De-crapping Windows 7

Although I've sidestepped W7 on the new laptop by using Ubuntu, I can't do that at work. So I'll be accumulating notes here on how to make W7 work properly.

Explorer - address bar: Alt-D to replace drop-down lists with an edit box that you can actually type a fucking location into

Get rid of fading/expanding windows etc: Control Panel - 'Ease of Access Center' - 'Make it easier to focus on tasks' [now 'Make things on screen easier to see'] - 'Turn off all unnecessary animations'

Get rid of rubbish flashy Alt-Tab previews: Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Personalization, set Theme to 'Windows Classic'. (This gets rid of a whole load of other crap too, notably it sets the buttons, menus and title bars back to grown-up colours).

Taskbar: in Properties set 'Use small icons' and 'Never combine'.

Start menu: Untick both 'Store' options. You can also use Customise to get rid of some of the useless menu options, but All Programs can't be made to expand like it did in XP (unfixed bug).

• Be warned that Windows 7 doesn't seem to be able to have MRU on the Run dialogue box without having MRU on the Start menu. I got round this by creating various batch files with very short names to run the things I want most often (like 'goe' - Go Explorer - to run Explorer). Well done Microsoft for forcing users to revert to the state of the art circa 1991.
• It may be possible to get rid of the search box by going 'Start -> Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows Features On or Off -> uncheck Windows Search' but haven't tested that yet (and it probably fucks up a load of stuff behind the scenes, like taking IE off the desktop used to)
• You can get your own items onto the main area of the Start Menu by dragging them out of Explorer and dropping them on the button. There doesn't seem to be a grown-up way of doing this.

Turn off various taskbar crappery like pinning and Office buttons thusly:

1. Unpin everything you don't want.
2. Use gpedit.msc to set the following settings in User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Start Menu and Taskbar to Enabled:
   • Do not allow pinning programs to the Taskbar
   • Remove pinned programs from the Taskbar
   • Remove pinned programs from the Start Menu

This may not be W7-specific, but with a new computer you may have unwittingly installed intellipoint mouse features. This will stop middle/wheel click from closing tabs in Firefox - instead the button takes you into some bizarre fourth-dimensional space between applications, presumably a 'feature' in W7. Use Control Panel/Mouse to set the middle button action back to 'middle-click'.

I love the implicit admission in 'Turn off all unnecessary animations' btw. They might as well have an option labelled 'Make Windows 7 less crap'.

All still working October 2015 - NB the change in the Ease of Access 'Center''s subheadings.