/u/WackoMcGoose's Guide to Setting Up Windows 10

Alright, so bear with me here, this is a pretty stream-of-consciousness-y thing, based on notes I was taking on my laptop during the installation process for Win10 Home on my desktop. Some of the settings may not be useful to everyone (you might have no use for those Supplemental Fonts, for instance), but it should give you a general idea of what is probably a good idea to tweak on a fresh 10 install.

General hardware breakdown for reference:
*CPU: Intel i7 930 (don't look at me funny /r/PCMR, I scored this at a garage sale for like $120 plus the mobo, and it's worked awesomely)
*Mobo: ASUS P6X58D
*GPU: EVGA GTX 960
*RAM: 10GB DDR3
*Hard drives: 240GB SanDisk SSD (boot drive for 10), and roughly 1.5TB of assorted HDDS for storage (sup SteamApps)
*Peripherals: Mundane USB keyboard and mouse, 2 speakers, 2 monitors connected via DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter for one and a DVI-to-VGA adapter for the other (second monitor's old), NetGear USB Wifi adapter
*OS to be upgraded: Win7 Home OEM, already installed to a different HDD on this computer, but since I'm not changing the CPU or mobo, it will and did successfully work

Overall install process of this thing:
*Installed Win7 Home
*Installed EVGA drivers and DX11
*Oops no wifi drivers, bridge connection via ethernet through laptop
*Windows Update::Everything
*Give up after it's unable to connect, make Win10 boot media and upgrade directly
*Customize settings - Everything::Off
*Connect to wifi
*Set static network IP for portforwarding reasons
*Whoops, reinstall the EVGA drivers and DX11, the Win10 "Keep nothing" install nuked it :p
*All of the Settings (app):
	>System
		>Display
			>About as expected
		>Notifications & actions
			>Notifications: All Off (for now)
		>Apps & features
			>Basically Add/Remove Programs, uninstall unneeded built-in stuff
				>Cannot or should not be uninstalled: Alarms & Clock, Calculator, Camera, Groove Music, Mail & Calendar, Maps, Movies & TV, OneNote, People, Phone, Photos, Store, Voice Recorder, Weather, Xbox
			>Manage optional features
				>Add features: Arabic Supplemental Fonts, Chinese Supplemental Fonts, Graphics Tools, Hebrew Supplemental Fonts, Japanese Supplemental Fonts, Korean Supplemental Fonts
		>Multitasking
			>Defaults, but turn off "When I snap a window, show what I can snap next to it" and "When I resize a snapped window, simultaniously resize any adjacent snapped window"
		>Tablet mode: Irrelevant
		>Power & sleep
			>Screen: When plugged in, turn off screen after [Never]
			>Sleep: When plugged in, PC goes to sleep after [Never]
			>Advanced power settings:
				>Sleep/Allow hybrid sleep: Off
				>Sleep/Allow wake timers: Disable
				>Display/Turn off display after: Never
				>Display/Enable adaptive brightness: Off (irrelevant anyway)
				>(Leave everything else default)
		>Storage: No need to change anything at this time
		>Offline maps: "Automatically update maps" to Off (feature turned off anyway)
		>Default apps:
			>Email: Mozilla Thunderbird
			>Maps: (idgaf)
			>Music player: Windows Media Player
			>Photo viewer: Windows Photo Viewer (requires a registry edit to be reactivated, google it)
			>Video player: Windows Media Player
			>Web browser: Mozilla Firefox
		>About: (Various kinds of system info)
	>Devices:
		>Printers & scanners:
			>Add network printer and set as Default
			>Let Windows manage my default printer: Off
		>Connected devices: No need to mess with this one
		>Mouse & trackpad: Default settings are ok here
		>Typing: Turn all Spelling options off, it's bad enough when Firefox misjudges a right-in-context word...
		>AutoPlay: Off
		>USB: Sure, tell me if there's issues with a device (leave as default On)
	>Network & Internet: Once connected to router, no need to change anything else
	>Personalization: Come back to this once I import my pictures and stuff. For now, turn off settings under Start submenu
	>Accounts: Leave as Local account, add profile pic once I import things
	>Time & Language:
		>Date & time: Should already be good
		>Region & language: Add Japanese as secondary input language, configure as normal
		>Speech: Ignore this, not using it
	>Ease of Access: Turn off everything... but change Other options/Show notifications for: 7 seconds
	>Privacy (oh boy):
		>General: Everything off (maybe consider "Let websites provide locally relevant content by accessing my language list"...)
		>Location: Everything off
		>Camera: Off (have no webcam anyway :p)
		>Microphone: Off for now (later on, enable for Audacity and OBS)
		>Speech, inking, & typing: Off (no need to use Cortana)
		>Account info: Off (is irrelevant with a Local account anyway)
		>Contacts: Off (...actually, Thunderbird may need this... except those contacts are local to the program anyway)
		>Calendar: Off (unused)
		>Call history: Off (unused)
		>Email: It's pretty clear Thunderbird will need this on... unless it's talking about Store apps specifically???
		>Messaging: Off
		>Radios: Off (I have none)
		>Other devices: Off (I have none)
		>Feedback & diagnostics: Windows should [Never] ask for my feedback, and only send [Basic] device data to MS
		>Background apps: don't really have a need for any of them to be on tbh
	>Update & Security:
		>Windows Update:
			>Advanced options: "Notify to schedule restart", and turn off "Updates from more than one place" so we don't get torrent-flagged by Comcast!
		>Windows Defender: On, but turn off Cloud-based Protection and Automatic sample submission
		>Backup: Not set up, but do external backups frequently!
		>Recovery: Nothing to poke
		>Activation: Yes, yes it is
		>For developers: ???
*Other settings of note:
	*Taskbar and Start Menu Properties: "Use small taskbar buttons", "Taskbar buttons: [Never combine]"
	*Microsoft OneDrive: [Uncheck] Start OneDrive automatically when I sign in to Windows
	*File Explorer: Enable showing file extensions and hidden files/folders
	*Desktop: View->Small icons
*Things changed in Services.msc:
	*Geolocation Service: Disabled, previously Manual (Trigger Start)


Also, I installed Classic Shell to make the Start Menu more 7-style, I unpinned all tiles, installed SCP-DS3 drivers and used Ninite to get most of my other usual programs.