1. Not sure of website address and want to try out all possible options ? Most of the computer users would choose to type less if they are given such an option. Problem is for many of us, to find that option itself is challenging enough! Anyway I am talking to those folks who don't have habit of typing complete domain names and want the computer/Internet to do the job. Here are some of the registry changes that can widen your search domain.. If in Internet options, Display result and go to most likely site or just go to most likely site is enabled, you can type only the domain root in the Address box and Internet Explorer attempts to locate the correct Web site by searching different domain types. For example, if you type "Microsoft" in the Address box, Internet Explorer searches the domain types in the Autoscan list until a domain name match is found (in this case, www.microsoft.com). By default, Internet Explorer searches the following domain types when the Autoscan Common Root Domains option is enabled:. .com, .org, .net, .edu To add a domain type to the Autoscan search list, add the string value "" with a value of "%s." and a string value "" with a value of "www.%s." (without quotation marks), where is the next available number and is the domain type, under the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/Main/Url Template For example, if you want to add the .gov domain type and there are already 7 domain types listed, add a string value "8" with a value of "%s.gov" and a string value "9" with a value of www.%s.gov. NOTE: The order in which Internet Explorer searches domains is based on the string value.For example, the domain type associated with string value 1 is searched before the domain type associated with string value 2. 2. Attention LAPTOP Users ! Do your eyes a favor, use Clear Type Fonts. Hi everyone! May be you have already realized the importance of clear type font by now. A new feature that must be a boon to all those people who are spending their life staring these monitor screens!. After years of research, it has been noticed that Clear Type Fonts are best way to prolong you Laptop computer experience. Windows XP comes equipped with it and you can change the setting to use Clear Type fonts. What is not so simple to do is to even change the Welcome (logon) screen to used Clear Type. I have got hand of a tip that might be of help to you installing clear type fonts at logon screen. Save following to a .reg file and import it in registry. [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "FontSmoothing"="2" "FontSmoothingType"=dword:00000002 [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop] "FontSmoothing"="2" "FontSmoothingType"=dword:00000002 For those of you who do not know how to use clear type fonts in normal session here are the instructions: Right click on at any free area of the desktop and go to appearance tab of Display Properties. Click on effects and check the box saying "use following methods to smooth edges of screen fonts" and select clear type. 3. Fine tune Internet connection speed: Tip on changing QoS parameter. This tweak deals with QoS parameter manipulation. There have been some confusion as to what can be achieved in real terms by changing the QoS parameter. Microsoft has finally released an article correcting describing the behavior of QoS parameter. I am providing a link to Microsoft web site knowledgebase article <http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;q316666> In brief though, this tweak would only work on QoS aware programs and rest of the programs would simply ignore them. Networking Quality of Service (QoS) refers to a variety of techniques that prioritize one type of traffic or program when these operate across a network connection rather than relying solely on "best effort" connectivity. Please click on how to change QoS parameter article <xptuneup_qos.htm> using Group Policy Editor (GPEDIT.MSC).By default, programs can reserve up to an aggregate bandwidth of 20 percent of the underlying link speed on each interface on an end computer. If the program that reserved the bandwidth is not sending enough data to utilize it completely, the unused portion of the reserved bandwidth is available for other data flows on the same host. This default parameter can be changed. 4. Further fine tune Internet access speed: Tip on improving DNS resolution. Internet browsing is such an exciting and easy experience now a days that we have almost forgotten the amount of work that goes behind the scene to make this all happen. We only feel bad if we can't find something easily or have to wait for a long time (I have heard many people saying WWW stands for world wide wait not too long ago!!!) Well with changes in technology and falling prices we have far better hardware and software to do this job but fruits of fine tuning have always been great and would continue to remain so. One of the things that should happen before Internet connection would go through is DNS resolution.DNS stands for Domain Name Service. Even though XP does a fine job of handling DNS resolution, you may still gain by increase the DNS Cache size. To do this you would have to add following entries in registry. Save what is written below in say "dnstuning.reg" file and import it in REGISTRY but opening registry editor and going to IMPORT option from top menu. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters] "CacheHashTableBucketSize"=dword:00000001 "CacheHashTableSize"=dword:00000180 "MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit"=dword:0000fa00 "MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit"=dword:0000012d 5. Want to remove shared documents folder from My Computer window ? Microsoft has done a fabulous job in the making of Windows XP. But least to say, no two people are alike. Some of the default features that Microsoft thought was good may not be liked by you at all. I have read various newsgroups and chats and one thing I noticed is that some don't like my shared documents folder option. If you are one of that, here is a trick to remove it.Open registry editor by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Once in registry, navigate to key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ My Computer \ NameSpace \ DelegateFolders You must see a sub-key named {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}. If you delete this key, you have effectively removed the my shared documents folder. 6. Want to have more options in the Add/Remove program list ? All programs that are available on your Windows XP system are not available for removal. For example wordpad. I mean you don't want to remove wordpad from Add/Remove program list, but that serves just as an example. So why are some programs in the list and some not. Its not a game of Random numbers. There many a few unique methods through which we can control what appears on list and what does not. If you have installed Windows in C: drive , Go to C:\WINDOWS\inf (substituting the correct drive letter for your version of Windows) and open the sysoc.inf file. File contents looks like this: See the components that have word HIDE as second last item on the row. This hide tells system to not to display those items/apps in the Add/Remove program list. If you want to have this item in list, simply replace it with blank. I think you understand what am I saying [Version] Signature = "$Windows NT$" DriverVer=07/01/2001,5.1.2600.0 [Components] NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4 WBEM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wbemoc.inf,hide,7 Display=desk.cpl,DisplayOcSetupProc,,7 Fax=fxsocm.dll,FaxOcmSetupProc,fxsocm.inf,,7 NetOC=netoc.dll,NetOcSetupProc,netoc.inf,,7 iis=iis.dll,OcEntry,iis.inf,,7 com=comsetup.dll,OcEntry,comnt5.inf,hide,7 dtc=msdtcstp.dll,OcEntry,dtcnt5.inf,hide,7 IndexSrv_System = setupqry.dll,IndexSrv,setupqry.inf,,7 TerminalServer=TsOc.dll, HydraOc, TsOc.inf,hide,2 msmq=msmqocm.dll,MsmqOcm,msmqocm.inf,,6 ims=imsinsnt.dll,OcEntry,ims.inf,,7 fp_extensions=fp40ext.dll,FrontPage4Extensions,fp40ext.inf,,7 AutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,au.inf,hide,7 msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7 RootAutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,rootau.inf,,7 IEAccess=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,ieaccess.inf,,7 Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,,7 AccessUtil=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,accessor.inf,,7 CommApps=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,communic.inf,HIDE,7 MultiM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,multimed.inf,HIDE,7 AccessOpt=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,optional.inf,HIDE,7 Pinball=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,pinball.inf,HIDE,7 MSWordPad=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wordpad.inf,HIDE,7 ZoneGames=zoneoc.dll,ZoneSetupProc,igames.inf,,7 [Global] WindowTitle=%WindowTitle% WindowTitle.StandAlone="*" 7. How to verify XP software you bought is OEM/UPGRADE/RETAIL? I am sure we all have noticed Microsoft product marketing strategy. Whenever they launch any new product line,there are various flavors of it available right from day one. Some are given adjectives like UPGRADE version or FULL, others RETAIL v/s OEM and then of-course we have various categories of the product like HOME, PRO , SERVER , ADVANCED SERVER etc etc. Well ever wondered what you bought is same as what was advertised ? How to tell the difference. Here comes the help. Look for a file called Setupp.ini that is present on your Windows XP CD and double click on it and browse its content. There is a field called PID=. This PID is what would tell us exactly what we have got.First 5 bytes of PID decide whether (it is OEM or RETAIL or is an UPGRADE ) and last three digits determine what kind of CD KEY will it accept. Here are some of the typical PID values: Retail = 51882 335 Volume License = 51883 270 OEM = 82503 OEM 8. Group Policy Editor: Extremely powerful tool in Microsoft XP Operating System. Have you heard of group policy editor ? This is one of the most powerful tool that Microsoft XP comes bundled with that most of us don't even know about. I recently discovered it by accident. Learn more about it at Group Policy Editor <xptuneup_qos.htm> section of this site but in brief it can be used to carry out powerful customizations and performance tuning of your system. Go to START-RUN and enter gpedit.msc 9. Have tendency to forget passwords ? Want a solution that will help you get back in business ? Most of us have a common tendency of forgetting passwords. If you don't every forget anything, I envy you and this may not be of much use to you but for most of us, this may be a life saver. If you're running Windows XP Professional as a local user in a workgroup environment, you can create a password reset disk by following instruction as shown below: Go to START-CONTROL PANEL-USER ACCOUNTS. Then click your account name and further on in RELATED TASKS, click PREVENT A FORGOT PASSOWRD. A wizard would come up, follow instructions and you have your password reset disk ready. IMPORTANT NOTE: As it goes with things like password, make sure that you keep this disk at secure location else you risk tress passing with your user account. 10. Want to change font size of Internet Explorer content on the fly ? Do you know that font size of many of the web sites can be changed as per your view pleasure. Yea ! You know about it but do not want to take those additional steps. I hear you ! Here is a tip. If you have a mouse that has scrolling button then fond changing is as easy as pressing CTRL key and rotating scrolling button either towards you (to increase) or away from you (to decrease). Try it out. It works for me. 11. Start menu is slow in responding? Want to boost response time of start menu ? Windows XP is touted as a new generation of OS Xperience. No doubt about that but this experience come at a cost. Resources. If your hardware configuration (read CPU,RAM) is not upto speed but still want to boost response time of start menu, here are a few tricks that might help. Open registry editor by going to START-RUN and entering regedit and navigate to key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ MenuShowDelay . Change the value (default may be 400) to 5 or 50 or even 0. This should speed up. If you are not all that crazy for shadowy effects, you can further speed the things up by going to DISPLAY Properties Window and from there to appearance and over there clicking Advanced command button and check off Show menu shadow. 12. Want to enhance Network throughput? Try out this tip. Network throughput depends on a variety of factors and as such you never no what could be the bottleneck. One of things that we can try out is the network redirector reserves.Open registry editor by going to START-RUN and entering regedit and navigate to key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters]. One here, click on right pane and added following Dwords. Dwords are in hexadecimal (and value as shown below indicates that of 104, valid values are 0-255). Keep both values same. I think default is 15 or 20. This may help networkthrough put but there is no guarantee. Try it out. "MaxCmds"=dword:00000068 "MaxThreads"=dword:00000068 26. Further speedup broadband cable Internet connection READ DISCLAIMER FIRST AND THEN FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS BELOW IF APPLICABLE: A. in the "My Network Places" properties (right click on the desktop icon and choose properties), highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK B. Continue as indicated below steps: 1. from the Windows XP CD in the support directory from the support cab, extract the file netcap.exe and place it in a directory on your hard drive or even in the root of your C:\ drive. 2. next, open up a command prompt window and change directories to where you put netcap.exe then type "netcap/?". It will list some commands that are available for netcap and a netmon driver will be installed. At the bottom you will see your adapters. You should see two of them if using a 3Com card. One will be for LAN and the other will be for WAN something or other. 3. Next type "netcap/Remove". This will remove the netmon driver. 4. Open up control panel / system / dev man and look at your network adapters. You should now see two of them and one will have a yellow ! on it. Right click on the one without the yellow ! and choose uninstall. YES! you are uninstalling your network adapter, continue with the uninstall. Do not restart yet. 5. Check your connection properties to make sure that no connection exists. If you get a wizard just cancel out of it. 6. Now restart the machine and go to your connection properties again and you should have a new connection called "Local area connection 2". highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK. 8. Choose connection properties and uncheck the "QOS" box 9. Restart the machine and enjoy the increased responsiveness of IE, faster page loading, and a connection speed boost It seems that Windows XP installs two separate versions of the NIC card. One you do not normally see in any properties. Remember the "netcap/?" command above showing two different adapters? The LAN one is the one you see. The invisible one slows everything down and its like your running two separate cards together, sharing a connection among two cards. This method breaks This"bond" and allows the NIC to run unhindered. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This tweak assumes that you have let Windows XP create a connection on install for your cable modem/NIC combination and that your connection has tcp/ip - QoS - file and print sharing - and client for Microsoft networks ,only installed. It also assumes that winxp will detect your NIC and has in-box drivers for it. If it doesn't do not try This as This may not work. 27. Avoid download of file attachments that may have virus infections Open Group Policy Editor by going to START - RUN and entering gpedit.msc. This one is easy.. Navigate to USER CONFIGURATION - ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES - WINDOWS COMPONENTS - INTERNET EXPLORER. For This on right hand pane (most likely secondly last line at bottom) you should see an item Configure Outlook Express. Double Click on it and enable it and mark check box that says "Block attachments that may contain virus". OK out and close the global policy editor. 28. Heard of Atomic Clocks? or NIST ? Here is a tip on accurately setting your computer clock Till yesterday I was using a separate third party utility to synchronize my computer clock precisely. I am not a timely person in all other aspects of life (not a good thing but have to be truthful !) to worry about time that too at atomic level but as it is with many things, it sounds like good a good idea to do it anyway! Thanks to National Institute of Standards and Technology, It has become much easier to do that via Internet. And there is no need for third party tool if you have bought WINDOWS XP Operating System. Just click on the time (right side of your START bar or panel) and click on INTERNET TIME tab. Select the time.nist.gov and click update now. Your are all set. Wait a minute your computer clock is still not that advanced. So you many need to synchronize again and again. But hey, we are in the computer world and who has time for This manual work. So I have a solution for you. OPEN registry editor ( I think you know how to open a registry.. click START-RUN and enter regedit) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ ControlSet001 \ Services \ W32Time \ TimeProviders \ NtpClient. In right pane, you would see "SpecialPollInterval". Double click and set a decimal number (unit is seconds) to the frequency with which you want to have the automatic synchronization carried out. Also you can add many more time servers directly into registry because by default all that you can see is two time servers in the drop down list. List of many other time servers is available at http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/ <http://www.eecis.udel.edu/%7Emills/ntp/clock2.htm>. To add any other time servers, get details about the server and then navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DateTime\Servers] and adding them into the list. 29. Do you know there are two command shell environments in XP ? which one is better ? In Microsoft Windows XP Pro ( I think this must be true for HOME Edition, but don't quote on me), There is not one but two different command shell environment. One is the old one COMMAND.COM and other one is CMD.EXE. Both would do the job but they do it somewhat differently at a lower level. Which one is better ? I have noticed that CMD.EXE is much better in executing your commands. And this is true. CMD.EXE is the new command shell environment. that is better by design.So if you want to try out even your very old DOS apps, try it first in CMD.EXE. There is a very good chance that it will work and will work better than in your old shell. 30. Ever wondered how come you get into those HTML error pages ? Want to customize them ? Some times, I type a webpage address and instead of seeing the page, see an error message. Do you know that all these error messages are stored in a DLL file. That is correct ! All of this message are burned into SHDOCLC.DLL file. Here is the syntax to see all of these error messages . If you want to see server busy error message type in Internet address field, res://c:\Windows\System32\SHDOCLC.DLL/servbusy.htm Similarly If you want to try out any other error message simply replace servbusy.htm by that html file (just the names) Here are some complete examples html files that you can try . http_400.htm, http_404.htm, http_406.htm, http_410.htm, http_500.htm, http_501.htm, http_gen.htm, servbusy.htm, syntax.htm, navcancl.htm, offcancl.htm, policyerror.htm, policylooking.htm, policynone.htm, policysyntaxerror.htm, privacypolicy.dlg, preview.dlg, printerr.htm, printnf.htm, printnof.htm, printunk.htm, wcee.htm, ietext.bmp, ietext256.bmp, world.bmp, world256.gif, ie.gif, ie256.gif, orgfav.dlg, about.dlg, analyze.dlg, bidifind.dlg, docppg.ppg, error.dlg, find.dlg, findic.dlg, ieerror.dlg, imageppg.ppg, orgfav.dlg, and pstemplate.dlg If you need to customize these messages, write an error message that you want to see as displayed and store it somewhere on your harddisk, open registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and navigate to Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs and changing entries associated with various keys and provide complete path name to your own custom html file. 31. If you have a lot of RAM, do you really need swap file? With RAM prices dropping so low ( I saw 256 MB SDRAM for $34 in COMPUSA on Jan 2nd,2002), more and more people are adding RAM to their computer. This is the best upgrade I would suggested to anyone. Well if you have 512MB or 768 MB or a whopping 1GB of RAM, you do not need a swap file (SWAP FILE is the concept of old dayw when RAM was too costly). Try this out. Go to My Computer and right click on properties and get into System Properties window. Go to Advanced tab and click on the Settings button for Performance group, click again on advanced tab and then click on change and choose NO SWAP FILE. I think you would see an improvement. If you don't like the change, follow the same steps and change SWAP FILE size to whatever you want (typically 1.5 * physical RAM). Also you can further gain by applying following changes in registry. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and look for DisablePagingExecutive. On my computer default value is 0. Set it to 1. This will stop paging act as well. 32. How to boost XP speed by by changing real time clock priority? I read about this trick the other day over Internet. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl]. If you see an entry by the name IRQ8Priority set it to a value "IRQ8Priority"=dword:00000001 if you don't then click on the right pane and add a new dword entry with given name.. IRQ8 is typically reserved for real time clock in most of the computers. Make sure thats the case (by going to device manager -> system devices -> system COMS/realtime clock -> properties -> resources tab , if it is set to another number try adding an entry with that number N as IRQNPriority) . Generally realtime clock priority boosting helps most but you are free to try others as well. 33. Reduce IO and increase turnaround which means faster computer ! I read about this trick the other day over Internet. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit. Depending upon how much RAM you have, you can increase your diskcache size by entering a higher value in IoPageLockLimit. Typically your computer won't come optimized for diskcache and you can set to a value which works best for you by trial and error.Rule of thumb is to have a ratio of 1 or 2 for every 64K chuck. But try out various different values as each case would be a little different 34. Correctly set your level 2 cache and improve performance !! I read about this trick the other day over Internet. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\SecondLevelDataCache. Based on the kind of CPU you have, this value should change. Here are some of the defaults. Intel Celeron - 128 , AMD Duron - 64. PII and Athalon: 512. Cyrix and AMD K6-3 256. Pentium IV-1024. Figure out what your CPU type is and what L2 cache it supports and set it accordingly. It is important to know what critics have to say about this tweak. Opinions vary and I have put following three articles that have been brought to my attention which may help you understand why it may not be effective in some situations: Do not change the SecondLevelDataCache entry (from Microsoft technet article <http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/serverop/part2/sopch06.asp>) Some third-party sources have erroneously reported that modifying the SecondLevelDataCache registry entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \System \CurrentControlSet \Control \Session Manager\Memory Management can enhance system performance. The second level (L2) cache is recognized by the operating system and is fully utilized regardless of the setting of this parameter. (from Microsoft knowledge base item Q183063 <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q183063>)This is not related to the hardware; it is only useful for computers with direct-mapped L2 caches. Pentium II and later processors do not have direct- mapped L2 caches. SecondLevelDataCache can increase performance by approximately 2 percent in certain cases for older computers with ample memory (more than 64 MB) by scattering physical pages better in the address space so there are not so many L2 cache collisions. Setting SecondLevelDataCache to 256 KB rather than 2 MB (when the computer has a 2 MB L2 cache) would probably have about a 0.4 percent performance penalty. (From an arstechnica article <http://www.arstechnica.com/tweak/nt/L2-cache-1.html>) One of the most infamous NT tweaks since the introduction of NT4 has got to be the "L2 cache" tweak, a lone registry entry which stipulates the amount of L2 cache (or secondary cache) that the OS will make use of. Well, as with many things in life, the effects of this tweak are not so black and white. If you're using a processor that implements a direct-mapped L2 cache design (like Pentium I's), then this registry adjustment is indeed for you. However, if you own any Intel processor post-PI, or any modern AMD processor (K6-2 and newer), then your processor is using a set-associative L2 cache design, and thus you need not specify your L2 cache size. Let me explain. If you choose not to futz with the registry key in question, the OS will call on the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for retrieval of the L2 cache size when you boot your computer. If this happens to fail, a default value of 256KB is used for all logon sessions on that boot session. This is where the myth that NT can only use 256KB of L2 cache comes from. But it's false. See, the HAL is able to retrieve the processor (L2) cache from any processor using the set-associative cache design, it's only the relatively few processors out there with direct-mapped L2 caches that the HAL won't chat it up with. Thus, this tweak only applies to a select number of people anymore (like people with Pentium I procs between 166-233MHz, as lower rated procs had only 256KB cache). 35. Do you know you can have Virtual Desktops (like in Linux) with PowerToys ? If you have powertoys installed on Windows XP Its available for free at Microsoft website, visit my downloads webpage address) It is very easy to enable Microsoft Virtual Desktop Feature. Simply right click on the Start Panel Bar also called TaskBar, Click on Tool Bar and select Desktop manager. You would see a set of 5 icons placed on the right portion of the TAskBar. Click on number 1 to 4 to go to any of the desktops. Now you have have four different Active Desktops. IMPORTANT NOTE: You may see a little degradation in performance but for desktop work it is negligible. 36. How to login as administrator if you don't see it available ? Unless and until you have run into issues and fixing XP (underwhich case you have to go to Safe Mode to login as Administrator), you can get to administrator screen by simply pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE twice at the main screen. 37. How to avoid password entry at start up ? Open Administrative tools in control panel and go to Local security policy.Select accounts and within that password policies. Set minimum password length to 0. This should be enough to stop password from being entered at startup. I have received some criticism for asking users to set their password length to 0 and I agree to some of the potential security risks. Here is one better way to do it. Go to START-RUN and enter "control userpasswords2" select the user the you would like to have auto logon set to and then uncheck "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer". Ok out. Now you have to do one more thing. Go to START-RUN and enter "control userpasswords" and clicking on “Change the way users log on or off”, and unchecking both “Use the Welcome Screen” and “Use Fast User Switching”. Now Reboot and see it happen. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: (Please make sure that you are doing this to user account and not administrator account. If you do this to administrator account or user accounts that have admin privileges and connect to Internet. and do not have a good firewall installed or enabled, your are exposing yourself to potential risks) XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage. *Also note that default user accounts created by XP are in admin group and have admin privileges so be careful. 38. How to stop new programs installed balloon from coming up? Right click on START button and select properties. Click on Customize and go to Advanced tab and deselect check box saying "Highlight newly installed programs". This would help you stop this annoying feature from popping up every now and then. 39. How to improve on shutdown time ? Close apps automatically & quickly at shutdown Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP and look for AutoEndTasks. On my computer default value is 0. Change it to 1. Thats all. Further more you can reduce the time it takes for Windows to issue kill directive to all active/hung applications. In doing this only constraint that you should make sure exists is that HungAppTimeout is greater than WaitToKillAppTimeout. Change the values of WaitToKillAppTimeout to say 3500 (since default value for HungAppTimeout 5000 and for WaitToKillAppTimeout is 20000) 40. Speedup boot up sequence by defragmenting all key boot files Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction. In right hand panel look for Enable. Right click on it and set it 'Y' for enable. This is the way I have it set on my computer. This will help speedup boot time. 41. Create your own customized legal notice at Windows Startup This tip won't make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. In right hand panel look for two fields by the name legalnoticecaption and legalnoticetext. Modify legalnoticecaption to what you want popup window caption should read and change legalnoticetext to customize whatever message you want. 42. One more way to fine tune Internet. Explorer load time If you do this little trick, application load time may improve significantly. Right Click on shortcut to Internet. Explorer in taskbar ( If you do not see it right click on taskbar,click toolbar and select quicklaunch) , click on properties and under shortcut tab look for Target field. It should say some thing like "C:\Program Files\Internet. Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE". This is typical default. I am suggesting you to put " -nohome" without quotes at the end of this string with one space in between. It should read like this "C:\Program Files\Internet. Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" -nohome. Doing this would help load the application quickly as time would not be wasted in connecting to home page again and again. This is good for normal use as well. 43. Customize Internet. Explorer Title bar This tip won't make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet. Explorer\Main. In right hand panel look for string "Window Title" and change its value to whatever custom text you want to see. That is it. 44. Are you a MP3 fan ? Add ability to rip MP3 songs in Windows Media Player 8 I am not that great a fan of MP3 but do appreciate its power. If you have a truckload of CDs that you would like to listen to but do not want to carry all of them at the same time, you can rip them into MP3. Yes it can be done technically and that too from Windows Media Player even though make sure you have legally on right side of fence, meaning you own the CD that you would rip MP3 from. That said here is the little tweak in registry. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayerSettings\MP3Encoding] and adding following entries "LowRate"=dword:0000dac0 "MediumRate"=dword:0000fa00 "MediumHighRate"=dword:0001f400 "HighRate"=dword:0002ee00 which corresponds to 56, 64, 128 and 192 Kbps. Following table would help with other settings as well: 320 Kbps = dword:0004e200 256 Kbps = dword:0003e800 224 Kbps = dword:00036b00 160 Kbps = dword:00027100 112 Kbps = dword:0001b580 45. Enable write caching on disk and improve disk performance I have enabled write caching on my disk and this does have helped improve disk performance to a significant degree. Now you may ask why ?. WriteCache is nothing else but implementation of concept of delayed write. As we all know I/O activities are generally slow and hence if they are synchronous can significantly reduce the system performance. Hence if system performance has to be improved we have to reduce I/O activities. Now practically we can not ask you to change your habits (meaning start typing like a superman or robot etc.) but we can have a solution. We can control the frequency of diskwrite by specifying regular intervals. All that needs to be written between the intervals would be writen in a write buffer which would be maintained in RAM. This write buffer would be written to the disk at regular intervals or whenever it gets full. This is a smart concept with one drawback. There is a chance that you may loose some data in case of critical power loss or system failure but this is not an issue for me and should not be to most of the users. Such things become an issue for Mission Critical Business Servers. To enable write cache on your disk, go to DEVICE MANAGER. Then select hard disk in the disk drives and right click on it and select properties. Go to policies tab and select checkbox which say "Enable write caching on the disk". Close out everything and you are done. 46. MFT (Master File Table) manipulations to improve disk performance MFT stands for Master File Table. Typically in Windows XP , if you are using NTFS ( I would recommend it if you don't) then by default,NTFS would reserve 12.5% of your free diskspace for MFT. MFT fragmentation could also cause a significant slow down. Let me discuss size first. Now if you have installed tons of different programs on your hard disk (or intend to do so), MFT utilization is going to be high. Under such situation, it may be beneficial to increase this percentage to say 25%. If you want to do this, here is the the trick. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem. In right pane, Add one more key by the name "NtfsMftZoneReservation" with the REG_DWORD value of 2. DWORD value of 1 is interpreted as 12.5% ,2 as 25% and so on. 47. Improve system performance by disabling DOS 8.3 naming convention In tip number 46, I briefly mentioned MFT fragmentation. So what is the cause of fragmentation. Well most common cause is too much use. As with anything excessive use causes fragmentation. Activities of add/update/delete to a section of disk would invariable cause it to fragment. So there is no permanent solution as we can not avoid these acts. As such it is a good idea to use disk defragmenter regularly. Contiguous data which results from defragmenting disk, improves system performance considerably. But what I am suggesting you here would prolong intervals between defragmentations resulting in more time for your own productive work. OK! This tip is for those folks would never be using a DOS based program or don't care for connection from DOS based operating systems (example: old games and all things before windows 95). In Windows XP, two file names are created for each file one is the actual name and another one is 8.3 version of that file name for compatibility with DOS based programs. Now this work name in the name of compatibility takes quite a lot of system resources specifically CPU time and disk space.But this is not it, it also increases your MFT utilization and fragmentation. So the solution is to disable it. How to do this ? Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem. In right pane, look for key by the name "NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation" and sets its value to 1. Thats it. You would see improvement in system performance for sure. 48. Customize logon prompt with your own words This tip won't make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]. In right pane, look for key by the name "LogonPrompt". Set its value to whatever text you want to see displayed at login screen. 49. Where does Window's ProductId get stored ? There are two places at least where ProductId gets stored. To see the first place, open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion]. In right pane, look for key by the name "ProductId". This is your Windows Product Id. Alternatively you can navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion] and still find same field with the name ProductId. 50. Set the low level hook time-out and stop certain programs from crashing or becoming unstable One of the things that you can do avoid some programs from becoming unstable is to set a low level hook timeout. There are a few programs which use this low level hook timeout. Setting a low value (in milliseconds) means that if the hooked program does not respond within timeout period, one that has set the hook would not become unstable or go in infinite wait but would kill itself saving windows resources and improving performance. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT USER\Control Panel\Desktop] and look for "LowLevelHooksTimeout" in the right pane. Now set it to a small number in milliseconds for example a value of 3500 would mean 3.5 seconds. 51. Having problems with Outlook Express ? Does it ask for password everytime you connect ? Even though this is not a problem for me but there is a chance that it could be a problem for you. Sometimes no matter what you do, Outlook Express forgets your password and asks you to enter it again each and every time you connect to your mail server.I have a solution that may work for you. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_CURRRENT USER\Software\Microsoft and look for "Protected Storage System Provider". There is a good chance that you will see this folder. If you have it. Simply delete it. More than likely, you have solved your problem . 52. Tuning up MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) to speed up Internet access. This is an old one. I had tried it on Window 2000 as well. Now let me tell you one important fact related with tuning. Value of MTU depends upon how fast a connection you have, what kind of activities you perform (ask yourself a question. Are your a mild, average or high end user of Internet ? To put it in other words, Do you download little or nothing, or are an average surfer or are Internet savvy individual and download everything from programs,apps,patches to watching Internet audio/video real-time content?) Depending upon who you are as a user and what kind of connection (modem,dsl,cable or in rare cases T1/T3), this tuning may have little to significant effect on your Internet experience. All right MTU stand for Maximum Transmission Unit. Value of MTU decides the size of Internet data packet. Bigger the size, more you can transfer. Analogy could be made with a bucket. If bucket is small, you can carry little but it would be no strain on your strength. Bigger the bucket, more you can carry but it strains your physical strength. (Well! Its not that simple but good enough to understand). Objective should be find a perfect balance which works for you. I think maximum that you can put is as value of MTU is 1500 (but could be higher for your specific network) and it may not make sense making it smaller than 68. Again this is a registry tweak unless and until you have a tweaking utility that can do it for you.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\ ID for Adapter. For this right click on right pane and add a key by the name MTU. For this key you can add a DWORD value from 68 to 1500 (or higher value is certain cases). If you put less than 68, it will default to 68. If you put a value higher than 1500 or your Network permitted max, it will default to permitted max. The MTU (Maximum Transfer Unit) specifies the maximum transmission unit size of an interface, and is usually determined by negotiation at the link layer of the driver. The upper level protocols normally optimize pack size for each medium. Following table gives typical values of MTU in bytes:- Network Type Windows XP MTU (bytes) Windows NT / Windows 2000 MTU (bytes) 16 Mbps Token Ring 17914 17914 4 Mbits/Sec Token Ring 4464 4464 FDDI 4352 4352 Ethernet 1500 1500 IEEE 802.3/802.2 1492 1492 X.25 576 576 PPPoE (WAN Miniport) 1480 N/A 53. Enable automatic path MTU size detection and improve Internet throughput. As stated on previous tip (Tip 52), MTP size plays an important role in deciding Internet speed. But its not so easy to determine the right value of MTU. For those of us who fall in this category and would prefer computer to find that for us, follow trick may work. I can not say with confidence whether this would work across all network but it should and there is no harm in trying it out. Now before I do that let me tell you what this action will do. Applying this trick, you would ask computer to automatically find out the maximum MTU size possible in the connection path to a host. This value could be different for different sites. I think this trick should pick the lowest common denominator across a particular path. Typically If MTU size is not optimized, this job has to be done by a router which would mean a significant waste of time (small chunks adds to a considerable loss if you imagine that there are billions of packets involved across the whole Internet) resulting in poor throughout and congestion on cyber lanes. All right this key is called EnablePMTUDiscovery. Again this is a registry.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\ ID for Adapter. For this right click on right pane and add a key by the name EnablePMTUDiscovery. For this key you can add a DWORD boolean value of 0 or 1 with 1 being TRUE (value that enables auto detection). Since we are trying this tweak, set to 1 and enable the TCP to attempt to discover the MTU size over the specific path to host. Microsoft has an interesting article on many similar tips <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q120642> and is titled TCP/IP and NBT Configuration Parameters for Windows (Q120642). <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q120642> 54. How to avoid autoplay of CD ? Way I like best. Hey this time no registry trick even though there are ways in registry to do it. In earlier operating systems only those CD that had autorun.inf file in their root directory were able to execute on its own but with advent of WINDOWS XP it has become possible with just about anything. Well sometimes it is good but there are other times when you want to avoid this part of automation. What would I do. Simply press SHIFT key when you enter a CD in your CD drive. It won't Auto play. For those of you, who do want a registry hack. Here it is: Open Registry and navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer] and look for key "NoDriveTypeAutoRun" and set its value to 185 (decimal). This would stop autoplay. 55. Running into Internet connection problem ? clean TCP/IP stack may be your solution One of things that has improved a lot is the Windows ability to detect and connect to Internet But I still get into situations where (specially with my NAT and consistent testing of new ideas and tricks) that I end up correcting the TCP/IP stack. I got another IBM computer day before yesterday and I got into trouble again. Well one quick command that you can try out to rebuild the TCPIP stack is by means of using netsh network command shell. This is mentioned on my list of tools page and I would be describing its capability in great detail whenever I get some free time. But for now try this command netsh int ip reset mynetsh.log . This would rebuild your TCP/IP stack and a log of activities would be created in mynetsh.log (by the way you can give any name to log file as long as you do give some name). 56. Are you using an computer that is accessed by more than one ? Secure your privacy by cleaning pagefile. I read about this tweak a long time ago and even found out couple of ways of achieving the same results but wasn't sure of the importance. But you know what, there is reason for everything. Assume your are working on computer where you don't really own the computer or is shared with someone else. Do you want maintain privacy and avoid other know what you were doing etc. Then this tweak may be of interest to you. Go to Control panel Administrative tools, local security policy. Then goto local policies ---> security options.Then change the option for "Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile" 57. Gain temp access to Administrative privileges even if you are not logged in as administrator. I must be telling you one thing. In most of the cases where Windows XP is installed on a personal computer, users generally have access to administrative account. But you know, it is not in your best interest to log on as administrator for all your computing needs. I must advise you to create a normal user account as well. But what if you are logged in as normal user and happen to download/install some software application that would need administrative privileges Here is the solution. Simply right click on the executable and select run as. You would see a window poping up. Here you can provide one of the userid/password that would have admin privileges That's all you need to run that program with administrative privileges 58. Another tweak to boost up network application performance. Change thread priority I just read about this over the internet.You can change the priority of applications as soon as associated IO tasks are completed. Microsoft TCP/IP Stack component AFD.SYS allows you to do this. You can read all about it at <http://rdweb.cns.vt.edu/public/notes/tcpip2000.pdf> Again this is a registry tweak and works well with XP.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFD\Parameters] and set the following key values to the values shown. "TransmitWorker"=dword:00000010 "PriorityBoost"=dword:0000000a 59. Make a habit of cleaning prefetch data once a month. Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP. However, after using XP some time, the prefetch directory can get full of junk and obsolete links in the Prefetch catalog, which can slow down your computer noticeably. I would suggest that You do this once a month: Go to C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, and delete everything and reboot. This may help speed up your computer. 60. How to determine a 16 bit application from a 32 bit application ? Old 16 bit app are still useful and are in use by many. I think this is the result computer evolution. If You want to know whether a particular executable is a 16 bit or 32 bit application, here is a secret. Right-click the program’s executable file and Then choose Properties. If You see a Version tab, it’s a 32-bit program else its a 16-bit program. Alternately You can go into task manager and look for applications that have ntvdm.exe (virtual dos machine) in the name column of process tab. If there is one, it means its a 16 bit app. 61. Do You know how to add/delete entries in Control Panel ? Heard about CPL extension ? If You open windows explorer and search for all *.cpl files, You would see at least as many entries in search as You have in your control panel.Yes ! .cpl stands for control panel. If You do not want to navigate to any of your favorite entries, You can create a shortcut to that entry's corresponding cpl file. Following lists control panel and cpl file names: System Properties = sysdm.cpl Network Connections = ncpa.cpl ODBC Administrator = odbccp32.cpl Display Properties = desk.cpl Add or remove programs = appwiz.cpl Internet Properties = Inetcpl.cpl Game Controllers = joy.cpl Phone and modem Options = telephon.cpl Time and Date Properties = timedate.cpl Region and Language Options = intl.cpl Power Options = powercfg.cpl Mouse Properties = main.cpl Accessibility Options = access.cpl Add Hardware Wizard = hdwwiz.cpl Sound and Audio Devices = mmsys.cpl User Accounts = nusrmgr.cpl Speech Properties = sapi.cpl Now if You want to add/delete any of these entries from panel You can do it through Registry or gpedit.msc or through tweakui if You have powertoys installed. It is preferable to use gpedit or TweakUi as its easier. From TweakUi, You have to simply click on control panel , and select/deselect entries in right panel as per your choice. From gpedit.msc (to run gpedit, goto START-RUN and type gpedit.msc) Navigate to User Configuration- Administrative Templates-Control Panel folder select and right click on Show only specified Control Panel Applets , click on enabled and Then click on the show. In this list You won't see anything if its your first time. Click on add and type the complete file name from above list. (This is a bit more complicated process specially if You are a new user of the tool) And if You are a registry fan, You can do this my navigating to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\] and adding a key field by the name "don't load" and one string value to each of the cpl file names. For example if You don't want to see accessibility options, add a string "access.cpl" on the right pane to the newly added key field "don't load". You can add as many strings You want. 62. Have a IDE drive ? Improve disk performance by changing to DMA access mode If You are an average user, there is a good chance that your are using a IDE hard disk that supports DMA access. Even Windows XP fails to set the DMA mode correctly for the IDE device designated as the slaves on the primary IDE and secondary IDE channels. Most CD-ROMS are capable of supporting DMA mode, but the default in XP is still PIO. Setting it to DMA won't make your CD-ROM faster, but it will consume less CPU cycles. Follow instructions below: 1. Open the Device Manager and navigate to "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers", expand it and double-click on "Primary IDE Channel" 2. Under the "Advanced Settings" tab, verify the "Device 1" setting. If transfer mode is set to PIO Then set it to "DMA if available". Repeat the step for the "Secondary IDE Channel" if You have devices attached to it. Reboot the sytem. 63. Working in command environment ? Avoid keystrokes - use TAB key One of the features in Linux and certain UNIX shells is the ability to predict user keystroke. If You are typing a directory name or a filename and if it exists, using this feature would help You avoiding those extra keystrokes. Do You know WindowsXP command environment has this feature ? (Well it is available in Windows 2000 as well). To use this feature You have to use TAB key. (I would also show You how to change it to some other key even though there is no need of it). Assume You are in C:\ drive and want to type autoexec.bat and there is a file that exists by that name. Result are amazing if there is no ambiguity in filenames (meaning multiple files/directories with similar names/prefix). In such cases You can simply type first few characters and press the TAB key. You would really be amazed at this finding (Hey if not, You are really too smart and don't need this tip! ) Now if You want to change this power key to some other key here is howto: Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Command Processor] and set CompletionChar" to ASCII number associated with the key char. for example, "CompletionChar"=dword:00000009 64. Customizing Windows Explorer Context menu (right click menu in windows explorer) Ever wondered how does the right click menu (which is actually a context menu) work ? For example, when I right click in windows explorer, I see an option which says "open command window here". Do You know why I see this ? Well I see this because I have following entries in my registry. [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd] @="Open Command Window Here" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd\command] @="C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe /k cd "%1"" If You have never used a tweaking utility and have newly installed Windows XP, You would not see this option. You would have to navigate to [[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive] go and create two subkeys ("cmd" and within that "command" and would have to put the text "Open Command Window Here" without quotes in default string value of "cmd" key and the text "C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe /k CD"%1"" without quotes in default string value of command key). After this You need to REBOOT for these changes to take effect. Trick is in adding similar entries for other applications as well even though its much harder to come with ideas about what to put in the context menu!!!! . 65. Low on disk space and do not use Windows XP Hibernate feature ? With hardware prices going down every passing day You may not need this tip but if You are in a situation where You are really low on disk space even after using disk cleaner, one of the things You can do is to identify features of XP You don't use. It may very well be the hibernate feature. If You don't use it, simply disable it and get as much of hard disk space free as is your physical RAM size. To do that go to power options in control panel (fast route: goto START-RUN or win+R and type powercfg.cpl ) and click on hibernate tab and deselect "enable hibernation". 66. How to make autodisconnect work in Internet explorer ? If You are having problem setting autodisconnect in Internet explorer 6 , here is a tip for You Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters] and look for autodisconnect parameter. Change its value to whatever You want (in minutes). Alternately You can try this from command prompt: net config server /autodisconnect:30 -to set the autodisconnect to 30 minutes. Microsoft have a detailed article dealing on this titled How Autodisconnect Works in Windows NT and Windows 2000 (Q138365) <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q138365> 67. Do You want Windows to unload dll immediately? Folks, I read about this a long time ago and my preliminary findings are that it works on XP as well even though I can not say how beneficial this trick is (or how damaging !). Also there might be some potential problems with a a few apps. But I would still provide it to You There is a way in registry for You to tell Windows OS to unload DLL,immediately as soon as its use is over. Here is how to do that: . Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] and look for AlwaysUnloadDLL parameter. It may not be present by default. If not, add a key by the name AlwaysUnloadDLL and set it to value of 1. This would inform OS to unload the DLL files from memory immediately. This has its advantages and disadvantages. It may also crash some Microsoft applications (like Access). 68. Lock known dll's list and make your computer a bit more safer Folks, You may be wondering that I am talking about making your computer a bit more safer even though my very site was hacked on 1/14/2002. As it stands I have kept this site simple and I do not control the webhosting part. Anyway it is a good idea to keep your computer safe.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager] and look for ProtectionMode parameter. If its value is not 1 , set it to value of 1. On my computer default value is 1. Doing this will protect your list of known system dlls from being compromised. To see what is present in your known DLL list, navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\KnownDLLs] and look in the right pane. I have not yet tried this but You may even try adding some other DLLs that You feel important and should be protected. This could be risky as I have not yet tried this myself. Microsoft has an old but informative article on it <http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q218/4/73.asp> 69. Improve computer performance by reducing EFS cache validation Navigate to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTFS\EFS\Parameters and set the parameter of EFSKCACHEPERIOD to a value between 2 and 30. default is 5. Value suggest the time in seconds the kernel will cache the session key for a user for a given file. The Kernel will not validate the user credentials during this cache period. This has the net effect of faster access to encrypted files that may be opened several times during a given time period.This is helpful in kernel and user mode of the EFS (encrypting file system) as it provides quicker access to frequently use components. Similarly navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EFS and set the value of KeyCacheValidationPeriod to a value in units of second from 1 minute to 1 day (60 to 86400). Microsoft has an interesting article on this at Registry Keys Used to Tune EFS Caching (Q278256) <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q278256>. Read it for complete details. 70. Customize your Start Menu setting and preferences You can open group policy editor (gpedit.msc) and go to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Start Menu and Taskbar and set a variety of preferences for your startmenu. Or if You want You can open registry editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and enable/disable various parameters by changing 1 to 0 and viceversa. I am doing a cut/paste of list available at Microsoft site. Visit the site to get details on these registry values Registry Value:"NoSimpleStartMenu" Registry Value:"NoStartMenuPinnedList" Registry Value:"NoStartMenuMFUprogramsList" Registry Value:"NoStartMenuMorePrograms" Registry Value:"NoCommonGroups" Registry Value:"GreyMSIAds" Registry Value:"NoWindowsUpdate" Registry Value:"NoStartMenuMyMusic", "NoSMMyPictures","NoFavoritesMenu","NoRecentDocsMenu" Registry Value:"DisableMyPicturesDirChange", "DisableMyMusicDirChange", "DisableFavoritesDirChange". Registry Value:"NoSMMyDocs" Registry Value:"DisablePersonalDirChange" Registry Value:"NoRecentDocsMenu" Registry Value:"MaxRecentDocs" Registry Value:"ClearRecentDocsOnExit" Registry Value:"NoFavoritesMenu" Registry Value:"{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}" under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\NonEnum. Registry Value:"NoNetworkConnections" Registry Value:"NoStartMenuNetworkPlaces" Registry Value:"NoRecentDocsNetHood" Registry Value:"NoSMHelp" Registry Value:"NoFind" Registry Value:"NoRun" Registry Value:"MemCheckBoxInRunDlg" Registry Value:"NoResolveSearch" Registry Value:"NoResolveTrack" Registry Value:"ForceStartMenuLogoff" Registry Value:"StartMenuLogoff" Registry Value:"NoClose" Registry Value:"NoStartMenuEjectPC" Registry Value:"NoChangeStartMenu" Registry Value:"NoSetTaskbar" Registry Value:"NoInstrumentation" Registry Value:"NoUserNameInStartMenu" I read about this on Microsoft Web Site. Here is the link Policy Settings for the Start Menu in Windows XP (Q292504) <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q292504>