Windows 8.1 disable start screen. Who is a Sysadmin? How to remove an app from the Home screen

Sysadmin(aka in English sysadmin, system administrator) - an abbreviated name of a profession, the full name of which in Russian sounds like system administrator. This profession has recently become very popular for most young and not so young people; they teach it, work in it, and get good money for it. This is due to the rapid development of various computer technologies and their penetration into all spheres of human life. The word system administrator is often used in colloquial speech, in vacancies and resumes when searching for a job, in a word - everywhere. Below we will talk about what the profession of a system administrator is.

In modern realities, a system administrator can be called virtually any person who is involved in servicing and maintaining the operation of a specific computer network, including all its hardware and/or software components, which may include:

• Personal computers, both workstations and servers;
• Network equipment such as switches, routers, firewalls and more;
• Web servers, mail servers, database servers, and others.

Also, in certain cases, the system administrator may be responsible for ensuring proper information security.

Depending on his specialization, a system administrator can engage in the following activities:

• An administrator of workstations and servers most often repairs both hardware (failed motherboards, burnt-out power supplies) and software (Windows won’t load, commas won’t print in Word...).
• Administrator of a corporate network based on an Active Directory domain. A very popular activity, given the prevalence of Windows operating systems, as well as the need to somehow centrally control them. Such a specialist must be able to create, distribute into groups, edit users, give them the appropriate rights in the AD domain, and also be able to manage group policies for users, their computers and the groups to which they are all members.
• Administration of networks and network equipment. His responsibilities include knowledge of network topology, the ability to work with both non-configurable and customizable network equipment, planning a local computer network, as well as the ability to combine several remote workstations into one network by setting up NATs and VPNs "ov. You should also not forget to control access within this network and outside it - setting up a proxy.
• A web server administrator, who must at least be able to install, configure and maintain one of the following web servers - Apache, IIS, Nginx, and monitor hosting (which can be located both within the organization’s network and outside it). In addition, a good administrator should be able to configure normal resource distribution under high loads, clustering and many other specific things.
• Administration of a mail server is also a common task for a system administrator; his tasks include working with such popular solutions as Exim, Microsoft Exchange, Postfix, Sendmail, or corporate mail solutions from Google or, for example, Yandex. In addition to the obvious control over accounts (creation, deletion, configuration), it is also necessary to be able to set up an antispam system, etc.
• Site administrator. These responsibilities may include simply filling the site with some content, but since we are talking about a system administrator, then in theory he should be able to set up hosting (including a web server, as mentioned above), install and configure the desired site, for example any content management system (CMS).
• Very rarely, the responsibilities of a system administrator may include the task of creating or maintaining a video surveillance system. The tasks include installing and configuring cameras, responding to various events, saving and playing back recordings. He has a weak attitude towards system administration, and often falls into his responsibilities in conjunction with some other responsibilities.

Left out of the system administrator's occupations described above are such possible things as database administration (Microsoft SQL, MySQL and its multiple branches, Oracle, etc.), 1C administration (not to be confused with “1C programmer”), PBX and much more .

There are quite good options for personalizing the Start screen, but in Windows 8.1 they have expanded even further and allow you to customize almost all its aspects. The new release has increased the selection of colors and patterns, including animated ones, and there are some less obvious improvements that are worth knowing about.

Patterns and colors

The most obvious customization options are available right from the start screen. Just click “Settings” and select “Personalize”.

Everything works almost the same as in Windows 8, but there are many more possibilities. There are twenty options available in the list of background patterns, including six animated, twelve static, a blank background (matching the background color), and Desktop wallpaper. The choice of background and foreground colors is also very wide, especially compared to Windows 8. Together, this allows you to completely customize the Start screen to your liking. Here are some examples where only the pattern, background and foreground colors are different.

Tip: if you expect to frequently switch between the Start screen and the Desktop, you should use the same background for them - this will soften the harshness of the transition from one interface to another.

Tiles

Consolidating administrative utilities. Administrators and old-school IT pros will appreciate the ability to pin administrative tools to the Start screen. To do this, click on the Settings charm on the start screen and select Tiles.

Turn live tiles on and off. The main advantage of Windows 8.1 in general and the Start screen in particular is the ability of tiles to update and show relevant information in real time. However, some would prefer to do without it - and they have such an opportunity. To turn off updating for one or more tiles, select them and select the “Turn Live Tile Off” option in the panel that appears. You can turn updates back on in the same way, just keep in mind that some tiles simply are not dynamic.

Replacing the Home screen

Desktop users might want to replace the Start screen with an Applications screen, which shows a static but comprehensive list of all installed programs. As I already said in the article “”, this can be done in the properties of the taskbar, on the “Navigation” tab. The option you want is called “Show the Apps view automatically when I go to Start.” If desired, the list of applications can be sorted by category to make it even more convenient.

Setting up synchronization

When you use a Microsoft account (as intended), Windows 8.1 automatically syncs a ton of settings, including the Home screen, so you can work in the same environment across all your computers. It's worth exploring these settings because not all Home screen settings are synced by default.

Home screen sync settings can be found under PC Settings | SkyDrive | Synchronizing settings" (PC Settings | SkyDrive | Sync Settings).

The following options are available:

“Sync your settings on this PC”. This option must be enabled for settings to sync for a given computer.

“Start screen”. When this option is enabled, tiles and their placement are synced across all computers. By default this option is disabled, and if you enable it there are some interesting side effects. Let's say modern applications that are not installed on the current computer may appear on the start screen, and if you click on the tile of such an application, it will be automatically installed.

"Performance" (Appearance). By default, this option is enabled and is responsible for synchronizing the pattern, background and foreground colors of the Start screen (as well as other settings not related to the Start screen). If you prefer to use different settings on different computers, it is better to disable this option.

Materials

This article will talk about how to add tiles in Windows 8.1 or how to remove extra tiles in the Modern or Metro interface. Not every user uses the Modern interface. For example, I haven’t been able to get used to it for a month now, or maybe I just don’t want to, because I’m used to my native seven. But perhaps someone is using Windows 8 tiles. This article is actually intended for such a user.

The new interface contains a lot of unnecessary tiles that can easily be removed and shortcuts to the necessary programs can be added to this place. Using the built-in programs of Windows 8 is somehow not very convenient. For some reason, there is a feeling that they are somehow underdeveloped or specially made this way, something like a rebus that must first be solved and only then used. I would like to give an example from my own experience of using the music player tile. So I launched the mp3 file and the music seemed to start playing, but I still couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. Not finding a button to turn off the music (oh, what kind of player is this that doesn’t have play or stop buttons, maybe it works by the power of thought, damn I didn’t think about that, I’ll have to try it), I decided to use the most reliable method and stupidly restart the computer. And what would you think? Yes yes yes! I almost jumped out of my chair, the music continued to play as if nothing had happened, it didn’t even think about turning off. I don’t remember how I stopped it (apparently I was in a trance state), but after that I decided not to use the built-in tile applications anymore but to install regular programs like AIMP and ACDSee and to make it more convenient to launch them, I needed to configure the tiles.

So, let's look at how to remove unnecessary tiles. Open the “desktop” (damn, the name “Metro” or “Modern” infuriates me, I’ll call it R12 in the old fashioned way; desktop (after all, it’s a desktop?)), and select the first “square victim” that we will remove. Yeah, there you go! We remove the camera. I use ACDSee to view photos (or you can install FastStone, there are many different viewers). To do this, right-click on the tile we need

A simple panel like this should appear at the bottom. Find the icon called “Unpin from Start Screen” and left-click on it.

That's all! The tile has been removed. We see an empty space where the camera was. By the way, you can add any tile you need there.

To consolidate the material, we will perform this procedure again. This time we’ll put away the notebook (of course I need a notebook, but I’m willing to sacrifice it to consolidate the material). Also right-click on it

And in the panel that opens, left-click on the icon with a hairpin (I forgot what this garbage is called correctly)

We see that the notepad has been removed from the “Home Screen” (here it turns out that the “Modern” interface is called correctly in Russian)

Well, we have learned how to remove tiles from the start screen, now we will learn to add the necessary tile programs, i.e. tile-shaped labels.

To do this, on the home screen, click on the down arrow, where all the programs are located (of course, they can be launched from the bottom screen, but this is not very convenient, so we will transfer them to the top screen)

Here we see all the programs installed on our computer. Select the one you need. I chose “Eset Nod32” that came at random (although I don’t really need it there, but whatever you do for the sake of an example). Right-click on it and in the panel that opens at the bottom, left-click on the icon that says “Pin to Start Screen”

We look at the initial screen and see the Eset Smart Security label square.

We add other programs in the same way. I chose the Yandex browser shortcut. Also right-click on it

And in the bottom panel select R12; “Pin to Start Screen” (the caption speaks for itself)

We look at the start screen and see the tile we added

This is how we set up the initial screen.

You can also freely move tiles from one place to another simply by clicking on it with the mouse and rearranging it to any other place.

If you no longer have enough space, you can customize their size. For example, if you often use some programs and less often others, then you can make them larger or smaller. To do this, again right-click on the tile we need and in the bottom panel click on the “Resize” icon

An additional window will appear with size options. In this case, there are two options (for other icons there may be three options, in my opinion three options are only for built-in Windows 8.1 programs). We choose small.

We see that it has become two times smaller. This way you can place who knows how many tiles on the home screen.

This is where I’ll end this article. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can add something to it. Leave your comments.

The greatest dissatisfaction among users of previous versions of Windows when switching to a new operating system was caused by two things:

1. By default, a new Start screen with "Tiles" opened, so to go to the "familiar" desktop you had to click on the corresponding tile. The next time I logged in, the same thing happened again.
2. To turn off/restart the computer using the mouse, you had to “call up the magic buttons, go into the parameters, select the shutdown item and select the desired action.

With the release, it became obvious that the developers made certain concessions to the “Old Believers” who did not want to “relearn.” Here we will briefly describe the most important (useful) features of Windows 8.1, which were sorely lacking in Windows 8.

The "Start" button appeared in its usual place. On click right By clicking on this button, a convenient menu appears with the ability to immediately choose to shut down or restart the PC.

However, when the system starts, tiles still open, not the desktop. To configure the desktop to open instead of "tiles", you must first go to the "Desktop". Then you need to click right mouse button on the "Taskbar".

Next, select “Properties” from the pop-up menu. A window will open dedicated to all the taskbar and “navigation” settings. It is the “Navigation” tab that we need to configure the opening of the desktop instead of the “start screen”. On this tab, find the item “When you log in and close all applications, open the desktop instead of the Start screen” and check the box.

Don't forget to click the "Apply" button, otherwise your changes will not be taken into account. Now, when you turn on your computer or laptop, instead of the start screen (tiles), the good old desktop will always open.

Let us remind you that owners of licensed Windows 8 can upgrade their system to Windows 8.1 absolutely free of charge - this can be done through the “Windows Store”. If you purchase one version of a Windows 8 product or