JVH Consulting's Blog

Below are some tricks I’ve run across to help Tweak Windows 11 to work the way you want it to (Like Win10 that is :)).

1. Inital Setup of Windows 11 – the OOBE – (out of box experience) doesn’t provide you an option to setup the machine using local account & password. MS is forcing only to login with a Hotmail, outlook or msn account – this not ideal especially if you need to join your computer to a domain first. But there is an alternative to doing this:
   • Turn on pc and wait for Windows 11 to show the OOBE – out of box experience – At any time DO NOT connect to your wireless first.
     • If you do connect to internet, then best to do the following to disable the wi-fi adapter before continuing:
     • Click SHIFT + F10 key
     • at command prompt type: netsh int show int – will bring up list of network adapters. If connected is set by “Wi-Fi” or Ethernet, then use next command to disable it temporarily: Netsh int set int “Wi-Fi” disable (or “Ethernet” disable)
     • Follow next step to get the option to setup a local account.
   • Once at OOBE setup screen Do NOT click next; instead, hit the “Shift + F10 Key”.. this will open a command prompt window – black window.
   • At the prompt type:  OOBE\BYPASSNRO – then hit enter.  The computer will reboot automatically. 
   • After reboot, you can follow prompts along until you get to the “connect to wireless” page – Again Do not connect to any wifi at home/office. Instead click on: “I don’t have Internet” link at the bottom left of screen. Click NEXT.
   • On Next Screen, Click on the “Limited Setup or Continue with Limited Setup”.
   • From there it’ll ask you who is using the computer – just type: admin then set password
   • From there it’ll go through the paces to get you to a desktop where you can then connect to the internet and download the syncro tool so I can connect further.
     • Note if you disable either wi-fi or ethernet adapter from netsh command above, then open administrator command prompt and type: netsh int set int “Wi-Fi” enabled 
3. Right-Click Menu Shortened list of options – Microsoft probably thought this was a good idea but in reality it’s more of a pain because the pictures are hard to remember what is what and you almost always need to click on the option to see more options :(.
   • Found after installing 7zip application that the right-click menu would hang every time you tried to use it. Reason is because 7zip adds to the menu and as a result Windows 11 Explorer hangs (one of the many reasons it hangs). The only way to fix the hang is remove 7zip and then perform the following command in Admin cmd prompt (or W11 Terminal).
   • Type/paste this in the command prompt:
     • reg.exe add “HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32” /f /ve
     • Afterwards the right-click menu looks like windows 10 again.
     • Can now re-install 7zip application and it will show the new options in the menu.
4. OneDrive (either version hangs) – This hang contributes to the Win11 Explorer shell hanging too – so best way to fix this is to run the onedrive.exe with /reset:
   • C:\users\%userprofile%\appdata\local\microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset
   • the OneDrive System tray icons will disappear while they reset to default settings. Then you can reopen by searching in Start menu.
   • Another option discovered is to go to the Settings/Apps and remove the Windows 11 installed OneDrive version and then re-install the O365 OneDrive software.
5. Library System folder has gone missing or been permanently deleted somehow – this could be in 10 or 11 – but recent troubles with OneDrive and OD4B caused Documents folder to disappear and thus had to recreate it. Found commands below to fix this problem – create in batch file:
   • @echo off
   • taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
   • timeout /t 2 /nobreak >nul
   • if not exist “%UserProfile%\Documents” mkdir “%UserProfile%\Documents”
   • reg add “HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders” /v “Personal” /t REG_SZ /d “C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents” /f
   • reg add “HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders” /v “{f42ee2d3-909f-4907-8871-4c22fc0bf756}” /t REG_EXPAND_SZ /d %%USERPROFILE%%”\Documents” /f
   • reg add “HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders” /v “Personal” /t REG_EXPAND_SZ /d %%USERPROFILE%%”\Documents” /f
   • attrib +r -s -h “%USERPROFILE%\Documents” /S /D
   • timeout /t 1 /nobreak >nul
   • start explorer.exe

Thats all for now! Will update as come across more items.