Hide Windows 10 useless folders

I just migrated over to a fresh development PC running Windows 10. It took many hours of work to remove most of the "junk" that clutters the desktop, processes and apps. I removed all tiles from the Start menu. I uninstalled every modern app that's possible (news, weather, sport, etc). I disabled services that will be unused. I disabled the firewall and Defender. Using Sysinternals tools I found startup items and running processes that were useless. And so on ... for hours. I still haven't figured out how to disable or remove Adobe Flash yet, but I swear I will, despite the fact they've baked it right into the operating system.

One challenge was to shrink the number of folders in Windows Explorer. You get a Quick access node at the top containing Desktop, Downloads, Documents, etc, but these folders are duplicated under This PC, which a dreadful waste of space. Web searches on this revealed lots of stupid and dangerous ideas, but finally I found a chap who correctly assumed that the appearance of the Windows Explorer tree was controlled by the Registry, and he found the correct keys to adjust and hide the useless folders. Look here with admin permissions:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft
  \Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions

Find the child Guid nodes containing a REG_SZ Name of the folders you want to hide. There will be a child key PropertyBag\ThisPCPolicy which you change from Show to Hide. One entry didn't have the ThisPCPolicy key and I had to add it manually.

Setting the values to Hide takes affect as soon as you relaunch Windows Explorer. You can see in this picture how I had removed a few folders and was about to remove the last two, leaving a much cleaner looking tree.

One overarching question needs to be asked here ... Why am I doing this? I'm not the only person who is "cleaning up" Windows 10 to remove all the clutter and junk. It hints that Microsoft's marketing and design departments are losing touch with reality. Overall, Windows is getting dumber and dumber, progressively looking and feeling more like an iMac (maybe that's what they want!).

There are so many subtle changes to Windows 10 that make life harder for power users and developers. Many actions and commands in Windows 7 require more mouse clicks, scrolling and navigation in Windows 10. I've been forced to pin many apps to the start bar or create desktop icons to allow quick Run as Administrator.

Addendum #1

While continuing to disinfect Windows 10 I stumbled across this fabulous article by Chris Hoffman which tells you how to use Powershell to uninstall the pesky modern apps like Camera, Groove Music, Get Skype, Music & TV, People, Weather, etc, that can't simply be uninstalled. The effect of running his commands is beautiful: all the built-in modern app garbage is erased. Once again ... why am I doing this?!

Addendum #2

I boot my PC the following morning and Windows 10 told me that updates had been installed and all my files were exactly where they used to be. The screen background had gone blank, and absolutely everything I did in the steps above had been undone. All folder icons and all Windows 10 apps had been restored.

Addendum #3

Someone in the forum has hinted that the reversal of my changes was an unfortunate coincidence, possibly caused by a major 10.1 automatic update. The update history has no entries to confirm this. My reapplied changes have been preserved for a couple of weeks now.

Orthogonal Programming