I am not sure why you would ever want to do this except probably if you do not have a windows enabled keyboard but here is the tip anyway (tip for the sack of tip !!!!). To disable use of Win key, open registry by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Navigate to
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Keyboard Layout] . In this look for value of "Scancode Map". Its binary data so be extra careful:
If you Don't care which windows app was located where when you are shutting down the system, this tip may in fact help improve the shutdown time a bit (a bit not too much)..Simply inform windows not to save the settings at exit time. To do this , open registry by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\Explorer] .
In this look for value of "NoSaveSettings". If available, do one of the following:
Remember this ! It happens to all of us invariably sometime or the other no matter what you do. Don't you hate waiting for those extra seconds and then simply responding yes to the windows query. Well you have a remedy. You can tell Windows XP to automatically close all non responding windows. Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Navigate to
[HKEY_USERS\\.DEFAULT\\Control Panel\\Desktopn] . In this look for value of "AutoEndTasks". If available, do one of the following:
In Window 3.1 autoexec.bat was one of the few choices of executing any app at boot time. But its importance has gradually thinned. It is still supported but you can pretty much do without it for most part. If you do not need to parse the autoexec.bat (there may not be anything in it anyway !), you can tell Windows XP to do that. Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Navigate to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Winlogon] .
In this look for value of "ParseAutoexec". If available, do one of the following:
Depending upon how you intend to use your computer (like a workstation or server ), it may make sense to set the system cache. Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM \\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Session Manager\\Memory Management] . In this look for value of "LargeSystemCache". If available, do one of the following: If intention is to use the computer like a workstation, set its value to 0.
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.
Default search engine of Microsoft Internet explorer is MSN. But there are better search engines available. I like yahoo.com and you may have your own preference. Recently I came across article that indicated how to change the default search engine through registry. Open registry editor by going to START-RUN and entering regedit and navigate to following three keys separately and change it as shown below:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\ Internet Explorer\\Main]
"Search Page"="http://www.google.com"
"Search Bar"="http://www.google.com/ie"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft \\Internet Explorer\\SearchURL]
""="http://www.google.com/keyword/%s"
"SearchAssistant"="http://www.google.com/ie"
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.
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.
I read a good article on Troubleshooting MS-DOS-Based Programs in Windows (Q314106) at Microsoft knowledgebase website. One of the first thing to test when you are having problems with MS-DOS-based programs is the Windows Virtual DOS Machine (NTVDM) subsystem. Open START-RUN and enter command.com or cmd.exe. If you don't see a MSDOS windows coming up you of course have a problem. Check the Config.nt and Autoexec.nt files in the SystemRoot%\\System32 folder for nonstandard settings. Use a REM statement to remark out all entries except the following default entries:
Config.nt
dos=high, umb
device=%SystemRoot%\\System32\\Himem.sys
files=20
Autoexec.nt
lh %SystemRoot%\\System32\\Mscdexnt.exe
lh %SystemRoot%\\System32\\Redir
lh %SystemRoot%\\System32\\Dosx
lh %SystemRoot%\\System32\\Nw16 (only if CSNW is installed)
lh %SystemRoot%\\System32\\Vwipxspx (only if CSNW is installed)
The registry entries that are associated with the NTVDM subsystem are:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\System\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Session Manager\\Environment
This key stores the environment variables from the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files for use in
Windows.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\System\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\ VirtualDeviceDrivers
This key stores the device drivers that are used in an NTVDM session. Windows Setup creates these entries when a device driver is installed.
This happens to everyone at some point of time or other and is most likely caused by some application or third party utility overwriting your drivers files (or if you do not have had a right video driver to begin with). To verify exactly what gets loaded, follow these steps. Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Navigate to :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\hardware\\DeviceMap\\Video . In this value of Device\\Video0 points to a registry key that has the location of the video driver that Windows is configured to load. for example: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\System\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\ videodriver \\Device0 . Navigate to this key. Check value of "InstalledDisplayDrivers" . Its value indicates whether driver was loaded or not. If the setting shows another registry location, a third-party driver may be getting loaded. Check out Microsoft Knowledgebase article for more details
