Here’s a couple of helpful tips and tricks I’ve found from Windows 10 1909/1903 and previous versions. Let’s get into them!

Search and Cortana Are Separated In 1903/1909

A good change IMO and my first impressions of the new search is that it’s back to being as good as Windows 7’s. The search bar on the Taskbar is now just search and has nothing to do with Cortana. By default the search bar is expanded on the Taskbar and Cortana is just an icon. To change the search bar to just an icon, you need to edit the registry on a per-user basis. There’s no Group Policy for this as yet that I can find.

1. Open up Regedit and browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search.
2. Change the DWORD SearchboxTaskbarMode to 0x00000001. This will change the search box to an icon on the taskbar.

To remove the Cortana icon entirely from the Taskbar, there is a Group Policy.

1. Open up Group Policy edition. Browse to Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Search.
2. Set the item Allow Cortana to Disabled. The Cortana icon will be removed from the Taskbar on all computers affected by that Group Policy.

Installing .NET Framework 3.5 (including 2.5 and 3.0)

In some previous versions of Windows, the .NET Framework 3.5 has been tied to the version of Windows. With 1809 installing .NET 3.5 from the files included in 1803 or 1703 failed, so I’ve taken to separating out the files with every new version of Windows 10 that I deploy. You can find the files by mounting the Windows 10 ISO and browsing to ISO:\sources\sxs. In this folder you’ll find four files. Two are related to .NET 3.5 and two are related to Internet Explorer, but I don’t mess with Internet Explorer.

These are the files you’ll need:

• microsoft-windows-netfx3-ondemand-package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~.cab
• Microsoft-Windows-NetFx3-OnDemand-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~.cab

Copy these to a folder and to install .NET 3.5 via command line or in MDT/SCCM run the following command:

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Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /source:Path-To-dotNET-Folder\\dotNET35-Win10-19XX /LimitAccess

Visual Changes

I’ve always noticed that each version of Windows 10 has some subtle or not so subtle changes and conveniently you can tell the version of Windows 10 apart at a glance. Here’s the changes in Windows 10 1903/1909. The login screen now has a blur effect after dismissing the lock screen.

As stated above, Cortana is now an icon and the search box is the new Windows Search.

The People bar icon has been removed from the Taskbar by default but can be added if needed.

As most obviously, there’s a new brighter style Windows logo wallpaper now.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike