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Windows XP Tweaks

 

 

Windows XP Tweaks2 and Tips

Within this page are enough ideas and things to do to totally trash your system.

Be forewarned that the ideas and concepts being presented here are what are generally referred to as hacks. As in I am hacking into this computer. It means that you are not working with general programs anymore, you are getting 'inside' the machine. If your computer were a car, you would have just changed your job description from user of the vehicle to the mechanic of the vehicle. You are going IN. You are working inside the guts of your computer. So be forewarned.

What is the worst thing that can happen in a situation like this? You would have to reformat your hard drive, reinstall your operating system and reload all your programs. I have trashed my computer several times. In fact, I am getting pretty fast about being able to recover from a trashing of my computer. And so I give you the lessons that I have learned from my encounters on the dark side in hopes that it will help you. Hopefully you won't have the same accidents that I have had and the pleasure of having your computer run just a little better, to have it run a little more like what you want it be rather than just as it came will outweigh the negatives. I can now go from trashed to operating again in an hour and half. Not bad, eh? Your times may vary.

But consider yourself warned.

There are actually two sections to all this information, there are general 'tweaks', little things you can do that make life more pleasant, these are non-destructive.

Then there are the registry edits. The registry is very similar to our mysterious black boxes in automobiles that control all the ignition, fuel, braking, heating and cooling functions. Most of the mechanics don't even know what the heck they do. But they've been told that if you do this .....  Sometimes one registry edit affects another registry value, but we didn't know it at the time. This is what causes the problem. Okay, enough doom and gloom, let's see what I've got!

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Tweaks

 

Error Reporting

  • My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Error Reporting
  • turn it off

Startup Display

  • My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Startup and Recovery
  • change the time to 4 seconds for startup display

Change Swap Drive Location

  • My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced
  • put the swap file on your D drive (get it off system drive)

Update Configuration

  • My Computer > Properties > Automatic Updates
  • change to whatever level you want

System Restore

  • My Computer > Properties > System Restore
  • for most people, just turn it off

Clear Type

  • Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Display > Appearance > Effects >
  • Use the following methods to smooth edges of screen fonts
  • change to Clear Type

or do it automatically at Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/customize/cleartype/tuner/default.asp

Hide Extensions (get rid of this)

  • Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Folder Options > View
  • uncheck automatically search for network folders and printers
  • uncheck hide extensions or known file types
  • Apply to All Folders at the End

Get rid of the confirmation to delete files

  • Don't you hate when you delete a file it asks if you're sure...It's annoying!
  • Right-Click on your Recycle Bin -> Properties -> Global Tab -> and Untick "Display delete confirmation dialog" ... No Reboot required

Creating a Keyboard Shortcut

  • Right-click the desktop shortcut, and then click Properties .
  • On the Shortcut tab, click in the Shortcut Key box.
  • Press the keyboard combination that you want to use to start the program. The shortcut combination must consist of one character (a letter, number, or symbol) plus at least two of the following three keys: CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT.
  • Click OK .

Get more processing power.

  • In the Run box, type "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks". This frees up any idle tasks running in the background so that Windows XP can devote its full attention to what you want it to do. For example playing graphic intensive games.

Performance Increase through "My Computer"

  • Right Click on My Computer and select properties.
  • Click on the "Advanced" tab
  • See the "Performance" section? Click "Settings"
  • Disable the following:
  1. Fade or slide menus into view
  2. Fade or slide ToolTips into view
  3. Fade out menu items after clicking
  4. Show Shadows under menus
  5. Slide open combo boxes
  6. Slide taskbar buttons
  7. Use a background image for each folder type
  8. Use common tasks in folders

There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster.

Remove hibernation file

  • If you do not use hibernation, make sure you do not have it enabled, which reserves disk space equal to your RAM. If you have a hidden file on the root directory of your C-drive called hiberfil.sys, hibernation is enabled. To remove that file, go to Control Panel, select Performance and Maintenance, Power Options, Hibernate tab, and uncheck the Enable hibernation box.

Turn off Indexing to speed up XP

Windows XP keeps a record of all files on the hard disk so when you do a search on the hard drive it is faster. There is a downside to this and because the computer has to index all files, it will slow down normal file commands like open, close, etc. If you do not do a whole lot of searches on your hard drive then I suggest turning this feature off:

  • Open my computer
  • Right click your hard drive icon and select properties.
  • At the bottom of the window you'll see "Allow indexing service to index this disk for faster searches," uncheck this and click ok.
  • A new window will pop up and select apply to all folders and subfolders. It will take a minute or two for the changes to take affect but then you should enjoy slightly faster performance.

Collisions, conflicts on hub, router, switch

  • For those of you networked through a hub, switch, router, etc... If you have the luxury (which should be a necessity) on your device that shows conflicts or collisions on the network, there is one big possibility that does that. One of the network cards, (whichever one blinks collision, change the properties of the card to 10MB full or half duplex. Auto-negotiation is a better recommendation if you have it. Neither Semi or Full. 10(x)duplex is fine. That will also cause your Internet pages to load faster.

Error reporting.

Every time a program crashes it attempts to send a report to Microsoft. Read below to find out how to disable this feature.

  • Start Menu > Control Panel > System > Advanced > Error Reporting > Disable Error Reporting

Getting older programs to work under XP

  • Straight outta the help, thought some people might find it useful
  • To set the compatibility properties for a program manually
  • Right-click the program icon on your desktop or the shortcut on the Start menu for the program you want to run, and then click Properties.
  • Click the Compatibility tab, and change the compatibility settings for your program.

Notes

The Compatibility tab is only available for programs installed on your hard drive. Although you can run the Program Compatibility Wizard on programs or setup files on a CD-ROM or floppy disk, your changes will not remain in effect after you close the program.

For more information about an option on the Compatibility tab, right- click the option and then click What's This.

Zip files are not folders.

  • XP treats Zip files like folders, to stop this type 'regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll' at the command prompt.
  • To reverse it type 'regsvr32 zipfldr.dll'.

Turn off the Autoplay feature for CD's

  • Turns off the Autoplay feature
  • you can also disable Autoplay on all drives.

START > RUN > GPEDIT.MSC > USER CONFIGURATION > ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES >

SYSTEM > TURN OFF AUTOPLAY > RIGHT CLICK PROPERTIES > CLICK ENABLED >

SELECT ALL OR CD ROM DRIVES > OK >REBOOT

Remove Balloon Tips

With this setting, some of this pop-up text is not displayed. The pop- up text affected by this setting includes "Click here to begin" on the Start button, "Where have all my programs gone" on the Start menu, and "Where have my icons gone" in the notification area.

START > RUN > GPEDIT.MSC > USER CONFIGURATION > ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES >

START MENU AND TASKBAR > FIND REMOVE BALLOON TIPS ON START MENU ITEMS >

CHECK ENABLED > OK

How to make a XP Startup Disk

  • Put a floppy disk in your floppy drive. One you have done this, Go to My computer, and right click on A:/. Click on format, and then at the bottom, click Make Boot Disk. Click Format.

Windows 2000/XP Automatically Log On

  • Settings > Control Panel > Users >
  • Uncheck the 'Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer.' box.

Copying to a CD-R automatically

  • Click on all the files that you want to copy to the CD
  • Drag them to the CD drive on your computer
  • Now open the CD drive going through the My Computer icon
  • You will see a dialog box that shows what "Files Ready to be Written to the CD"
  • Click on File > Write these files to CD

Cleaning Up User Profiles

For every user that logs on to your Windows XP computer, a new "profile" is created. The profile contains information about the things that are specific to that user, such as screen savers, sounds, printers (network), colors, email, and so forth. These profiles can grow quite large and can consume disk space. If there are users who no longer log into your computer, you can free up disk space by deleting them.

To delete a profile, simply

  • right-click the My Computer icon and choose Properties (or press Windows-Break). Click the Advanced tab (in windows 2000, there is a User Profiles tab instead). In the middle section called User Profiles, click the Settings button.

You can see from the listing what the size of the user profile is, and also the last date it was used. Select (click) the name of the user profile to delete, and click the Delete button. Note that you can also copy the user profile to another location, which might be a good idea before you delete it.

Tip-within-a-tip: Sometimes a profile can become corrupt, which produces very strange symptoms such as problems with using network printers, or email, etc. Deleting the profile means that the next time the user logs in they will have all the default settings, but it will often clear up strange problems.

Replacing Desktop Icons

  • Although I personally appreciate having less clutter on my Windows XP desktop, many readers question where the My Computer, My Network Places, and My Documents icons have gone. By default, they are no longer on the desktop. If you would prefer to have them back there, simply right-click the desktop, and choose Properties. On the Desktop tab, click Customize Desktop. Check next to any of the icons that you would like to see on your desktop, then click OK.

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