Tips from 0076 to 0100: | ||||||
76. Do you have a
problem with your Video ? Always going in VGA MODE ? IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk |
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77. Prevent a Program
From Being Displayed in the Most Frequently Used Programs List |
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78. Having trouble
with MSDOS program ? Tips on troubleshooting. Use a REM statement to remark out all entries except the following default entries: Config.nt Autoexec.nt lh %SystemRoot%\System32\Mscdexnt.exe HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\Environment HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\
VirtualDeviceDrivers Read the article at Troubleshooting MS-DOS-Based Programs in Windows (Q314106) for complete details as I am simply repeating what's already available in the article. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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79. Create your own popup menu in TASK BAR This is not a registry tweak or anything big at all but may still be helpful to some. Remember what happens when you click on START button. You see a popup window coming up. You can create your own popup window other than START MENU in taskbar. Put down shortcuts to all applications that you want to see in your popup in a folder. Then you right click on taskbar->toolbars->new toolbar-> and select the new folder. |
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80. Change default
directory of Windows Explorer |
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81. How to alter behavior
of System Restore Utility Only some sub-keys of third key can be modified without harming your computer. Read the Microsoft Article to know what can not be modified.Following keys can be modified (copied from Microsoft Article): CompressionBurst DiskPercent DSMax DSMin RestoreStatus RPGlobalInterval RPLifeInterval RPSessionInterval ThawInterval IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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82. Remove unnecessary
Scheduled Tasks scan by Internet Explorer and make Internet Explorer
Load faster IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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83. If you have a
faster hard disk, keep your pagefile.sys IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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84. Make Windows XP load frequently used programs in quickly accessible
location Windows XP is smart enough to analyze user behavior and adjust accordingly (somewhat !) Important example is MRU list. Periodically (default is 3 days I think), XP would do some file movements to keep most actively used programs in that part of the disk that are quickly accessible. (Believe me all parts of disk are not the same,some are quicker to access and some are not..its simple law of physics). Anyway if you want to do it at your will, go to START-RUN and enter Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks and start the reordering process. |
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85. Surfing the web
? Find related web sites easily and quickly 1. Right-click the toolbar at the top of the
browser window, and then click Customize. |
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86. How is the Icon
color depth and Size information controlled ? |
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87. Enable UDMA/66 mode on IDE Channels Even if DMA is enabled on IDE channels, by default UDMA/66 mode is disabled. You can improved disc performance by enabling it. Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigating to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]. In right pane look for a key by the name "EnableUDMA66". If it is there, set its value to 1 if it is not already set to 1. If not, add a dword entry by the name "EnableUDMA66" and set its value to 1. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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88. Save electricity ! Specify the typical role for your computer. Based on how you use your computer (meaning your computer) you might be wasting a lot of electricity if you leave it on with little or no activity for extended periods of time. Depending upon whether you rarely use the computer or you frequently use the computer or keep it always on, you can do a registry tweak to let the system know the typical role of your computer and help select the best approach to power savings. Navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\PowerCfg] and look for value of CurrentPowerPolicy. Following defaults are in use: Enter 0 for Home/Office Desk. Enter 1 for Portable/Laptop. Enter 2 for Presentation. Enter 3 for Always On. Enter 4 for Minimal Power Management. Enter 5 for Maximum Battery. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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89. Private information about who is logged on your computer at a time.
XP stores certain information about you as and when you are logged on in following places in registry: Logged on User: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Logon User Name] Personal: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Personnal] Default Document folder: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Volatile Environment\HOMEDRIVE] .Net email account: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MessengerService\ListCache\.NET Messenger Service\IdentityName] Number of Open programs: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SessionInformation\ProgramCount] IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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90. Does your computer forgets to power off after shutdown ? If this is is the case, try this. It may help. Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigating to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] and look for value of PowerOffActive key. If it is set to 0, set it to 1 . This may not work in all cases (specially if your hardware does not support APMS protocol) but is worth a try in other cases. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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91. Have you been asked to insert Window XP CD whenever you install a
new software ? If this is is the case, you may want to automate the process a bit. Assuming you have enough disk space (meaning at least 600 MB extra), you can copy all that you have in your Win XP CD's \i386\ directory to your harddisk and change its pointer in registry. Assume you copy everything that you have in \i386 directory to say C:\i386 where C: is your hard disk, you can automate this process and avoid being asked for inserting CD by changing following entry in registry. Open registry and navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion and look for the key called SourcePath. Change this key's value to your hard disk path. Thats all. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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92. Optimize your XP Pro system by tweaking service manager ? Remove unnecessary
services ! This is important. You don't know how many services are started by your service manager everytime you boot your system. There is a very strong likelihood that some of these services are never of any use to you and as such you never directly or indirectly use them. If so, why delay the boot time and also degrade the system performance for no reason ! Stop this services from starting automatically. Here is How-to ! Open service manager by going to START-RUN and entering services.msc. Now in the right pane, you would see a list of services some of them would be started and others don't. Also they could be set to any of three status of start mode. "Manual", "automatic" and "disabled". If you double Click on any of these you would see detailed info on each of these. You have an option of starting or stopping the services running on your computer. If you are typical desktop user like most of us, it might be safe to disable and stop following services. But still do understand it before you do it. Also some of those listed below may not be available for you as well. 1. Portable Media Serial Number 2. DHCP Client 3. Distributed Link Tracking Client (Most likely you're not connected to a Windows 2000 domain ) 4. DNS Client ( Again you're not connecting to a specific DNS server on your local network most of times) 5. FTP Publishing Service ( If you don't want your system to act as an FTP server. I don't !) 6. IIS Admin Service ( You computer may not be a WWW server and as such no need for this service ) 7. IPSEC Policy Agent ( disable it if you're not connected to a Windows 2000 domain ) 8. Messenger ( same reason...you may not be connected to a Windows 2000 domain ) 9. Remote Registry Service (Typically you don't remotely access the Registry of other systems ) 10. RIP Service (If you are a typical home user, you don't need your system to act as a router) 11. Run As Service ( This can also go since most likely you don't use any applications that run as an alias ) 12. World Wide Web Publishing Service ( If you are a not into web publishing business,You don't need this as well) IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Be careful ! Even though what I have written here would hold true most of the times, still it is most of the times, not always ! Do read and understand before stopping services randomly. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. |
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93. Improve speed
of of file search in WINDOWS XP PRO operating system. For CAB files: All of a sudden it goes so much faster, and no
need for indexing service, Can always be re-enabled afterwards with the same command, minus the/u Set index service on: TO SEARCH FOR A FILE BASED UPON A WORD OR PHRASE
IN THE FILE: |
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94. Troubled by IE
crashing unexpectedly for no reason? Launch it in its own process. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk |
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95. Don't want Num
Lock to be switched on at boot time ? Shut it off.
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96. Modify color selection
of default theme. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk |
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97. Troubled by IE
crashing unexpectedly for no reason? Launch it in its own process. |
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98. Increasing number of connections per http server Folks, HTTP Protocol limits number of maximum connections to a HTTP server to 2. Following table explains restrictions placed by various HTTP PROTOCOLS. This is the as per the RFC specifications.
Limitation caused by this is visible whenever
your applications make calls like HttpSendRequest and InternetOpenURL
which take longer to complete as they wait for previous connections
to be freed up before their requests are sent. You can configure WinInet
to exceed this limit by creating and setting the registry entries. Open
registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet
Settings] and look for values of "MaxConnectionsPerServer"
and "MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server ". If you don't see then add
two key by the names "MaxConnectionsPerServer" and "MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server
" respectively. Default values are as Changes its value to a number you want. I read
about this at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q183110 |
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99. Load Outlook Express faster. Stop Outlook express logo screen from
poping up Not a big deal but would help you get there faster. Open registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{** Identity ID **}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0] where Identity Id is your computer specific value (on my computer Identity Id is {9144D186-C4E5-462F-A269-E9F293F14A1D}) and look for value of "NoSplash ". If this is the first time, you may not see this key and if so add the DWORD key by the name "NoSplash ". Now sets its value to 1 IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk |
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100. Run your Windows Desktop in its own process environment This may take a little more memory but would make your Desktop more stable. So this is more of a security tip. Security from other applications running on your desktop. Open registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] and look for value of "DesktopProcess". If this is the first time, you may not see this key and if so add the DWORD key by the name "DesktopProcess". Now sets its value to 1 IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk |