Making Win10 look and act like Win7

[johnhoh]

I've been asked to make a thread about making win10 look and operate like win7. I currently have two identical systems, same hardware, same programs, same start menu, same desktop, same icons, same theme, but one system is Win7 and one is Win10. Other people who use my computers do not know they are different OSs other than minor details like the font in explorer, a little different look when you right-click on the taskbar, minor things like that. Here are the steps I took.

Install win10. Then immediately install Classic Shell and customize it to your liking. Reboot and let windows update do its thing to get you up to date. Then install Winaero Tweaker, get a gigantic bag of potato chips, and take your time going through every menu of the program. You will be checking boxes that start with the words "Disable Windows xxx" over and over. Its easy to use and self explanatory and would take me too long to go back and find all the boxes I checked. But some basic things I checked were Disable Windows Update, Disable Microsoft Store, Disable Cortana, Disable Windows Search, Disable Edge pre-launching, Disable UAC, Disable Telemetry and Data Collection, you get the idea. If you are a fast eater you will finish the chips before you are finished checking boxes. Okay not really. Quite a few of things I disabled were the same things I disabled on Win7, btw.

Install the current version of Sledgehammer (which is 2.6.0 as of this writing). This program is a script that does the following: briefly enables windows update from its disabled status WHILE ALSO keeping it from automatically updating in the background, checks ask-woody.com for its Win10 MS-DEFCON rating so you know if the recent win10 updates are likely to create an issue for you, then prompts you to proceed (I only proceed if Defcon isn't level 1 or 2), at which time it loads WuMgr or WUMT, two very similar programs that give you manual control over windows update. As soon as you do your updates (or not - up to you) and exit, Sledgehammer then re-disables windows update. It does several other things I have not mentioned, but suffice it to say keeping MS from doing things automatically behind your back is an extensive process and Sledgehammer does a superb job of keeping MS from reaching your system.

Install your favorite wallpaper, themes, programs, customize your Explorer interface, change your deskop icons (mine are taken from Win98), all the same things you would do when you install win7. I didn't discover winaero tweaker until late in my customization process, so can't be sure it can do everything as most of my changes were done via regedit, but it appears that it may have everything I need if I had to do it all over again, so perhaps would not need to touch regedit. There was NOTHING I wanted to do to Win10 that turned out to be impossible to do, or even difficult to do. The amount and the quality of user programming that has gone into making it easy to correct Win10 annoyances with these three programs is amazing, and the process was miles easier than I expected.

One caveat. Out of the box Win7 treats you like a mindless 6th grader who is about to walk off a cliff if you are not warned constantly to be careful. Win10 takes that to a whole new level with its helicopter parenting. I hated that about win7 and also hate it about win10, so many of my customizations remove those warnings and give me total control over the machine, such as disabling UAC. If you want to make win10 look like win7 YET ALSO keep all those warnings intact, its on you to be smart about what you disable when using winaero tweaker.

Once the interface looks like win7 and MS is exiled from probing your system, you will find a few small benefits to Win10 vs Win7:

a handy settings app that is a gateway into system settings. I created a shortcut on my start menu ("powershell start ms-settings:") which goes straight to it.

a more customizable tray clock, with month date, seconds, etc.

native multi-monitor taskbar support

smaller hard disk footprint

faster program loading (no idea why, perhaps smarter caching?)

driver support for any and every piece of hardware you buy

things like task manager and network settings are fuller featured and more informative

every command prompt command you ever used on win7 will work on win10

After you've taken a couple days to finalize your setup, make a clone of your disk or a system image backup. You're done.

This post is not meant to be comprehensive and maybe folks are looking for more detail. Sorry. I wanted to take 15 minutes to do this and my time is up.

 

[RoWin7]

But the big question is: is the bag of potato chips big enough to last through the whole task?

Good tutorial, thanks. I made my Win 7 look like XP, but I had made my XP look like Win 98. So my 7 looks like 98. Only the UI, of course, not the internals.

Classic Shell stopped its development at 7. Has someone forked a Win 10 version?

 

[johnhoh]

Classic Shell stopped its development at 7. Has someone forked a Win 10 version?

It actually supported Win10 for several years and the final release was 8/2017. Its now been taken over as an open source project called Open Shell. I tried open shell on Win10 but it was buggy in multi-monitor mode so I went back to the final release of classic shell.

 

[RoWin7]

I've bookmarked this thread in case I ever get forced into 10. Let's break out the potato chips and iced tea!

Do you think Brink will let you post this in the official tutorials? Maybe with numbered steps and a little more use of Bold and color to highlight items?.

 

[ian50]

Win10 control

Install Sledghammer 2.6.1 (or current version).

.

I'm clearly being dumb, but I cannot find this program. I do suspect Google is deliberately "losing" links to it, but nonetheless ...


It's so critical. The strongest dealbreaker for Win10 is the sheer rudeness of enforced "updates" that continually destroy your installation - and the complete loss of your machine while this mayhem occurs, nightly.

 

[johnhoh]

I'm clearly being dumb, but I cannot find this program. I do suspect Google is deliberately "losing" links to it, but nonetheless ...

That's on me. I had thought 2.6.1 would be out by now (its due any day), but 2.6.0 is actually still the latest release. And I misspelled it, forgot the e after the g, so I just fixed that in the top post.

Google Sledgehammer 2.6.0 and you'll find it.

 

[ian50]

Thanks - now I don't feel so dumb.


Your post, apart from minor (!) glitches, is very helpful.

 

[Megahertz07]

Install Sledgehammer 2.6.1 (or current version). This program is a script that does the following: briefly enables windows update from its disabled status WHILE ALSO keeping it from automatically updating in the background, checks ask-woody.com for its Win10 MS-DEFCON rating so you know if the recent win10 updates are likely to create an issue for you, then prompts you to proceed (I only proceed if Defcon is level 1 or 2), at which time it loads WuMgr or WUMT, two very similar programs that give you manual control over windows update. As soon as you do your updates (or not - up to you) and exit Sledgehammer re-disables windows update. It does several other things I have not mentioned, but suffice it to say keeping MS from doing things automatically behind your back is an extensive process and Sledgehammer does a superb job of keeping MS from reaching your system.

From https://www ask woody.com/ms-defcon-system it says that you should only install the patch if Defcon is level 4 or 5

 

[johnhoh]

From https://www ask woody.com/ms-defcon-system it says that you should only install the patch if Defcon is level 4 or 5

thanks for pointing that out, I meant to say isn't level 1 or 2. Level 3, while usually a new and unproven patch, is often an environment where not having the patch is also a risk. The ZombieLoad is a level 3 for instance.

 

[GEWB]

I might downgrade to Win10 if your "disable" entries were actually "uninstall."

 

[johnhoh]

I might downgrade to Win10 if your "disable" entries were actually "uninstall."

Uninstall is possible for most things but I did not include those steps because its not part of winaero tweaker. I really just wanted to outline the quick and easy route for people and so just focused on using the three freeware programs. But the same guys who wrote winaero tweaker also have over 500 scripts you can download, such as UninstallCortana.cmd and UninstallEdge.cmd.

Downloads / Other / Uninstall Cortana for Windows 10
Downloads / Other / Uninstall Edge browser for Windows 10

Its worth noting that as long as programs never run the only annoyance is they take up space, and win10 takes up significantly less space than win7 even if you do not uninstall anything, so its not really a big deal either way.

 

[RoWin7]

It just needs some polishing and some screenshots, then I would ask Brink if he can use it in Tutorials. Or sticky it in the tenforums.

 

[johnhoh]

Your post, apart from minor (!) glitches, is very helpful.

Let me know the glitches and I'll fix them

 

[RoWin7]

I don't know the glitches, I was referring to the other posters. But shouldn't this thread be in tenforums?

 

[XweAponX]

Stardock Start 10 is the best Start Menu solution. It's paid,. but I don't think it costs that much, last I checked it was 10 bucks. That's where you start. Next, you gotta get your ICONS onto the desktop, that's in the new POS "Immersive" settings panel... Somewhere. There are other things you can do to make it more like Win 7, you can activate the Windows 7 style "Preview" context item so that you can look at images without having to open Photoshop. There is also a way to get the AERO effects happening too. I have the files backed up on my PC. But there is a program that activates it. I forget the name of it. Works well though, Also, GadgetPack will add Gadgets to your Desktop, I like to use speedometers and tachometers hehe. I can File-mail some of this stuff as long as someone downloads it, you want it? It'll take me a while to find it.

PS: Between Classic Explorer and Start10, you want START!0! It's MUCH better than Classic Explorer. And, you gotta pay for that, I can't give it to you.

 

[XweAponX]

Uninstall is possible for most things but I did not include those steps because its not part of winaero tweaker. I really just wanted to outline the quick and easy route for people and so just focused on using the three freeware programs. But the same guys who wrote winaero tweaker also have over 500 scripts you can download, such as UninstallCortana.cmd and UninstallEdge.cmd.

Downloads / Other / Uninstall Cortana for Windows 10
Downloads / Other / Uninstall Edge browser for Windows 10

Its worth noting that as long as programs never run the only annoyance is they take up space, and win10 takes up significantly less space than win7 even if you do not uninstall anything, so its not really a big deal either way.

The Green Graphs are true ONLY if you leave the Update Installer files in your /Windows/SoftwareDistribution/ folder intact - Normally, after an install is applied, you don't need the installer files anymore, you can delete the $&#! outta 'em. You can do this with "Start Menu - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Disk Cleanup utility". There are also 3rd party tools that can excise what's left. As long as you know you don't need to uninstall a Windows Update, cos you do need the installer files to do THAT. But then again, if you create system restore points every 3 days or so, you should be able to restore to a point before any updates were installed.

 

[ian50]

win10 like win7

Let me know the glitches and I'll fix them

There's a plethora of bewildering jargon. For example, I have no idea at all what "defcon 1, 3 ... whatever" means or its' relevance.


All sorts of caveats suddenly appear on the horizon. As I understand your initial post, installing Sledgehammer into a Win10 setup allows a cmd file to be run that blocks intrusive MS upgrades unless you permit them. Sounds great and simple ... but then:


we have defcon, askwoody, green graphs. What on earth ?


And interestingly, Google finds the Sledgehammer 2.6.0 in search and lists a few links, including Softpedia. Yet the Softpedia search box itself comes up empty. So Google accurately lists the download screen for Softpedia, yet Softpedia itself insists it cannot find it. Clearly MS dislikes Sledgehammer a lot.

 

[johnhoh]

There's a plethora of bewildering jargon. For example, I have no idea at all what "defcon 1, 3 ... whatever" means or its' relevance....we have defcon, askwoody, green graphs

I make all my posts assuming that google will come to the rescue if anyone is not familiar with something.

If you google MS-DEFCON the very first hit takes you to an internet website called askwoody, where in the first paragraph the site author says he has developed a system he calls "MS-DEFCON" which tells users how much risk they are taking on by installing the latest windows updates.

If you google sledgehammer 2.6.0 the first two hits take you to a majorgeeks download link that works. The third google hit takes you to a softpedia download link that works. But I checked and you are correct, if you simply go directly to softpedia then do a search on the word sledgehammer, nothing comes up. Note though that I never advised doing that.

As for green graphs? That is not a term that appears in my post at all.

 

[ian50]

> "If you google MS-DEFCON the very first hit takes you to an internet website called askwoody, where in the first paragraph the site author says he has developed a system he calls "MS-DEFCON" which tells users how much risk they are taking on by installing the latest windows updates."


So, nothing to do with the actual application of Sledgehammer. Good ...


Installing Win10 now has a little more practicality over the next few years. Thank you for the post.

 

[chefduane]

Maybe a dumb question, but.... has anyone ever thought about creating piece of software entitled "Make Win10 Look and Act Like Win7" that does all the mods, tweaks, and refinements, mentioned above and create a disk that will simply load up and do the magic? Run the disk in Win10, let it do its thing, re-boot, and now you have a Win7 cocoon around Win10. I bet MSFT would be ticked and get the lawyers involved but it probably would be legal, eh? Maybe not. Just a thought, and if I thought of it I'm sure MANY others have also.