On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 19:04:05 +0000, Java Jive
wrote:

On 07/02/2019 18:09, Char Jackson wrote:

On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 10:15:03 -0700, "Bill in Co"
surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:

Well, I think Java Jive illustrated the essence of some of those annoyances,
best. :-)

Well, no, not at all, unless I missed something. What he illustrated was
taking a sledgehammer approach to a non-issue. Taking ownership of the
entire C: drive is not what I'd call a good idea.

It's not a sledge-hammer to a non-issue - who exactly owns the files
on a computer is important in many different ways, because it determines
who is really in control. In Vista+ by default, the Administrator
really is no longer in control of the computer, but is at about the same
level as first line telephone support personnel, and can't *do* anything
much to sort out any problem.

For example, quite often I find I need to go into the MMC Computer
Management console, which like previous versions of Windows I do by
rt-clicking My Conputer. But in *every* version of Windows, the
default layout of that console is sh*te - the window is so small that
it looks as though it was designed for keyhole surgery, and the layout
of the columns in many of the components is daft, particularly since XP
with the introduction of the 'Advanced' tab whose sole purpose seems to
be to waste the majority of the available screen real estate. However,
in versions up and including XP all you had to do was run just once ...
mmc /a
... which allows you to change the layout to something more sensible and
useful, and then you could save the result. Thereafter, every time you
launched Computer Management by rt-clicking My Computer, it would come
up with the layout you saved, and you could launch it, use it, and close
it without hassle. Now in Windows 7, by default the relevant files in
the Windows directory are owned by un-'Trusted Installer' or some
similar entity, and you can't save your changes until you've taken
ownership of the Windows directory heirarchy, and given Administrators
Full Control, but you have to do that as described in my previous post,
because you must *add* these permissions to the existing permissions,
whereas the GUI method *replaces* existing permissions. Even after
that, you're not out of the wood, because on 64-bit systems there are
*4* different version of the management console within the Windows
heirarchy, and you have to replace them all to be sure that your changes
will 'take'!

All that, just to get a sensible layout in Computer Management! And
there are so many other examples I could give - getting rid of clutter
such as Library, Favorites, etc, in Explorer, getting a decent Start
Menu layout, etc, etc. Every new version of Windows has a more
cluttered and less professional GUI than the last, and the first thing I
have to do is spend ages finding out how to remove or at least disable
it all so that I can use the PC in the professional manner that I got
used to with W9x/NT4/W2000. NT4/W2000 were the most professional GUIs
that Windows ever had, and how I wish we could return to them!

Using your example above, I simply expand Computer Management to full
screen. If that still doesn't give you enough screen real estate, you
can run any of the modules in Computer Management by itself to remove
the mmc wrapper, although I very rarely bother. Full screen works fine
for me. I've never had a need or desire to customize that particular
display any further, certainly not by messing with file permissions.

--

Char Jackson