on a PC, tablet, phone, or even on your TV.
Figure 12-1: The Settings app lets you change your computer’s behavior.
System: This huge catch-all collects settings that don’t fit neatly anywhere else. For instance, you can find ways to adjust your monitor’s resolution — the amount of information it can pack onto a screen without making everything too tiny to read. You even find settings for how the Maps app should react when disconnected from the Internet.
Devices: In Windows Land, devices are physical things such as your mouse, keyboard, printer, scanner. Accordingly, this area lets you adjust your mouse’s scroll wheel, as well as how your computer reacts when you insert a memory card. In short, it’s a hodgepodge of settings that you find mostly by searching in the Start menu’s Search box, as described in this chapter’s previous section.
Network & Internet: The Wi-Fi settings listed here are more easily accessed elsewhere. (Click the Wi-Fi icon in the taskbar, as described in Chapter 9.) As a result, this area remains mostly a techie’s holdout. Here, geeks can tweak their VPN (Virtual Private Network), and old-schoolers can create dial-up Internet connections. Most items listed here simply drop you off at in dusty corner of the desktop’s old Control Panel.
Personalization: Visit here to choose a new photo for your desktop or lock screen, the image that greets you when you first turn on your PC. Head here to customize portions your Start menu, as well, by choosing whether to display recently opened items for convenient return trips.
Accounts: Head here to create or change accounts for people who can use your computer, a chore I cover in Chapter 14, as well as to delete accounts for those no longer welcome. This area also lets you change your password or account picture. If you work on more than one PC, visit the Sync Your Settings section to control what settings should link to your Microsoft account.
Time & Language: Visited mostly by frequent fliers, this set-it-once-and-forget-it area lets you change your time zone, adjust the time and date formats to match your region, and tweak other settings relating to your language and geographic location.
Ease of Access: These settings make Windows more navigable for people with challenges in vision and hearing.
Privacy: In today’s age, there’s very little privacy left on the Internet. Nonetheless, this section lets you see the controls that Windows offers to limit the amount of information apps and websites can gather about you. For example, you can control which apps can access your location and control your camera, as well as which apps can see your list of contacts in the People app.
Update and Recovery: Drop by here at least once to set up your File History backup, covered in Chapter 18. The Recovery area offers powerful troubleshooting tools, also covered in Chapter 18.
Bringing out the Big Guns: The Desktop’s Control Panel
Although Windows 10 considerably beefs up the Settings app, sometimes you need to bring out the big guns. The desktop’s Control Panel lets you while away an entire workweek opening icons and flipping switches to fine-tune Windows. Part of the attraction comes from the Control Panel’s magnitude: It houses nearly 50 icons, and some icons summon menus with dozens of settings and tasks. It offers familiarity, too, because many of its settings haven’t changed much for 20 years.
To open the desktop’s Control Panel, right-click the Start button and choose Control Panel from the pop-up menu.
To save you from searching aimlessly for the right switch, the Control Panel lumps similar items together in its Category view, as shown in Figure 12-2. Like the Settings app, the Control Panel sports a Search box in its upper-right corner for finding settings dealing with a particular subject. If you hover your mouse pointer over a major category, the Control Panel describes the available settings.
Figure 12-2: Rest your mouse pointer over any of the Control Panel’s eight categories to see the settings it contains.
Below each category’s name, shortcuts list that category’s most popular offerings. The System and Security category icon in Figure 12-2, for example, offers shortcuts to review your computer’s maintenance and security status, turn on the File History backup, and access troubleshooting tools.
Some controls don’t fall neatly into categories, so they’re not listed. To see every icon the Control Panel offers, choose either Large Icons or Small Icons from the View By drop-down list, shown in the top-right corner of Figure 12-2. The window quickly displays all umpteen-zillion Control Panel icons, as shown in Figure 12-3. (To return to the Category view in Figure 12-2, select Category from the View By drop-down list.)
Figure 12-3: The Large Icons view displays an icon for every setting in the Control Panel.
Don’t think something’s astray if your Control Panel differs from the one in Figure 12-3. Different programs, accessories, and computer models often add their own icons to the Control Panel. Different versions of Windows, which I describe in Chapter 1, may also have slightly different icons.
Rest your mouse pointer over any confusing icon or category in the Control Panel, and Windows thoughtfully explains its meaning in life. (Add this perk to the list of reasons why touchscreen owners will want a mouse when visiting the Windows desktop.)
The desktop’s Control Panel gathers a plethora of switches in Windows into one well-stocked panel, but it’s certainly not the only way to change the settings. You can almost always jump to these same settings by right-clicking the item you want to change — be it your desktop, an icon, or a folder — and choosing Properties from the pop-up menu.
The rest of this chapter lists the Control Panel’s categories shown earlier in Figure 12-2, the reasons you’d ever want to visit them, and any shortcuts that jump straight to the setting you need. It also explains when a Control Panel setting drops you off at the Settings app, where you make the final changes.
System and Security
Like an old car or a new friendship, Windows needs occasional maintenance. In fact, a little bit of maintenance can make Windows run so much more smoothly that I devote the best of Chapter 13 to that subject. There, you discover how to speed up Windows, free up hard drive space, back up your data, and create a safety net called a restore point.
This category’s security section contains a full brigade of soldiers, and I’ve written field manuals for them in Chapter 11. The backup program in Windows, File History, gets its due in Chapter 13.
Windows 7 owners can find a treat in this section of the Control Panel: Windows 10 brings back the Windows 7 Backup and Restore program. (It was missing from Windows 8 and 8.1.)
User Accounts
You won’t visit this area of the Control Panel much. Windows 10 has moved almost all of its switches to the Settings app. I explain in Chapter 14 how to create separate accounts for other people to use your PC. That lets them use your PC but limits the amount of damage they can do to Windows and your files.
If you want to create a user account for a visitor, here’s a refresher so you needn’t flip ahead to Chapter 14: Click the Start button and choose Settings from the Start menu. When the Settings app appears, click the Accounts category and then click Family & Other Users from the left pane.
Network and Internet
Plug an Internet connection into your PC, and Windows quickly starts slurping information from the web. Connect your PC to a second PC, and Windows wants to connect the two with a Homegroup or another type of network. (I explain Homegroups in Chapter 14.)
But should Windows botch the job, the Control Panel’s Network and Internet category offers some troubleshooting tools.
I devote Chapter 15 completely to networking, and the Internet gets its due in Chapter 9.
Changing the Appearance of Windows (Appearance and Personalization)
One of the most popular categories, Appearance and Personalization lets you change the look, feel, and behavior of Windows in a wide variety of ways. Inside the category await these six icons:
Personalization: Once pay dirt for budding interior designers, this area now contains a lot of shortcut that take you to the Settings app to change the way Windows looks onscreen. A few handy settings still live here, though, including ways to save your window dressing as a theme — a collection of personalization settings. You can also choose a new screen saver. Most personalization settings now live in the Settings app. To jump to the app’s personalization settings, right-click a blank part of your desktop and choose Personalize.
Display: Whereas personalization lets you fiddle with colors, the Display area lets you fiddle with your computer’s screen. For example, it lets you enlarge the text to soothe tired eyes, adjust the screen resolution, and adjust the connection of an additional computer screen. Again, clicking this takes you to the Settings app’s new controls.
Taskbar and Navigation: Head here to add program shortcuts to your taskbar, the strip living along your desktop’s bottom edge. I cover this topic in Chapter 3. (To jump quickly to the taskbar’s Settings window, right-click the taskbar and choose Properties. The window that appears also lets you change your Start menu’s settings.)
Ease of Access Center: This shortcut contains settings to make Windows more navigable for the blind, the deaf, and people with other physical challenges. Because Ease of Access also exists as its own category, I describe it in its own section later in this chapter.
File Explorer Options: Visited mainly by experienced users, this area lets you tweak how folders look and behave. (To jump quickly to File Explorer Options, open any folder, click the View tab and click the Options icon on the far right.)
Fonts: Here’s where you preview, delete, or examine fonts that spruce up your printed work.
Clicking some of the items listed above takes you to a Control Panel setting. On others, clicking brings you to the appropriate control in the Settings app. In the next few sections, I explain the Appearance and Personalization tasks that you’ll reach for most often and how to handle the settings the appear.
Changing the desktop background
A background, also known as wallpaper, is simply the picture covering your desktop. To change it, follow these steps:
Right-click your desktop and choose Personalize.
Windows quickly kicks you over to the Settings app’s Personalization section, neatly open to the Background setting shown in Figure 12-4.
You can’t right-click the desktop when in Tablet mode. Instead, press the Start button, tap the word Settings, and tap the Personalization icon.Select Picture from the Background drop-down list.
The Background section’s menu lets you create a background from a picture, a color, or a slideshow — a combination of photos that automatically changes at preset intervals.
Click a new picture for the background.
If you don’t like Microsoft’s picture offerings, click the Browse button, shown in Figure 12-4, to search your own Pictures folder for potential backgrounds.
Background files can be stored as BMP, GIF, JPG, JPEG, DIB, or PNG files. That means you can choose a background from nearly any photo or art found on the Internet, shot from a digital camera, or scanned with a scanner.When you click a new picture, Windows immediately places it across your desktop and shows you a preview atop the Personalization window. If you’re pleased, jump to Step 4.
Decide whether to fill, fit, stretch, tile, or center the picture.
Although Windows tries to choose the best-looking setting, not every picture fits perfectly across the desktop. Small pictures, for example, need to be either stretched to fit the space or spread across the screen in rows like tiles on a floor. When tiling and stretching still look odd or distorted, try the Fill or Fit option to keep the perspective. Or try centering the image and leaving blank space around its edges.
Click the Save Changes button to save your new background.
Windows saves your new background across your screen.
Figure 12-4: Click the drop-down list to choose between covering your desktop background with pictures or colors.
Did you happen to spot an eye-catching picture while web surfing with Microsoft Edge? Right-click that website’s picture and choose Save Picture to save it in your Pictures folder. Then you can follow the preceding steps to place the picture as your desktop’s background.
Choosing a screen saver
In the dinosaur days of computing, computer monitors suffered from burn-in: permanent damage when an oft-used program burned its image onto the screen. To prevent burn-in, people installed a screen saver to jump in with a blank screen or moving lines. Today’s computer screens no longer suffer from burn-in problems, but people still use screen savers because they look cool.
Windows comes with several built-in screen savers. To try one out, follow these steps:
Click in the Search box next to the Start menu, type Screen Saver and press Enter.
The Screen Saver Settings window appears.
Click the downward-pointing arrow in the Screen Saver box and select a screen saver.
After choosing a screen saver, click the Preview button for an audition. View as many candidates as you like before making a decision.
Be sure to click the Settings button because some screen savers offer options, letting you specify the speed of a photo slide show, for example.
If desired, add security by selecting the On Resume, Display Logon Screen check box.
This safeguard keeps people from sneaking into your computer while you’re fetching coffee. It makes Windows ask for a password after waking up from screen saver mode. (I cover passwords in Chapter 14.)
When you’re done setting up your screen saver, click OK.
Windows saves your changes.
If you really want to extend the life of your display (and save electricity), don’t bother with screen savers. Instead, put your computer to Sleep before stepping away: Right-click the Start button, click Shut Down or Sign Out, and choose Sleep from the pop-up menu. To wake your PC, tap any key on the keyboard.
Changing the computer’s theme
Themes are simply collections of settings to spruce up your computer’s appearance: You can save your favorite screen saver and desktop background as a theme, for example. Then, by switching between themes, you can change your computer’s clothes more quickly.
To try one of the built-in themes in Windows, click the Start button, type Change The Theme into the Search box, and press Enter.
The Control Panel opens to display themes bundled with Windows 10, as shown in Figure 12-5. Click any theme, and Windows tries it on immediately.
Figure 12-5: Choose a preconfigured theme to change how Windows looks and sounds.
The window offers these themes, with options listed along the window’s bottom.
- My Themes: Themes you’ve personally created appear here. If you have a Microsoft account, you see a Synced Theme, which is the theme you see on every PC you log in to with that account.
- Windows Default Themes: This category includes the bundled themes in Windows, including its original one, called simply Windows.
- Basic and High Contrast Themes: This features high-contrast themes for the visually impaired.
Instead of choosing from the built-in themes, feel free to make your own by clicking the words Save Theme (shown in Figure 12-5) for saving your currently assigned Desktop Background, Window Color, Sounds, and Screen Saver. Type a name for your theme, and it will appear as a choice in this section.
Changing the screen resolution
One of the many change-it-once-and-forget-about-it options in Windows, screen resolution determines how much information Windows can cram onto your computer screen. Changing the resolution either shrinks everything to pack more stuff onscreen, or it enlarges everything at the expense of desktop real estate.
To find your most comfortable resolution — or if a program or game mutters something about you having to change your screen resolution or video mode — follow these steps:
- Click the Start button, choose Settings, and click the System icon.
When the System page appears, click the words Advanced Display Settings in the bottom-right corner.
The Advanced Display Settings window appears, as shown in Figure 12-6.
To change the screen resolution, click the Resolution drop-down list and select your desired resolution.
The drop-down menu lists a variety of resolutions, all sorted by number. The larger the numbers, the higher the resolution, and the more information Windows can pack onto your computer screen. Unfortunately, packing more information onto your screen shrinks the text and images.
Unless you have a good reason not to, choose the resolution with the word (Recommended) next to it. That’s the highest resolution your computer supports.
Choosing the Windows-recommended setting makes for the clearest text and images.
View your display changes by clicking the Apply button. Then click the Keep Changes button to authorize the change.
When Windows makes drastic changes to your display, it gives you 15 seconds to approve the change by clicking a Keep Changes button. If a technical glitch renders your screen unreadable, you won’t be able to see or click the onscreen button. After a few seconds, Windows notices that you didn’t approve, and it reverts to your original, viewable display settings.Click OK when you’re done tweaking the display.
After you change your video resolution once, you’ll probably never return here unless you buy a new monitor or upgrade your computer’s video. You might also need to revisit this window if you plug a second computer screen into your PC, which I describe in the following section.
Figure 12-6: The higher the screen resolution, the more information Windows can squeeze onto your computer screen.
Adding a second monitor or projector
Have you been blessed with an extra computer screen, perhaps a leftover from a deceased PC? Connect it to your PC or tablet, and you’ve doubled your Windows desktop: Windows stretches your workspace across both computer screens. That lets you view the online encyclopedia in one computer screen while writing your term paper in the other.
Or, if you’ve connected a projector, you can mirror your laptop’s screen with what you see on the projector. You can even connect your tablet to your widescreen TV for watching movies.
To perform these video gymnastics, your PC needs two video ports, and those ports must match the connectors on your second monitor or projector. This poses no problem if they’re less than two or three years old. Most Windows PCs, laptops, and tablets include an HDMI port for plugging in a second monitor or projector.
You may need to buy an adapter or special cable that matches the ports of both your computer and second display.
After you connect the second monitor or the projector to your computer, follow these steps on your PC:
- Click the Start button, choose Settings, and click the System icon.
When the System page appears, click the words Advanced Display Settings in the screen’s bottom-right corner.
The Advanced Display Settings window appears, as shown earlier in Figure 12-6. This time, however, the Advanced Display Settings window shows two monitors, side by side, shown in Figure 12-7. (Click the Detect button if the second computer screen doesn’t appear onscreen. You may need to turn the second monitor off, wait 30 seconds, and turn it back on again.)
Drag and drop the onscreen computer screens to the right or left until they match the physical placement of the real computer screens on your desk. Then choose your main display.
The window shows your two monitors as little onscreen squares, as shown in 12-7. Not sure which square represents which monitor? Click the Identify button; Windows displays numbers on the onscreen monitors, as well as your real monitors, so you can tell which is which.
Then, drag and drop the onscreen monitors until they match the placement of your real monitors.
Finally, click the onscreen monitor that should display your Start button, and select the Make this My Main Display check box.
Adjust the Orientation setting, if necessary, and the Multiple Displays setting.
The Orientation drop-down list, useful mostly for swiveling monitors and docked tablets, lets you tell Windows how you want monitors rotated. Stick with the default Landscape mode; choose Portrait mode only if you’ve turned a monitor or tablet sideways, perhaps to better display reading material.
The Multiple Displays drop-down list tells Windows how it should display your desktop across the second monitor. It offers these options, each handy for different scenarios:
- Duplicate These Displays: This duplicates your desktop on both screens, which is helpful when you want to project an image of your desktop onto a wall or screen for presentations.
- Extend These Displays: This stretches Windows to fit across both screens, giving you an extra-wide desktop.
- Show Only on 1: Choose this before you’re ready to show off your presentation. Then switch to Duplicate These Displays.
- Show Only on 2: Choose this to show only the second display, which is useful when hooking up a tablet to a TV for watching movies in a dark room.
- Click the Apply button to save your changes.
Figure 12-7: Move the onscreen monitors to match the placement of your real monitors.
If you move the position of your monitors, return to the first step and start over.
To adjust the screen resolution of your two monitors, follow the directions given in the previous section, “Changing the screen Resolution.” This time, however, the Advanced Display Settings window shows both monitors. Click the monitor you want to change, and the Resolution drop-down list applies to that monitor alone.
Hardware and Sound
The Control Panel’s Hardware and Sound category, shown in Figure 12-8, shows some familiar faces. The Display icon, for example, also appears in the Appearance and Personalization category, described in this chapter’s previous section, “Changing Appearance of Windows (Appearance and Personalization).”
Figure 12-8: The Hardware and Sound category lets you control the physical aspects of your PC, such as its display, sound, and attached gadgets.
The Hardware and Sound category controls the parts of your PC you can touch or plug in. You can adjust the settings of your display here as well as your mouse, speakers, keyboard, printer, telephone, scanner, digital camera, game controllers, and (for you graphic artists out there) digital pen.
You won’t spend much time here, though, especially coming in through the Control Panel’s doors. Most settings appear elsewhere, where a click brings you directly to the setting you need.
Whether you arrive at these pages through the Control Panel or a shortcut, the following sections explain the most popular reasons for visiting here.
Adjusting volume and sounds
The Sound area lets you adjust your PC’s volume, a handy technique when trying to sneak in a computer game on a Windows tablet during a boring business meeting.
Most Windows tablets come with toggle-switch volume controls mounted along their left or right edge. The top button turns up the volume; the lower button decreases the volume. Experiment with them a bit before bringing Angry Birds into the board room.
To turn down your PC’s volume from the desktop, shown in Figure 12-9, click the little speaker by your clock and slide down the volume. No speaker on your taskbar? Restore it by right-clicking the taskbar’s digital clock, choosing Properties, and turning the Volume switch to On.
Figure 12-9: Click the speaker icon and move the sliding control to adjust your PC’s volume.
To mute your PC, click the little speaker icon at the left of the sliding control, as shown in Figure 12-9. Clicking that icon again lets your computer blare music again.
Right-click the taskbar’s speaker icon and choose Open Volume Mixer from the pop-up menu to set different volumes for different desktop programs. You can quietly detonate explosives in your favorite game while still allowing your desktop’s e-mail program to loudly announce any new messages. (Note: The individualized volume levels only control desktop programs, not apps, unfortunately.)
Installing or setting up speakers
Most PCs come with only two speakers. Others come with four, and PCs that double as home theaters or gaming rigs sometimes have up to eight. To accommodate the variety of setups, Windows includes a speaker setup area, complete with a speaker test.
If you’re installing new speakers or you’re not sure your old ones are working, follow these steps to introduce them properly to Windows:
- From the desktop, right-click your taskbar’s Speaker icon and choose Playback Devices.
The Sound window appears.
Click (don’t double-click) your speaker’s icon and then click the Configure button.
Click the speaker’s icon with the green check mark, because that’s the device your computer uses for playing sound. The Speaker Setup dialog box appears.
Click the Advanced tab, then click the Test button (as shown in Figure 12-10), adjust your speaker’s settings, and click Next.
Windows walks you through selecting your number of speakers and their placement and then plays each one in turn so that you can hear whether they’re in the correct locations.
- Click the tabs for any other sound devices you want to adjust. When you’re through adjusting, click OK.
Figure 12-10: Click the Test button to hear your speakers one at a time.
While you’re here, check your microphone volume by clicking the Recording tab, as well as tabs for any other sound gadgetry you’ve been able to afford.
If your speakers and microphone don’t show up as devices, Windows doesn’t know they’re plugged into your computer. That usually means you need to install a new driver, an annoying journey I walk you through in Chapter 13.
Adding a Bluetooth gadget
Bluetooth technology lets you connect gadgets wirelessly to your computer, removing clutter from your desktop. On a tablet, Bluetooth lets you add a mouse and keyboard without hogging one of your coveted USB ports.
Bluetooth can also connect your computer, laptop, or tablet with some cellphones for wireless Internet access — if your wireless provider allows it, of course.
To add a Bluetooth item to a computer, laptop, or tablet, follow these steps:
Make sure your Bluetooth device is turned on and ready to pair.
Most Bluetooth devices include a simple On/Off switch. Telling the device to begin pairing is a little more difficult. Sometimes you can simply flip a switch. Other devices make you hold down a button until its little light begins flashing.
When you spot the flashing light, the device is ready to pair with another Bluetooth device including, you hope, your computer.
Click the Start button, choose Settings, and click the Settings app’s Devices icon.
The Devices page of the app appears and shows you a list of currently installed devices.
Click the Bluetooth option from the left side of the Devices window.
Your computer quickly begins searching for any nearby Bluetooth devices that want to connect, known in Bluetooth parlance as pair.
If your device doesn’t appear, head back to Step 1 and make sure your Bluetooth gadget is still turned on and ready to pair. (Many give up and turn off after 30 seconds of waiting to connect.)
- When your device’s name appears below the Add a Device button, click its name.
Type in your device’s code if necessary and, if asked, click the Pair button.
Here’s where things get sticky. For security reasons, you need to prove that you’re sitting in front of your own computer and that you’re not a stranger trying to break in. Unfortunately, devices employ slightly different tactics when making you prove your innocence.
Sometimes you need to type a secret string of numbers called a passcode into both the device and your computer. (The secret code is usually hidden somewhere in your device’s manual.) But you need to type quickly before the other gadget stops waiting.
On some gadgets, particularly Bluetooth mice, you hold in a little push button on the mouse’s belly at this step.
Cellphones sometimes make you click a Pair button if you see matching passcodes on both your computer and phone.
When in doubt, type 0000 on your keyboard. That’s often recognized as a universal passcode for frustrated Bluetooth devices owners who are trying to connect their gadgets.After a gadget successfully pairs with your computer, its name and icon appear in the Devices category of the Settings app.
To add a Bluetooth device from the Windows desktop, click the taskbar’s Bluetooth icon (shown in the margin), choose Add a Bluetooth Device, and then jump to Step 3 in the preceding list. Don’t see the taskbar’s Bluetooth icon? Then click the upward-pointing arrow that lives a few icons to the left of the taskbar’s clock. The Bluetooth icon appears in the pop-up menu, ready for your click.
Adding a printer
Quarrelling printer manufacturers couldn’t agree on how printers should be installed. As a result, you install your printer in one of two ways:
- Some printer manufacturers say simply to plug in your printer by pushing its rectangular-shaped connector into a little rectangular-shaped USB port on your PC. Windows automatically notices, recognizes, and embraces your new printer. Stock your printer with any needed ink cartridges, toner, or paper, and you’re done.
- Other manufacturers take an uglier approach, saying you must install their bundled software before plugging in your printer. And if you don’t install the software first, the printer may not work correctly.
Unfortunately, the only way to know how your printer should be installed is to check the printer’s manual. (Sometimes this information appears on a colorful, one-page Quick Installation sheet packed in the printer’s box.)
If your printer lacks installation software, install the cartridges, add paper to the tray, and follow these instructions to put it to work:
With Windows up and running, plug your printer into your PC and turn on the printer.
Windows may send a message saying that your printer is installed successfully, but follow the next step to test it.
Load the Control Panel.
Right-click the Start button and choose Control Panel from the pop-up menu.
From the Hardware and Sound category, click the View Devices and Printers link.
The Control Panel displays its categories of devices, including your printer if you’re lucky. If you spot your USB printer listed by its model or brand name, right-click its icon, choose Properties, and click the Print Test Page button. If it prints correctly, you’re finished. Congratulations.
Test page didn’t work? Check that all the packaging is removed from inside your printer and that it has ink cartridges. If it still doesn’t print, your printer is probably defective. Contact the store where you bought it and ask who to contact for assistance.
To print your documents to a file that you can e-mail to nearly anybody, choose Print As a PDF. That saves your printed, formatted file as a PDF file, a format that’s accessible with nearly every type of computer, smartphone, or tablet. (If somebody can’t read it, tell them to download Adobe Reader from https://get.adobe.com/reader/.)
That’s it. If you’re like most people, your printer will work like a charm. If it doesn’t, I’ve stuffed some tips and fix-it tricks in the printing section in Chapter 8.
If you have two or more printers attached to your computer, right-click the icon of your most oft-used printer and choose Set As Default Printer from the pop-up menu. Windows then prints to that printer automatically unless you tell it otherwise.
- To remove a printer you no longer use, right-click its name in Step 3 and then choose Delete from the pop-up menu. That printer’s name no longer appears as an option when you try to print from a program. If Windows asks to uninstall the printer’s drivers and software, click Yes — unless you think you may install that printer again sometime.
- You can change printer options from within many programs. Choose File in a program’s menu bar (you may need to press Alt to see the menu bar) and then choose Print Setup or choose Print. The window that appears lets you change things such as paper sizes, fonts, and types of graphics.
- To share a printer quickly over a network, create a Homegroup, which I describe in Chapter 14. Your printer immediately shows up as an installation option for all the computers on your network.
- If your printer’s software confuses you, try clicking the Help buttons in its dialog boxes. Many buttons are customized for your particular printer model, and they offer advice not found in Windows.
Time and Language
Microsoft designed the Settings app’s Time and Language area mostly for travelers to different time zones and locations. Desktop computer owners see this information only once — when first setting up the computer. Windows subsequently remembers the time and date even when your PC is turned off.
Portable computers owners will want to drop by here when visiting different time zones. Bilingual computer owners will also appreciate settings allowing characters from different languages.
To visit here, click the Start button, choose Settings from the menu, and click the Settings app’s Time & Language category. Three sections appear:
Date and Time: This area is fairly self-explanatory. (Clicking your taskbar’s clock and choosing Change Date and Time Settings lets you visit here, as well.)
Region and Language: If you’re bilingual or multilingual, visit this area when you’re working on documents that require characters from different languages.
Speech: If Windows doesn’t recognize your voice well, visit here to fine-tune its speech recognition settings.
Adding or Removing Apps or Programs
Removing an app from your Start menu doesn’t take much effort. Right-click the app’s tile from the Start menu and choose Unpin from Start from the pop-up menu.
That doesn’t remove the app, though. The app lives on in the Start menu’s alphabetical list. To permanently remove an app or program from your PC, follow these steps:
Click Start button and choose Settings from the Start menu.The Settings app appears.
- Click the System icon and then, when the System window appears, click Apps & Features from the window’s left pane.
The Installed Apps & Features window appears, as shown in Figure 12-11, listing your currently installed apps and programs sorted by size.
To sort the programs by their installation date, click the Sort By Size button and choose By Install Date from the pop-up menu. You can also view programs installed on certain drives, which comes in handy on small tablets, where you want to store programs on memory cards rather than their main memory. Click the unloved program and then click its Uninstall or Move button.
Click a listed program, and two buttons appear below it:
- Move: When you’re running out of storage space, choose this option. It lets you move an app or program onto your tablet’s memory card, freeing up space for your files.
- Uninstall: Click this button — as well as the confirmation button that follows — to completely remove the app or program from your PC.
Depending on which button you’ve clicked, Windows either boots the program off your PC or moves it to another disk drive or memory card.
Figure 12-11: Click an unwanted app or program and choose Uninstall from the pop-up menu.
After you delete a program, it’s gone for good unless you kept its installation CD. Unlike other deleted items, deleted programs don’t linger inside your Recycle Bin. Mistakenly deleted apps, however, can almost always be relocated and reinstalled from the Windows Store.
Always use the Settings app to uninstall unwanted programs. Simply deleting their files or folders doesn’t do the trick. In fact, doing so often confuses your computer into sending bothersome error messages.
Modifying Windows for the Physically Challenged
Nearly everybody finds Windows to be particularly challenging, but some people face special physical challenges, as well. To assist them, the Control Panel’s Ease of Access area offers a variety of welcome changes.
If your eyesight isn’t what it used to be, you may appreciate the ways to increase the text size on your computer screen.
Follow these steps to modify the settings in Windows:
Load the Windows Settings app.
You can fetch the Settings app any of several ways:
- Mouse: Click the Start button and then click Settings from the Start menu.
- Keyboard: From the desktop, press
+I, scroll up to the words Settings, and then press Enter. Touchscreen: Slide your finger inward from the screen’s right edge inward and tap the All Settings icon.
When the Settings app appears, select the Ease of Access icon.
The Ease of Access Center appears, as shown in Figure 12-12.
Change the settings according to your needs.
The Ease of Access window offers several categories to make your computer easier to control. To turn a feature on or off, click its toggle button in these categories:
- Narrator: The awful built-in narrator in Windows reads onscreen text for people who can’t view it clearly. It also tells you what button you’ve pressed. Be prepared to hear a lot of information as you touch a tablet or move a mouse.
- Magnifier: Designed for the visually impaired, this option magnifies the mouse pointer’s exact location.
- High Contrast: This setting eliminates most screen colors but helps vision-impaired people view the screen and cursor more clearly.
- Closed Captions: Designed to help the hearing impaired, this option helps you place captions in movies that support Closed Caption technology.
- Keyboard: This setting places a clickable keyboard along the screen’s bottom, letting you type by pointing and clicking. It also manipulates the keyboard in other ways, making it easier for people with limited typing ability.
- Mouse: Head here to enlarge the mouse pointer and make it easier to view.
- Other options: This offers a variety of options for the vision impaired, from enlarging cursor width to whether Windows should show animations when opening and closing windows.
Choose any of these options to turn on the feature immediately. If it makes matters worse, choose it again to toggle it off.
If you’re still not happy, proceed to Step 4.
Visit the Control Panel’s Ease of Access Center.
Windows 10 still offers the desktop Control Panel’s Ease of Access Center, which has been a Windows staple for many years.
To reach it, right-click the Start button, choose Control Panel, and click the Ease of Access Center icon.
Some centers that assist physically challenged people may offer software or assistance for helping you make these changes.
Figure 12-12: The Ease of Access Center contains a wide variety of ways to help users with physical limitations.