How to get rid of 6 Windows 10 useless shortcuts (Desktop, Documents, Download, Music, Pictures, Video)?

On Thu, 08 Jun 2017 01:22:13 -0700, Justin Tyme wrote:

If you go back to 'Navigation Pane- Default Items' you can get rid of
these two by unchecking OneDrive and Removable Drives.

Thanks. The removable drives is unchecked, but they still show up.
Dunno why.

There are a lot of other useful tweaks in Winaero. I liked the
Appearance tweaks...

One thing I never do is spend time on frivolous things such as backgrounds,
colors, icons, and other things that a lot of other people spend ALL their
time on.

I'm not denigrating what you're doing but I am saying that the "appearance"
of anything isn't what I'm after. I'm after efficiency. Order.
Organization. Simplicity.

There is a fix for just
about everything that people dislike about Windows 10.

That's good to know. Right now I'm just trying to get rid of extraneous
distractions in the user interface.

BTW: if you are new to Win10 forget about the Mail app as it causes a
lot of grief for people. Thunderbird for mail is a much better choice.

I'm old school on email. Eudora was fine for years. Thunderbird is fine
too. I don't touch anything from Microsoft unless I absolutely have to use
it. Corporate crap mostly (although Outlook is powerful).

Don't use MS browsers like Edge or even Internet Explorer, both are
crappy IMO.

Edge is horrible. I can't even get it to ask me where to put files when I
download them. How dumb can a browser be that doesn't even recognize that
nobody in their right mind puts downloaded files into a big garbage can
just so they can then try to dig them out of that garbage can.

Firefox will serve you better.

I have Firefox and I tweak the heck out of it.
I have my own user.js that does the gHacks privacy customizations.

Don't use Windows backup
tools as Macrium Reflect (free) works much better.

My backup is super simple.
I make a copy of my data directory and that's it.
When I deal with a file, it's always in that data directory.

You can also turn
on the old Photo Viewer with Winaero.
The stock photo app isn't great.

Irfanview is my photo viewer.
Has been for decades.

Can anything from Microsoft possibly be quicker or more functional for
simply viewing photos?

I really have no use for any of the Windows apps or the crappy Store.

I have the store turned off now.

And I agree that there isn't a single Windows app that I can think of that
isn't crappy too. For example, I use Media Player Classic with the KLite
codec packs. Nothing on Windows is as simple nor as fast nor can they play
everything like Media Player Classic does.

Well, MS Office is the only Windows app that is a must have.

I usually remove all the apps with a powershell command. You can right
click and unpin all the crap on the Start screen, then use your mouse
to hook the edge of it, drag it left so it is more narrow like it
should be. Windows10 can be made much more user friendly if you fix it
up a bit.

I eliminated the entire start screen big flashy boxes already.
I'm using the Classic Start Menu.
There's nothing wrong with it.

Franklin wrote:
On Thu, 8 Jun 2017 09:49:53 +0000 (UTC), harry newton
wrote:

In this screenshot below you see USB drives E, F, G, & H.
https://s14.postimg.org/qiijyos5d/usb.gif

But, I have ZERO USB drives plugged into the computer.

What are those ghost USB drives?
They don't exist.


Those are the media card readers.

Most people, who don't want to see those, pull the cable from the
reader.

The usual for getting at that cable is to remove the computer cover,
remove the front bezel, remove the top cover, disconnect the cable
from the reader.

Perhaps downloading the service manual from the manufacturer of your
computer is in order.

Or... you can rename them to W, X, Y, Z to get them out of the way
and then pretend that you don't see them.

The easy options don't look that good, so you could try this instead.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

[Settings]
NoMediaNoLetter=1

Paul

On Thu, 08 Jun 2017 09:19:59 -0400, Paul wrote:

The easy options don't look that good, so you could try this instead.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

[Settings]
NoMediaNoLetter=1

I agree with you that this answer seems a bit on the complex side.
Here's what that reference says about the empty card readers.

USBDLM V5.2.8 - USB Drive Letter Manager for Windows
The typical 20-in-1 card reader eats one drive letter for each of its slots
- if we own a card for or not.

USBDLM can remove the reader's drive letters until a media is inserted.

[Settings]
NoMediaNoLetter=1
USBDLM assigns then a drive letter as configured. If you need different
drive letters for a multislot cardreader, then use the criterion
"DeviceType" in a DriveLetters section (MSCR is short for
MultiSlotCardReader):
[DriveLetters]
DeviceType=MSCR
Letters=R,W


Beta release:
Download V5.2.9.92 beta for V5.3.0.0 (20 March 2017):
Win32 version:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/usbdlm_beta.zip
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/usbdlm_beta.msi
x64 version:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/usbdlm_beta_x64.zip
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/usbdlm_beta_x64.msi

On Thu, 08 Jun 2017 05:58:44 -0700, Franklin wrote:

Those are the media card readers.

Most people, who don't want to see those, pull the cable from the
reader.

Thank you for EXPLAINING what they were!

Yes, I do have 4 empty media card reader ports.
But I also have 8 empty USB ports.

Why would just empty "media card reader ports" and not empty USB ports
create a ghost USB drive in Windows 10?

harry newton wrote:
On Thu, 08 Jun 2017 05:58:44 -0700, Franklin wrote:

Those are the media card readers.

Most people, who don't want to see those, pull the cable from the
reader.

Thank you for EXPLAINING what they were!

Yes, I do have 4 empty media card reader ports.
But I also have 8 empty USB ports.

Why would just empty "media card reader ports" and not empty USB ports
create a ghost USB drive in Windows 10?

The media card reader is a "removable media" storage device. The
SD card is treated as if it's a CD or DVD in an optical drive.

The drive letter on an optical drive can be present, but not have
any media in it either.

The unused USB ports are connected to a "bus". And that
means we don't know that device type will be connected.
The ports as a result, stay hidden in the OS, in the same
way as expansion card slots in your PC don't have a life of
their own either.

Paul