Hardware Registry Tweaks   Registry tweaks, tricks & hacks to optimize, enhance and secure Microsoft Windows. Hardware and Peripheral Enhancements Disclaimer: Modifying the registry can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system.          We cannot guarantee that problems resulting from modifications to the registry can be solved. Use the information provided at your own risk.                         Disk Drives Fixed and Removable Disk Drives                         Mice and Keyboards Mice, Keyboards and Joystick Enhancements                         Network and Modems Network Peripherals, Modems and Fax Enhancements     Printers and Plotters Printer and Plotter Enhancements     Processor and Motherboard Central Processor and Motherboard Enhancements     Video and Graphics Video, Graphics and 3D Enhancements     Disk Drives Change Drive Name and Icon (All Windows) This tweak allows you to change the name and icon shown in Explorer for a specific drive letter. Convert an IEEE 1394 Device to a Dynamic Disk Drive (Windows XP)            This tweak allows you to convert an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) 1394 (FireWire) disk drive to a dynamic disk drive. Enable 48-bit LBA Support for Large Hard Drives (Windows 2000/XP) By default Windows 2000 SP2, Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows do not support 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) for drives larger than 137GB as defined in the ATA/ATAPI 6.0 specification. Enable UDMA66 Mode on Intel Chipsets (Windows 2000/XP)               If you have a computer with an Intel chipset that supports UDMA66, you will still find that UDMA66 mode is disabled by default on Windows 2000 computers. This tweak allows you to enable or disable it. Control the CD-ROM Autorun Function (Windows NT/2000/XP) Normally when you insert a disc into your CD-ROM drive, the contents are automatically launched. This tweak allows you to disable this behaviour. Configure Protected-Mode Hard Disk Interrupt Handling (Windows 95/98/Me) This switch allows Windows to terminate interrupts from the hard disk controller, bypassing the ROM routine that handles these interrupts. Some hard drives might require that this setting be disabled in order for interrupts to be processed correctly.  If this setting is disabled, the ROM routine handles the interrupts. Hard Disk Free Space Warning (Windows NT/2000/XP) By default Windows sends an administrative alert when the amount of free space remaining on a hard disk drive falls below 10 percent. This percentage can be configured using this setting. Disable CD Burning (Windows XP) This restriction is used to disable the use of the inbuilt CD recording functions of Windows.   Mice and Keyboards Change Mouse Double-Click Sensitivity (All Windows)               This setting controls the amount of mouse movement allowed between clicks, for two consecutive clicks to be registered as a double-click. Change Mouse Wheel Scroll Settings (All Windows)                           This tweak determines the number of lines scrolled for each rotation of the mouse wheel on a Microsoft IntelliMouse (or compatible) when no modifier keys (such as [Ctrl] or [Shift]) are pressed. Active Window Tracking (All Windows) This tweak allows you to bring running programs to the foreground just by moving you mouse of the application window. This is similar to the X-Mouse feature found on UNIX operating systems. Change the Keyboard Preferences (All Windows) These settings allow you to configure the repeat rate, blink rate and repeat delay of your keyboard. Increase Application Keyboard Response Time (Windows 95/98/Me) When running more than one application at a time, you may find that your system's keyboard response is slower.  To alleviate this, you can adjust the amount of time allocated to processing keystrokes. Disable the Windows Key (Windows NT/2000/XP) This tweak disables the Windows key that is found between the Ctrl and Alt keys on a Windows enhanced keyboard. Detect Accidental Double Clicks (All Windows) This setting is used to control whether explorer should attempt to automatically detect accidental double mouse clicks. Change Wheel Mouse Detection (Windows NT/2000/XP) This setting controls whether the driver should attempt to detect and enable the wheel on the mouse device. The mouse wheel provides rapid scrolling and other control features. PS2 Mouse Port Rate Adjustment (Windows NT) Ever noticed how your mouse cursor flickers sometimes or doesn't run as smoothly as you would like? That's because the refresh rate is set too low, modify this key to speed things up and make your mouse cursor move smoothly. Change the Keyboard Buffer Size (Windows NT/2000/XP) Occasionally Windows may report an error relating to an overflow in the keyboard buffer. This tweak can be used to increase the size of the buffer, and avoid this problem. Change the Mouse Buffer Size (Windows NT/2000/XP) Occasionally Windows may report an error relating to an overflow in the mouse buffer. This tweak can be used to increase the size of the buffer, and avoid this problem. Display Mouse Pointer Trails (All Windows) This setting allows you to control whether trails are shown behind the movement of the mouse pointer to increase visibility. Reverse the Mouse Buttons (All Windows) By default the left mouse button is the primary mouse button and the right is the secondary. This tweak lets you swap those buttons around to make the right the primary, which may be useful for left handed users. Control the Mouse "Snap To" Feature (All Windows) When enabled, this setting causes the mouse pointer to snap-to the default button of the active application window.   Network and Modems Speed-up Modem and Serial Connections (Windows 95/98/Me)                 Windows is normally limited to a default maximum speed of 115,200 bps for serial communications. By using compression and high-speed UARTS modern modems may reach this limit and not be allowed to operate at full speed. This tweak allows Windows to communicate with speeds of 230400, 460800 and 921600 bps. Load Balance Network Adapters (Windows NT/2000/XP)                If you have two or more network cards in your system this setting allows you to distribute the number of connections, or sessions among the adapters according to a randomizing algorithm. Configuring Unimodem Support (Windows NT)                       Windows NT 4.0 and greater support Unimodem modems, if your device is not supported though Windows can be configured to use the MODEM.INF file instead. PCMCIA Network Power Management (Windows 95/98/Me) When using a PC Card network adapter you might not be able to connect the computer to the network, and under Control Panel > System there is a yellow exclamation mark "!" next to the card. Enable Random Adapter Responses (Windows 95/98/Me)            For a computer with multiple network adapters, this setting specifies whether to respond with an IP address selected randomly from the range of addresses on the computer or whether to return the IP address of the adapter that the request came in upon. Enable the Network Adapter Onboard Processor (Windows 2000/XP)             If your network adapter has an onboard processor, designed to offload network processing from the system CPU, it is disabled by default. This setting allows you to enable it and increase the processing speed of your system. Disable Automatic Modem Connections at Startup (All Windows)                If remote connections are enabled in Windows, the system may try to initiate an Internet connection at Windows startup or at the start of many applications. This setting disables that behaviour. Speed Up ISP Logon Time (Windows 95/98/Me)                    On some systems it can take a long time to connect to the Internet, you can decrease the time required to connect to your ISP by trying these simple steps. Faster Modem Dialing (Windows 95/98/Me) Waiting to long for your modem to dial? This tip lets you reduce the time it takes your modem to dial, and increase your overall modem connection speed. Configure the TCP/IP Settings of a Network Adapter (Windows NT/2000/XP) These values control the TCP/IP parameters of the network interface cards. Configurable parameters include IP Address, Subnet Mask and Default Gateway.   Printers and Plotters Change the Printer Spooler Priority (Windows NT/2000/XP) New Normally the printer spooler runs at the same priority as other services on a system.                               If your system is being mainly used for printing or handles a large number of print jobs you can use this tweak to change the priority class the print spooler. Enable Wide Text Printing in Microsoft Word (All Windows)                       When you print a document that contains extended characters, such as Greek symbols, to certain printers that do not support Unicode characters, the extended characters may be printed as square boxes. This tweak should resolve the problem on most printers. Disable Web Printing (Windows 2000/XP) This restriction enables and disables server support for Internet printing.             Internet printing lets you display printers on Web pages so they can be viewed, managed, and used across the Internet or an intranet. Disable Print Job Notification in Event Viewer (Windows NT/2000/XP) By default Windows NT server adds an entry in the event log for every print job occurring on the spooler. This can quickly fill up the event log with redundant information. Define the Scheduler Priority (Windows NT/2000/XP) This setting controls the overall priority of the printer scheduler. Disable the Printer Server Browse Thread (Windows NT/2000/XP) When this option is enabled, the print spooler does not send shared printer information to other print servers. Beep on Printer Errors (Windows NT/2000/XP) When this setting is enabled the machine will beep every few seconds when a remote job error occurs on a print server. Changing the Default Printer Spool Directory (Windows NT/2000/XP)                  Windows uses the hard drive to store information before sending it to a printer. If the system is acting as a print server it is possible that the default location may cause insufficient disk space. Enable Print Job Notification Messages (Windows NT/2000/XP)         By default Windows notifies a user with a popup message that their print job has been completed on the printer. This setting controls that behavior. Specify Where to Display Printer Notifications (Windows NT/2000/XP)          This setting controls whether print job notification should be sent to the local computer or the computer that the user first logged on to. Specify the Printer Browser Timeout (Windows NT/2000/XP) This setting is used to specify the time a network printer should remain in the browse list before it is removed. Specify the Print Server Broadcast Timeout (Windows NT/2000/XP) This setting is used to specify the timeout period between broadcasts of a print servers resources. Show Cascading Printers Folder (Windows 2000/Me/XP) This tweak controls whether the 'Printers' sub-folder under 'Settings' on the Start Menu, is displayed as a cascading folder. Change a Users Default Printer (All Windows) This setting will allow you the change the default printer of a user by modifying the registry.   Processor and Motherboard Increase the USB Polling Interval (Windows 98/Me/2000/XP)              By default the USB polling interval is once every millisecond (ms). Even if no USB devices are connected the polling operation is still performed and the processor may not be able to enter power-saving state.  Use this tweak to increase the polling interval. Optimize Large Second Level Cache (Windows NT/2000/XP)                       Windows is optimized for a 256KB secondary cache by default. With most computers now having L2 caches larger than that it pays to take the time to change the setting to correspond to the size of the cache memory installed. Manage the CPU Task Priority (Windows 95/98/Me) This setting allows you to manage how the system processor should prioritize foreground and background tasks. System Board and Memory Optimizations (Windows 95/98/Me)             These settings allow you to optimize the AGP and PCI buses along with the system memory by reducing the number of wait states (idle time). View System BIOS Information (Windows NT/2000/XP) This registry key stores information about the system BIOS, including the release date, version number and video BIOS date. View System Processor Information (Windows NT/2000/XP) These values contain information about the system processor, including speed, brand and model. Fix Problem with Athlon Hanging AGP Programs (Windows 2000/XP) Windows may stop responding when you use an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) program with an AMD Athlon processor. This is due to the memory allocated by the video adapter driver becoming corrupted. Enable UDMA66 Mode on Intel Chipsets (Windows 2000/XP)             If you have a computer with an Intel chipset that supports UDMA66, you will still find that UDMA66 mode is disabled by default on Windows 2000 computers. This tweak allows you to enable or disable it. Manage Native Processor Performance Control (Windows XP) Windows includes built-in processor performance control to manage the microprocessor so it is more efficiently utilized. This tweak allows you to modify this feature. Modify the Paged and Non Paged Pool Memory Sizes (Windows NT/2000/XP) Windows normally calculates the paged and non paged pool memory sizes using complex algorithms based on physical memory size. These settings allow you to override and manually specify values. Improve Core System Performance (Windows NT/2000/XP) On systems with large amount of RAM this tweak can be enabled to force the core Windows system to be kept in memory and not paged to disk.   Video and Graphics Fix Problem with Athlon Hanging AGP Programs (Windows 2000/XP)       Windows may stop responding when you use an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) program with an AMD Athlon processor. This is due to the memory allocated by the video adapter driver becoming corrupted. DirectDraw and Direct3D Settings (Windows 98/Me/2000/XP) These DirectX settings allow you to change some of the DirectDraw and Direct3D video acceleration parameters.