Other Windows 10 related notes

Your LSCE computer is your (best) friend. It can be useful to know its name, if you need to get technical help from the LSCE admins

• If your computer has been configured at LSCE, it will always try to connect to the LSCE wired network to check if your password has changed, when you type your password on the login screen.
  
  If you are not on the LSCE wired network (e.g when you use the eduroam or ORME ACCES (aka guest) WiFi or when you are outside LSCE), there will be a 1-2 minutes delay until Windows is sure that it can't connect to the LSCE password server before starting the session… Windows is not slow, this is just an annoying connection timeout delay.
  
  The easy workaround is just to temporarily interrupt the network, type your password, and then restart the network
  • laptop + WiFi: you just have to activate the airplane mode, type your password, and leave the airplane mode
    • Activating airplane mode from the login screen: look for Lock screen in How to enable or disable Airplane mode on Windows 10
    • Turning off airplane mode from an active session: Turn airplane mode on or off
  • Desktop or laptop connected to an ethernet cable outside LSCE: in this rare case, just be patient, or temporarily unplug the network cable

• When you (re)start your computer, you have to wait for Windows to start, launch your applications, type your passwords, etc… Fortunately, you can also restart from the exact same state when you stopped using the computer, by using the hibernation mode (aka Mise en veille prolongée).
  • Your computer will not use the battery when it is hibernating
  • All network connections will of course be brutally closed when your computer enters hibernation, so it is better to cleanly close the remote applications (text editors, etc…) and terminals before hibernation

There are many actions that you can perform with a touchpad, instead of using a 2-3 buttons mouse, including simulating a right-click and middle-click

Be sure to:

• at least read the Touchpad gestures for Windows page
• check and configure/improve the default Settings: Start ⇒ Settings ⇒ Devices ⇒ Touchpad
  • this is The Place where you can specify that tapping the touchpad with 3 fingers will simulate clicking on the middle button of a mouse

This is the network your guests can use when they visit LSCE, but this is also a way for you to get WiFi access at LSCE when eduroam is not configured yet. Do not forget that you will need to download a configuration package before you can use eduroam

guest network configuration

This is the most convenient way to use WiFi at LSCE, and when you travel to other research labs (including foreign labs)

Do not forget to take care of the eduroam network configuration when you are at LSCE and when you can easily make sure that eduroam is working correctly!

Visit Recovery options in Windows 10 and follow the steps below to make sure that the system protection by recovery is activated:

• English: follow the steps in Restore from a system restore point and make sure that Turn on system protection option is activated for the C:\ drive
• Français: suivez les instructions dans Restauration à partir d'un point de restauration système et vérifiez que Activer la protection du système est sélectionnée pour le disque C:\
  • Panneau de configuration ⇒ Chercher recovery ⇒ Créer un point de restauration ⇒ Vérifier si la protection de C:\ est Activée dans le panneau Paramètres de protection. Sinon sélectionner C:\ puis cliquer sur Configurer…

This will allow you to access your disks more conveniently/quickly. Follow the steps below and move the Computer icon (This PC or Ce PC) to the top left of the screen, and the Recycle Bin icon to the bottom left

Show desktop icons in Windows 10

A correct VPN (Virtual Private Network) configuration will allow you to access CEA resources from outside, and LSCE resources (e.g. disk servers, jupyterhub) as if your computer was physically connected to the LSCE network

VPN usage and configuration

If you have followed the steps above to display the Computer icon on the desktop, you should now be able to easily access your disks!

You should have most of your files in (sub-folders of) the two following folders (create them if they don't exist yet). If you are moving from another computer, maybe you just have to copy these folders from the previous computer

• Local HOME FOLDER: <some_disk_different_from_c>:\Users\<your_login>
  • This is where you keep your work. Do not put this folder on the C:\ system disk/partition (unless you have only one partition on the computer)
  • This folder is different from your Windows User folder! ⇒ C:\Users\<your_login>
    • Note: documents on your desktop are located in C:\Users\<your_login>\Desktop
  • Remember to make a backup of this folder regularly!
    • You can use a Backup program to easily and quickly save your work

• Local SCRATCH FOLDER: <another_disk>:\Scratch\<your_login>
  • The place where you store your temporary files, installation programs, etc…
  • It's OK to put this folder on the C:\ drive if you have enough space on C:\
  • Remember to clean this folder from time to time, especially if you need some disk space

• Use the file explorer to go to your local Home folder inside the Users folder (<a_disk_different_from_C>:\Users\<your_login>), click on the small folder icon at the left of the bar displaying the folder location, and drag the icon on the desktop. This will create a shortcut that you can rename Home Local

• Do the same thing to create a Scratch Local shortcut on the desktop, pointing to <some_disk>:\Scratch\<your_login>

• Note: if you install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Ubuntu later, you can also create a Home WSL shortcut to your local Linux home directory in \\wsl$\Ubuntu\home\<your_login>

When your computer is physically connected to the LSCE network (or connected to the LSCE VPN !!), open the file explorer, copy paste \\dfshost\dfs\home in the location field and press Return to display the content of your Linux home directory. Grab the folder icon at the left of the location field, drop it on the desktop and rename it Home Linux.

Do the same thing with \\dfshost\dfs\scratch01\<your_login> and create a Scratch Linux shortcut

Follow the steps in Show hidden files (Windows 10)

In the View tab, you should also uncheck the option Hide extensions for known file types

Go to the Power panel: Win+I ⇒ System ⇒ Power and sleep

• Check/choose when the screen and PC should go to sleep
  • If you have to maintain a network connection (ssh, VcXsrv, etc…) you have to set up the options so that the computer will never go to sleep (at least not when it's connected to a power source, for laptops!)
    • Select Never in the Sleep pull-down menu

• Go to Additional power settings ⇒ Choose what the power button does ⇒ Change settings that are currently unavailable
  • Select when the computer should sleep, hibernate or shutdown, depending on buttons/keys you use
  • If you have a laptop, it's really useful to enable Hibernate when you press the Sleep button of the laptop (Fn key and the function key with a moon logo).
    When your laptop is in Sleep mode, it will still use some of the battery, but no power is required for the Hibernate mode.

More details

Tech note: if you want to save space and remove the hibernation file (C:\hiberfil.sys) on a desktop because you know that you will never use hibernate, you can just type powercfg -h off in a cmd shell (powercfg -h on to re-activate). You should always use hibernation on a laptop, for performance reasons

You can save some time by learning Windows keyboard shortcuts

Creating a new (virtual) desktop

Using virtual desktops

• Open Task view: Win + Tab
• Cycle through the virtual desktops: Win + CTRL + left or right arrow
  • Hint! On a laptop, you can swipe left or right with four fingers on the trackpad to go to the previous/next desktop
• Create a desktop: Win + CTRL + D
• Close current desktop: Win + CTRL + F4

More about Windows shortcuts

• Thunderbird
• Firefox

Follow the steps on the LSCE Eduroam WiFi page

It seems that you will not automatically receive Microsoft Office updates. You have to manually activate this

• Check the Windows 10 activity history and your privacy settings to determine the activity history information (the files you have opened) you want to keep locally, and share with your other Windows devices (through your Microsoft account) and Microsoft.

Visit the Installing extra applications for Windows 10 and get what you need

If you work on remote Linux servers, but also want to do some Linux stuff locally (possibly when you are offline or have a poor network connection), follow the steps on the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and Ubuntu page!

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