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ActiveWin: How to Optimise Windows XP Home and Pro Part 2

Written By: Alex Harris
Date: 11th October 2002
Sources: ActiveWin, TweakXP and Doug Knox

 

After the amazing popularity of the first How to published on optimising Windows XP Home and Pro, I decided to do a part 2 with even more tweaks to try and get your copy of XP running as sweetly as possible. Once again thanks to Tweak XP and Doug Knox. If you are not 100% sure how to do regedit please do not attempt to try the tweak. If any problems occur because of the tweak then ActiveWin does not take responsibility. Please do a system restore point before you try a tweak if you are not 100% sure.

 

Performance Increase through My Computer

Easy enough tweak to usually find out about it on your own, but still, some of use still don't find it right away. So here it is:
1: Start > Right Click on My Computer and select Properties.
2: Click on the "Advanced" tab
3: See the "Performance" section? Click "Settings"
4: Disable the following:
Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show Shadows under menus
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type
Use common tasks in folders

"After the amazing popularity of the first How to published on optimizing Windows XP Home and Pro, I decided to do a part 2 with even more tweaks to try and get your copy of XP running as sweetly as possible. Once again thanks to Tweak XP and Doug Knox."

Unload .dll's to Free Memory

Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory.

1. Find the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer.
2. Create a new DWORD sub-key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1' to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory.
3. Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

Edit Hidden System Settings using Group Policy Editor

Windows XP has a great program called Group Policy Editor that allows system administrators to modify the settings to a great number of windows features. TO start the program up follow the directions below.

1. Open the start menu and click Run
2. Type gpedit.msc
3. The Group Policy MMC appears
4. Click through the different nodes of the tree to see all the hidden features of Windows XP that you can edit without touching the registry.

Examples: Changing IE displays, Clearing the pagefile at shutdown, boot-time defrag settings, and many many more

Another tip is to add this to your Administrative Tools by adding the shortcut to gpedit.msc

Fix IE 6 Slowdowns and Hangs

If Internet Explorer (IE) 6 is slowing to a crawl and/or hanging and starts to use 100 percent of CPU time it may well be a corruption of the "Temporary Internet Files folder". In particular, trying to delete Temporary Internet files via Tools, Internet Options or other privacy software seems to trigger this behavior. Also, attempts to view files in the Temporary Internet Files folder may show the folder as already empty when it is not. This behavior occurs because the Temporary Internet files database is corrupt.

The Temporary Internet files aren't really files but entries in %systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat. Deleting that file solves the problem. This same problem has occured for NT users and the fix works for XP.

1. Open a command prompt window on the desktop (Start/Run/command).

2. Exit IE and Windows Explorer (iexplore.exe and explorer.exe, respectively, in Task Manager, i.e - Ctrl-Alt-Del/Task Manager/Processes/End Process for each).

3. Use the following command exactly from your command prompt window to delete the corrupt file:

C:\>del "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat"

4. Restart Windows Explorer with Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del/Task Manager/Applications/New Task/Browse/C:\Windows\explorer.exe[or your path]) or Shutdown/Restart the computer from Task Manager.

IE should now work properly.

 

Brand your copy of Windows XP

Have you used someone's new Hewlet Packard with their OEM version of Windows XP? You've seen that HP has their own icon in the Start Menu, underneath Run, that goes to their Help Site. Now, you can have your icon that does anything you want (website, program, etc) and says anything you want. Basically, you are "branding" Windows XP (Home or Pro), great for if you are a computer builder and sell them, or you just want to make Windows XP your own. It involves Regedit.

1. Start up Notepad and create a new registry file (*.reg) and copy and paste the following into it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}]
@="YOUR TITLE HERE"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\DefaultIcon]
@="YOUR ICON HERE"
00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,68,00,70,00,6c,00,69,00,\
6e,00,6b,00,2e,00,69,00,63,00,6f,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\InProcServer32]
@=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25,\
00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,73,00,68,00,\
64,00,6f,00,63,00,76,00,77,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00
"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\Instance]
"CLSID"="{3f454f0e-42ae-4d7c-8ea3-328250d6e272}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\Instance\InitPropertyBag]
"CLSID"="{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}"
"method"="ShellExecute"
"Command"="YOUR TITLE HERE"
"Param1"="YOUR FUNCTION HERE"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\shellex]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\shellex\MayChangeDefaultMenu]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2559a1f6-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}\ShellFolder]
"Attributes"=dword:00000000

2. Edit where it says YOUR ICON HERE to a path to an icon (ex. c:\icon.ico), it must be 24x24 pixels and in *.ico format.

3. Edit both places where it says YOUR TITLE HERE to what you want it to say in the Start Menu (ex. Elranzer Homepage).

4. Edit where it says YOUR FUNCTION here to what you want it to do when you click it, it can be anything... your website, a local HTML document, a program, a Windows funtion, whatever your imagination can provide (ex. http://www.elranzer.com).

5. Save this file as brand.reg, double-click it to enter in your information, and refresh Explorer (log off/on) to see it in the Start Menu!! This works in both Home and Professional (and probably 64-Bit Professional) Editions!

The wonders of Syskey

This is an interesting way to increase the security of your machine further.  With the help of this tip, you will need to insert a special floppy disk that you make in order to log on.  If you loose the disk, you are locked out.

  1. Click on start run and then type in SYSKEY, hit return
  2. On the first window that opens you shall need to click on UPDATE.
  3. On the next window ensure the System generated password is selected. (this is what I recommend)
  4. Also ensure the Store startup Key on a floppy drive is selected click on OKAY (Yes, make sure there is a blank disk in the floppy drive.) follow the prompts closing out of the windows and restart.
  5. Remove the disk and restart.

What does this do? An extra layer of security. When you reboot your XP system, you will be asked for this diskette prior to accessing you login screen. If you do not have the Disk to bad for you and the flamers that are may be trying to hack your system.

Security Settings AKA Windows 2000 Style

Miss the old Windows 2000 style of setting security permissions?

Do this and you will get them all back.
Fire up Windows Explorer.
Go to Tools>Folder Options.
Hit the View tab. Scroll to the bottom.
un check 'Use Simple File Sharing (Recommended) and voila!

This should work in Home version as well.

Disable error reporting

Open Control Panel
Click on Preformance and Maintenance.
Click on System.
Then click on the Advanced tab
Click on the error reporting button on the bottom of the windows.
Select Disable error reporting.
Click OK
Click OK

How do I restrict a User's Logon hours?

1) Open Help and Support and type "logon hours" (without the quotes) in the search box.
2) Go to Full text matches and click on "Net user".  See the examples for setting a user's logon hours.  Some examples would be:

    net user johnsw /time:M-F,08:00-17:00
    net user johnsw /time:M-F,8am-5pm
    net user marysl /time:M,4am-5pm;T,1pm-3pm;W-F,8:00-17:00
    net user johnsw /time:all     (this one means this user can always log on)

3) Open a Command Prompt window.
4) Enter the appropriate "net user" command for the user(s) you wish to restrict access for.

 

« How to Optimise Windows XP Home and Pro Part 1

 

 

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