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45 Windows Registry & Other Hacks
This page has been brought to viewers kindly through Sam Lyckholm. He was a Lab Technician & thankfully offered to share some of his crib sheets with site readers. Many thanks to him I say. Hopefully you will find something in here that will make the use of Windows XP more to the way you want it to work and improve its performance. Please check out all pages by clicking on the next page link as there is a lot here to view. By clicking on the underlined statement below it will take you to the details of how to carry out the task. You may find this application handy for changes in the registry. RegEditX (Registry Editor Extensions) is freeware that enhances the Windows Registry Editor. If you edit the same keys repeatedly, this is for you! New buttons activate frequently used commands, and a combo box stores a history of visited keys and allows quick navigation back to them. The keys are saved across
sessions and available the next time you use the Registry Editor. 1.Unnecessary Programs Disable unnecessary programs in startup by going to Start, Run, type msconfig press enter, go to Startup tab, uncheck any unnecessary programs, especially PCHealth (which is a scheduler), Load power profile (usually there twice), Scheduling agent, anything that mentions scheduling. Look at: http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm for detailed advice on this. The program "End it All", can also be useful for this. It is available here (you have to sign up to PC Magazine's utility library and pay an annual charge) <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,95493,00.asp > or is often available free here <http://home.ptd.net/~don5408/toolbox/enditall/ > (it seems to come and go at this address) If you have been experiencing difficulties with scandisk or defragmenter being interrupted this will usually solve the problem. It also reduces the load on your system resources memory and, to some extent, RAM. There is an explanatory post on system resources and problems with running out of system memory here 2.Using RAM Correctly Note: Some ME installations handle more than 512Mb RAM with no problems at all. To run ME well usually requires 128Mb RAM or more though some users get away with 64. In a nutshell, what the link says is to use a text editor like notepad, go to the "system.ini" file which you will find in: "C:\Windows", scroll down to find the [vcache] section. Add the following line "MaxFileCache=524288" and then save the file and reboot. This does not mean Windows will use any less of your RAM, it just means that vcache will work properly. If your computer has more than 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of memory (RAM), the computer may reboot continuously when you try to start Windows Millennium Edition (Me) or Windows 98. Or, when you try to install Windows Me or Windows 98 with more than 1.5 GB of RAM installed, Setup may stop responding (hang) or reboot continuously. Windows Me and Windows 98 are not designed to handle more than 1 GB of RAM. More than 1 GB can lead to potential system instability. To work around this issue, add the following line to the [386enh] section of the System.ini file: MaxPhysPage=40000 This limits the amount of physical RAM that Windows can access to 1 GB. To add this line, use the following steps: Use Notepad to open the "system.ini" file. Scroll down to to [386Enh] section. Add the following line: "MaxPhysPage=40000" and then save and reboot. To use the MaxPhysPage entry to specify the amount of RAM that is available to Windows, add the following line in the [386Enh] section of the System.ini file: MaxPhysPage=<nnn>; where <nnn> is a hexadecimal number that determines the number of memory pages available to Windows. A page is 4096 bytes of RAM for 486 and Pentium processors. When the MaxPhysPage entry is used, the following formula is used to determine the amount of RAM available to Windows: 4096 X MaxPhysPage (decimal) = Amount of RAM available to Windows in bytes. Therefore, to limit Windows to 32 MB of memory, use the following formula to determine the MaxPhysPage entry: (32 * 1048576) / 4096 = 8192 (decimal) or 02000 (hexadecimal) The following table lists some common RAM amounts and the corresponding MaxPhysPage entry: RAM for Windows (MB) (Bytes) MaxPhysPage=<entry> 960 1,006,632,960 MaxPhysPage=3C000 896 939,524,096 MaxPhysPage=38000 832 872,415,323 MaxPhysPage=34000 768 805,306,368 MaxPhysPage=30000 704 738,197,504 MaxPhysPage=2C000 640 671,088,640 MaxPhysPage=28000 576 603,979,776 MaxPhysPage=24000 512 536,870,912 MaxPhysPage=20000 448 469,762,048 MaxPhysPage=1C000 384 402,653,184 MaxPhysPage=18000 320 335,544,320 MaxPhysPage=14000 256 268,435,456 MaxPhysPage=10000 224 234,881,024 MaxPhysPage=0E000 192 201,326,592 MaxPhysPage=0C000 160 167,772,160 MaxPhysPage=0A000 128 134,217,728 MaxPhysPage=08000 096 100,663,296 MaxPhysPage=06000 088 092,274,688 MaxPhysPage=05800 080 083,886,080 MaxPhysPage=05000 072 075,497,472 MaxPhysPage=04800 064 067,108,864 MaxPhysPage=04000 056 058,720,256 MaxPhysPage=03800 048 050,331,648 MaxPhysPage=03000 040 041,943,040 MaxPhysPage=02800 032 033,554,432 MaxPhysPage=02000 024 025,165,824 MaxPhysPage=01800 016 016,777,216 MaxPhysPage=01000 012 012,582,912 MaxPhysPage=00C00 008 008,388,608 MaxPhysPage=00800 ****************************************************************************************************************** 3.Office Findfast If you have Office installed, disable Findfast (first go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Find Fast, delete the indexes, look in the menus and uncheck "run at startup". Next get out your Office CD 1 and in the maintenance mode of the setup program go to Office Tools and make Findfast unavailable.) Findfast is an indexing program, which is largely unnecessary. Disable the Office toolbar while troubleshooting if you use it. It causes some conflicts. Make sure you have all appropriate service releases installed if you are using Office with ME. 4.Transition Effects A performance boost can be obtained by turning off animated menus Go to: Start>>Settings>>Control Panel>>Display>>Effects. Uncheck the "use transition effects" box). 5.Delindex Using Renaissance Man's delindex.bat, which you can obtain at: www.burzurq.com/forum/delindex.html It will also remove the hidden index.dat files, which record your Internet use, along with other junk. If you also keep your anti-virus up to date and run a personal firewall such as Zone Alarm or Tiny Personal Firewall, you should have a well run, neat and tidy installation of Win Me. 6.Clear Swap File at Shutdown HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement: Data Type: REG_DWORD [Dword Value] // Value Name: ClearPageFileAtShutdown [ NOTE: Only works in ME if you use the correct "SessionManager" {THE ONE WITHOUT SPACES between the words "Session+Manager" !!! } ]
7.Change System Restore Disk Usage "To reduce the minimum and/or maximum hard disk space Windows ME System Restore uses, e.g. to go below the 200 MB minimum allowed, run Regedit and go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\StateMgr\Cfg\ReservedDiskSpace and also to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\StateMgr\ReservedDiskSpace Change the "Max" and "Min" DWORD Values in the Decimal boxes to whatever you want." 8.Advanced Options Galore If you have never added anything to the advanced menu, there's not much you can change there, except: Folder view, File attributes, and a few basic MS IE options. To delve (much) deeper into your GUI settings, just open Windows Explorer or File Manager (FM = C:\WINDOWS\WINFILE.EXE). Doubleclick on ADVANCED.REG [download ADVREG.ZIP, 11 KB, Freeware; use one of these "FREE 9X/NT/2000/ME/XP/2003 FILE SHRINKERS" to extract the REG file], and answer Yes/OK to all nagging prompts. Now reopen Windows Explorer and access the advanced menu (see above) again. You'll see a long list of new hidden options you can "play" with: AutoPlay for all possible drives in your system, Desktop, Tool Bars, Active Desktop, Documents, Favorites, Logoff, Run, Task Bar, Start Menu, Shell Extensions, Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer interface/security, Desktop Icons and Shell Icons display/size, GUI Animation and Update, Mouse and X-Mouse etc. 9.Restore sysedit To get it back, you need to have a Win98 retail or 98 SE Setup CD-ROM. Pop it in, open a DOS prompt box, and run: Win98 retail: EXTRACT D:\WIN98\WIN98_41.CAB SYSEDIT.EXE %windir%\SYSTEM Win98 SE: EXTRACT D:\WIN98\WIN98_46.CAB SYSEDIT.EXE %windir%\SYSTEM This presumes that your CD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW/DVD drive letter is D. Change it if necessary. Hit Enter. Type EXIT and hit Enter to close the DOS box. Finally, you can create a shortcut for it, i.e. under Start Menu -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> call it System Configuration Editor, or Sysedit. ***********[Note: Some Anti-Virus Systems, etc., will detect sysedit as malicious] 10.Display *.dll icons Launch regedit and drill down to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/dllfile/DefaultIcon. Double click on Default in the right pane. Delete the entry in the value box. [ Default value: "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\shell32.dll,-154" ] Type "%1" (sans quotes) in its place. Click on OK, close RegEdit and reboot. Use find to search your computer for all .dll files (*.dll). Or use a icon finder program. (Before going into the Registry to change an entry, be sure to create a backup file of the registry) 11.ShowSuperHiddenFiles Want to See All The Hidden Files and Folders? Did you know that even when you've selected to view hidden files and folders in >> Explorer's Tools >> Folder Options >> View Advanced settings, there are some files that still won't be displayed? These are system files and normally you'd have no reason to access, change or delete them (and doing so could cause big problems if you don't know what you're doing). But if you'd like to see everything that's there, you can make Windows treat these like regular hidden files so that the settings to view hidden files and folders will cause them to display in Explorer. You can do so by editing the registry. Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced. In the right pane, double click the entry ShowSuperHidden. Set the data value to 1. If you later decide you want these "super hidden" files to stay out of sight, set the data value back to 0. 12a.Final Directory Destination for Explorer Shortcut To create a final destination for explorer when opening with a desktop shortcut (i.e., D:\ALL S&L DOC's\xxxxxx\xxxxx) right click on the shortcut and scroll down to properties. Then in the target window following "C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE", type a space, followed by a fore-slash, letter "e", a comma, (with no space following), then the path. (i.e., "D:\ALL S&L DOC's\xxxxxx\xxxxx" ) Click "Apply", then "OK" to close. This will take you to a predetermined location you frequent a lot, without all the unnecessary "drilling down". 12b.How to Create an Explorer Shortcut to a Specific Directory with the Folder Tree Enabled. This tip is for those of us who are tired of clicking the folder view button then navigating to our data directory every time we launch windows explorer. 1.Right click an empty area of the desktop and choose New / Then Shortcut. A Create Shortcut dialogue box will appear. 2.In the Command line box insert this line: C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /n,/e,d:\ Change the d:\ in the line above to the directory you wish to open. As an example if you had a folder named data in c:\ you would change the line to C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /n,/e,c:\data 13.Show All File Extensions It is possible for a malicious user to name a file so that it looks safe to open, when in fact it may be executable containing dangerous content. For example, a file could be displayed as "readme.txt" in explorer, when it fact it is really named "readme.txt.shs" but since the ".shs" portion of the filename is hidden it is impossible to tell it apart from a simple text file. Then once a user double-clicks to open this file, instead of seeing a text page as expected, the file will be executed by Windows as a scrap object and potentially harm the system. To remove the potential to hide files, open your registry and using the search function find each occurance of a value named "NeverShowExt". When this value is present the associated file extension will not be shown. To display the file extension highlight the "NeverShowExt" value and press Delete. Repeat this process for each extension you want to display. Some common hidden extensions include: Document Shortcut (.SHB) [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DocShortcut] Internet Shortcut (.URL) [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\InternetShortcut] File Shortcut (.LNK) [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile] (NOTE: this will add ".lnk" to all shortcuts in "Start Menu") DOS Shortcut (.PIF) [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\piffile] Explorer Command (.SCF) [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SHCmdFile] Shell Scrap Object (.SHS) [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ShellScrap] Restart Windows for the change to take effect. 14.SYSEDIT.exe & HWINFO.exe Install both in C:\WINDOWS directory. Create shortcuts to both in "Start Menu>>Acessories>>System Tools. (Note: HWINDO.exe should have a target path specifier of "C:\WINDOWS\HWINFO.EXE /ui" 15.Modify IE title bar name In regedit I go to: HKCU/Software/Microsoft/InternetExplorer/Main/ Modify/Create value: "Window Title" I changed the value from "Internet Explorer by Verizon Online" to "Sam's Web Browser" 16.Rename "Recycle Bin" Regedit to HKCURRENTUSER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\MUICache\@c:\Windows\System\Shell32.dll,-8964. Default string value = "Recycle Bin". Edit to new string value, i.e., "SAM's TRASH". Note: If "MUICache" does not exist in left pane under "ShellNoRoam", create it, then create the String value, and give it the Data value. 17.Rename "My Network Places" Regedit to HKCURRENTUSER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\MUICache\@c:\Windows\System\Shell32.dll,-9217. Default string value = "My Network Places". Edit to new string value, i.e., "SAM's LAN". Note: If "MUICache" does not exist in left pane under "ShellNoRoam", create it, then create the String value, and give it the Data value. 18.Rename "My Documents" Regedit to HKCURRENTUSER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\MUICache\@c:\Windows\System\Shell32.dll,-9227. Default string value = "My Documents". Edit to new string value, i.e., "SAM's DOCUMENTS". Note: If "MUICache" does not exist in left pane under "ShellNoRoam", create it, then create the String value, and give it a Data value. 19.Win9x unload DLLs Go to Start>>Run>>Regedit Navigate to: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer" Modify/Create: "New Key" Key name: "AlwaysUnloadDll" (without quotes and capital letters are important). Leave/Create the Key string [REG_SZ] value: "Default" Change the value from "value not set" to "1" Close the Registry Editor, and reboot Windows. Stop Windows from caching a .dll file after I close the program that was accessing it HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer Modify-create the key; AlwaysUnloadDll Set this DWORD value to 1 to unload DLLs immediately when a program is closed. This tweak is perfect for low resource systems. The drawback of using this is a very small slowdown in the initial opening of programs, but this isn't half as bad as it sounds. And the benefit of using this tweak far outweighs the drawback. 20.Eliminate "WinUpdate" Annoyance To eliminate the Windows update annoyances, do a windows search using the following search string: " wuau*.* " (sans quotes). The following five (5) files should show up: WUAUBOOT.exe WUAUCLT.exe WUAUCPL.cpl WUAUPD98.dll WUAURES.dll I suggest saving these files in a folder (such as: "WinUpdateFiles") created on your secondary HDD, or on a floppy, in case you should ever need them again, but you don't need to. After you choose which alternative you want, then hi-light them all in the search window and delete them. You will not be bugged any more by "WindowsUpdateNotifications" 21.Hacking the Context Menu PC Mag has a utility called "context edit," that would probably help, but they charge for the download (which seems really cheesy to me--- PC Mag isn't exactly a struggling shareware author...). But if you want it, it's If you want a purely-shareware tool, System Workshop 2.3 contains a context menu editor. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2012.html These manual methods are free, but take more work: PC World has limited free help: A generic manual (free) way is described here: And the free article "Hacking the Context Menu" goes into quite extensive |
