ADD SPICE TO YOUR BRAIN
Posts tagged xp
Performance Increase Through My Computer
Nov 29th
1: Start > Right Click on My Computer and select properties.
2: Click on the “Advanced” tab
3: See the “Perfomance” section? Click “Settings”
4: Disable all or some of 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
There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster
[ad] Empty ad slot (#1)!
Remove "Unremovable" Desktop Icons
Sep 29th
To customize XP to your liking, you’ll want to be able to delete these protected icons. To do so, you’ll need a Registry hack. Run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace. Here’s where you’ll find various special desktop icons. They’re not listed by name, but instead by CLSID—for example, {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} for the Recycle Bin.
To remove an icon from the desktop, simply delete the key of the icon—for example, {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} for the Recycle Bin. Then exit the Registry, go to your Desktop, and press F5 to refresh the screen. The Recycle Bin icon should now be gone.
Control the Control Panel
Sep 29th
[ad] Empty ad slot (#1)!
When I first started using XP, one of the things that annoyed me most was its new Control Panel. Yes, the big new icons for running applets are certainly pretty, but the Control Panel’s several-layer organization forces you to click far too many times in order to get to the applet that you want. And its clutter of applets that I rarely if ever use make it even more difficult and confusing.
My first reaction was to click on the Switch to Classic View button, to do away with the new design, but the Classic View has its problems as well: its long, alphabetized list of thumbnails is just as difficult to navigate as the new Control Panel.
The solution? Start by cleaning up the Control Panel, hiding applets that you rarely if ever use. Note that when you hide the applets, you can still use them; you just won’t see their icons in the Control Panel.
In this hack, you’ll not only find out ways that you can control the Control Panel—you’ll also see how you can apply that knowledge to create different customized Control Panels.
Hide Unused Applets with the Registry
To hide unused applets using the Registry, run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\don’t load.
The key, as its name implies, determines which Control Panel applet icons are not loaded into the Control Panel. You’ll still be able to run those applets from the command line after you hide them (as explained later in this hack); you just won’t be able to see their icons in the Control Panel.
To hide an applet, create a new String value whose name is the filename of the applet that you want to hide. For example, to hide the Mouse Control dialog box, the String value would be main.cpl for a list of Control Panel applets and their filenames.
