Brad's Hacks

The Problem

If you’re connecting your laptop to a TV and the black in the image is gray instead, your laptop is not outputting the full 8-bit-per-channel color range. Instead of sending values between 0 and 255, it’s sending 15-255. You could compensate for this in some TVs’ settings, but you’d be losing color definition.

Intel defaults to 15-255. There is a setting for this in the Intel Graphics Control Panel (In Video > Color Enhancement), but it doesn’t seem to take any effect… unless you do the following:

The Workaround

1. Make sure Input Range is set to ‘Full Range‘.
2. Now go back to the main menu and into the Display page.
3. In the Color Settings section, Enable ‘YCbCr’.
4. Wait for several seconds for the setting to revert itself. You should now be getting full 0-255 color range.

You have to do this every time you restart the computer or reconnect the TV.

These are the tweaks I use every time I set up a Windows laptop, to make it faster, more power-efficient, and less annoying. Some of these are pretty standard and well known; others are more advanced and thorough.

Fresh Windows Installation

Skip manufacturer bloatware altogether and start with a clean slate. YOU decide what OEM packages you want to install back.

1. Back up your files. If your laptop comes with a display calibration profile (like Razer Blade), then find the ICC file in Windows\system32\spool\drivers\color and back it up to reinstall it later.
2. Use the Windows Media Creation Tool to make an installation USB drive.
3. If you want features like Group Policy Editor (helpful for some tweaks below), you'll want to install the Pro version instead. In this case, download this ei.cfg file (right click, save link as) and put it in the \Sources folder of the created install disk. Putting this config file there enables the option to choose a different Windows edition. You'll need a license for Windows 10 Pro.
4. Boot into the install drive using the Boot Menu or Settings/Update & Security/Recovery/Advanced Startup.
5. Go through the installer. While doing so, make sure you choose the "Custom" option instead of "Upgrade", and delete all the partitions. Choose to install Windows in the resulting unallocated space—it will set up the partitions for you.
6. Once you've booted into the system, wait for Windows Update to automatically install drivers - no need for any OEM software to do this. If a device is still missing drivers afterwards, you can selectively get that driver from the manufacturer website.

Reduce Startup Programs

Make Windows start up faster by disallowing unnecessary programs to automatically launch.

1. Open Task Manager (you can press Ctrl+Shift+Esc).
2. Go to the Startup tab and disable any programs you don't need to automatically self-launch every time you turn on the computer.
3. You can also do the same thing for many programs like Spotify and Skype from within the application's own settings page.

Disable Intel's Cringe-worthy Graphics Features

Does the brightness or color of your display change by itself from time to time? Intel's "image enhancement" is probably messing with you. All these "enhancements" do is make the image inconsistent and worse.

1. Open Intel Graphics Command Center by searching "graphics" in the Start Menu.
2. Go to the Video section.
3. Press the "+ Custom" button to create a different video mode.
4. Turn off all the "enhancements" like Noise Reduction, and Film Mode Detection, Skin Tone Enhancement, and Contrast Enhancement. All of these adulterate the content your computer is meant to display.
5. Go to the System section, and then Power.
6. Disable Extended Battery Life for Gaming to get maximum frame rates.
7. Disable Display Power Saving Technology. This one messes with your display brightness. Make sure you set this for both "On Battery" and "Plugged In" and all power plans.
8. A Windows version update may reset the Power settings, so set them again if that happens.

Disable Panel Self-Refresh

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You can prevent Windows from automatically installing or updating a specific device or driver using the “Prevent installation of devices that match any of these device IDs” Group Policy, but what if you’re using Windows 10 Home and don’t have Group Policy Editor? You can do the same thing using Registry Editor.

• For convenience, we can edit this template REG file to our needs and install it, instead of manually creating each registry in Registry Editor.
• Once you’ve downloaded the REG file, right click on it and Edit. We’re going to replace the Device ID in the template with the correct Device ID of your device.

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This is the AutoHotkey script I use to type common special characters, including Spanish accented letters, superscripts, math and science symbols. I’ve also included shortcuts to simulate the media control keys.

You can copy and paste the script, or download a precompiled version that doesn’t require AutoHotkey to run.

You can put it in %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (navigate to this quickly by running “shell:startup” in the Run box) to have it automatically run at Windows startup.

(‘!’ means Alt, ‘+’ means Shift, ‘^’ means Control, so ‘!a’ means pressing ‘Alt’ and ‘A’ together.)
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Important: this is no longer necessary for many laptops because ThrottleStop‘s “Disable and Lock Power Limits” option can override DPTF. If that doesn’t work, try the following.

If your CPU frequency is being reduced under load, even at low temperatures, you’re probably experiencing power throttling. Most of the time, you can solve this by disabling or raising the power limits, and disabling DPTF explicitly is not required. But sometimes, you need to disable Intel’s Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework (now called Innovation Platform Framework), which tries to set the power limit dynamically on your behalf.

Your laptop may have an option to disable DPTF in the BIOS menu. If not:

Keep in mind: the removal of DPTF will not inherently change anything until you raise the power limits using ThrottleStop or Intel XTU.

Warning: if your computer can’t cool its CPU VRM properly, then raising the power limits may cause it to suddenly shut down. If that’s the case, you need to give the VRM more cooling like I did here.

If any DPTF devices are still present, please tell me their hardware IDs in the comments. (To check hardware ID: right click on the device, Properties, Details, select “Hardware Ids” in the drop-down menu.)

Reversion Instructions

1. In Registry Editor, delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceInstall\Restrictions.
2. Reboot.