I prefer to have reg files for tweaks than several different programs to tweak stuff. The only tweak program i use is 7 Taskbar Tweaker.
The very first thing I would do after reformat or clean install is right click on desktop, select personalize, settings pops up, select Themes, then desk icon settings on right hand side, another box pops up, I would select all in box, click apply at bottom, these are real icons, not shortcuts, they will now be on your desktop, if you have duplicates, right click on duplicates, select properties, if it says shortcut, delete it.
Since Windows 8, disk defrag wont defragment solid state drives, just send a trim command, so, actually you must be losing performance disabling it.
New to Windows 10 (as well as here.. ) so this is a great idea and hope it gets enough info to make a sticky out of. Coming from Win 8.1 a must have for me is Classic Shell. That gives me time to find and setup whatever tweaks/customizations I'm going to do before playing with the tiles menu. Kinda helps ease my way into it if you know what I mean (being a Win 7 refuge even 8.1 was culture shock).
˄˄ Well, I came to Windows 10 directly from XP, not 8.1, so the jump was much bigger. At first, I almost despaired at the new Start (and not only). But decided to resist the temptation of going back to the classic shell, as I didn’t want to tamper with my new system before I knew how to fix it. Long story short, being thrown at the deep end, I learned the W10 interface and adapted it to my preferences, without resorting to any third party software. And I do not regret it, nor do I want to go back in this respect. Something else to add: All those system modifiers have to be kept up to date, otherwise they may stop working or cause problems after WUs. Using them might even make you dread WUs. So, my advice is, it’s worth spending the time to learn the new thing rather than trying to live in the past.
You forgot the most important two or three. 1 Install Classic Sell to get rid of the crap start menu 2 download winaerotweaker to fix few remaining things... logon screen, automatic updates, photo viewer, windows update and so on 3 Download vivaldi to get a decent browser 4 install mplayer classic to get a decent video player
That's certainly a much bigger leap than I took and if you're using Windows full time I can see your point with learning and using the interface. I will eventually spend some time with it as well. I do not use it full time though and I'm mostly Linux Mint and Manjaro depending on the system I'm using and happily encamped there. My main need for Windows is for finances (Quicken, which I'm heavily vested in) and taxes (Turbo Tax and TaxAct). I refuse to do taxes online and I have many years of financial data as an old fart that I haven't successfully been able to convert to a Linux finance app. Classic Shell seems to be pretty solid and stable and is well maintained but yeah, I'm sure Microsoft could and will mess with it. In keeping with the OP, for lightweight use as an Office application I also load up Libre Office. Mostly spreadsheets and documents and seems to work well for my uses.