So, with Windows 8 sporting these god-awfully ugly opaque square boxes, which are not adorned in any way whatsoever, (not even the decent in all its simplicity gradient of Windows 98,) it seems like a confession on Microsoft’s behalf that the spiffy “Aero” look of Windows 7 was nothing but an unnecessary gimmick after all.

So, are you sticking with Windows 7 but want to disable Aero in order to enjoy considerable gains in performance, memory, power consumption, and GPU temperature? Here is how:

To enable the Administrator account in Windows:

1. Open up an elevated command prompt. (If you do not know what this is, you should not be even thinking of enabling the Administrator account.)

2. Type the following command:

   net user administrator /active:yes

To disable the administrative shares in Windows, (default shares like C$, ADMIN$, etc.) follow these steps:

1. Run the Registry Editor and go to the following key:

   HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Services\LanmanServer\Parameters

2. Create a new DWORD, name it AutoShareWks, and leave the default value of 0.

3. Reboot Windows.

This will disable things like C$ and ADMIN$.

I am not sure how to also delete print$ and IPC$. (net share ipc$ /delete appears to work temporarily, but the share automagically re-appears after the next reboot.)

In order to have your windows computer connect to your favorite WiFi access point immediately after booting, (without you having to first login to your computer,) follow these simple steps:

1. First of all, make sure that this computer has previously connected to the WiFi spot of interest. (This is necessary, because a so-called wireless profile is created as a result of this manual process.)

2. Run cmd.exe and issue the following command:

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Millions of people all over the planet continuously have this problem: they try to eject their USB drive so as to avoid data loss, but windows does not allow them. Which is very frustrating, because whatever reasons windows thinks it has for not allowing the removal should have lower priority than the user’s explicitly stated direct wish to remove the damned thing!

Anyway, suggestions for solutions abound on the interwebz, but they are mostly misguided and ineffective. Here are some that I found with a quick search:

So, I am on computer A, trying to map a local drive to a shared folder of computer B, and Windows gives me this message: “The network folder specified is currently mapped using a different user name and password”.

Microsoft supposedly addresses this issue here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/938120 and concludes that it is so by design.

Bullshit. They are missing the point. The error message is wrong. The network folder specified is not currently mapped using a different user name and password. Instead, what is happening, is that another folder of the same computer B is already mapped on computer A using a different user name and password.