tips & tricks windows-2

[yathish]

Automatic Logon
You can have Windows log on automatically every time you start Windows.
1. Open the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
3. Add the following String values.
AutoAdminLogon
DefaultPassword
DefaultUserName
4. Double-click each of them to enter their respective data. Set the value of AutoAdminLogon to 1. Enter your user name and password in the DefaultUserName and DefaultPassword items respectively.
You can also do this using TweakUI.

Instant Shut Down or Restart
To shut down or restart Windows with one mouse click:
1. Right-click the Desktop and select New > Shortcut.
2. In the Command line box type:
C:\WINDOWS\rundll.exe user.exe,ExitWindows (for shut down)
C:\WINDOWS\rundll.exe user.exe,ExitWindowsExec (for restart)
3. Click Next, name it appropriately and click on Finish to create the shortcut.
Be careful, clicking on the shortcuts will not ask for any confirmation before shutting down.

Reclaim CD-ROM Cache
If you do not use the CD-ROM drive very often, you could very well reclaim some precious memory. This could be especially useful for low-end computers.
1. Right click on My Computer and click on Properties.
2. Click File System from the Performance tab.
3. From the CD-ROM tab, you can configure the amount of cache that is assigned to the drive. Adjust the slider according to your needs. The minimum amount is 64KB and the maximum is 1238KB.
4. Changing the Optimise access pattern for drop-down selection also affects the amount of memory used (maximum for Quad-speed or higher and minimum for No read-ahead).

A clean Run
To remove unwanted items from the Run menu:
1. Start the Registry Editor.
2. Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU.
3. Delete the entries that you do not want on the Run menu.
4. Close the Registry Editor and Restart Windows.
Note: Do not delete the (Default) or MRUList values.

Permanently delete files
To permanently Delete files without moving them to the Recycle Bin, hold down the Shift key while pressing Delete. To stop using recycle bin altogether, right-click the Recycle Bin and click on Properties. On the Global Tab, select Do not move files to the Recycle Bin. If you enable Configure drives independently, you can set this up for the drives you want to.

Dummy entries in Add/Remove Programs list
Sometimes, even after programs are uninstalled, or due to the files being deleted instead of a uninstalled, the entry in the Add/Remove Programs list does not get deleted. To remove it from the list:
1. Start the Registry Editor.
2. Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall.
3. Delete the program entry here.
You can also use TweakUI to do this.

Windows 98 Easter Egg
1. Right-click an empty space on your Desktop, and select New > Shortcut from the context menu.
2. In the Command line field, type the following line, exactly as it appears:
"C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\WELCOME\WELDATA.EXE" You_are_a_real_rascal
3. Click Next and then Finish.
4. Edit the Properties for this shortcut. Change the Run field to Minimized. Also, make sure that the Start in field shows “C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\WELCOME”.
5. Double-click the shortcut and enjoy the Easter Egg.

Preview Media Files
Internet Explorer 4 and allow previewing media files (wav, mid, avi, mov, mpg) in Windows Explorer. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to \Windows\Web, and open Folder.htt in Notepad. Look for wantMedia = false and replace this with wantMedia = true. You should now be able to preview media files in folders that are viewed as a web page.

Optimising the Windows 98 Registry
Windows 98 compresses the registry by default at restart if it finds that there is more than 500KB of empty space in the registry. This is controlled by the line Optimize=1 in the Scanreg.ini file in the \Windows directory.
To compress the registry manually:
1. Restart in MS-DOS mode.
2. At the MS-DOS prompt, type scanreg/backup. This will backup your registry.
3. Now type scanreg /opt.
4. Scanreg will compress the registry.

Preview Images
You can preview your Image files by viewing the folder they are in as "Web View". From the Windows Explorer menu, select View > as Web page. A better way to preview images is as thumbnails instead of icons. To enable this view in Windows Explorer, right-click the folder you want to preview and click on Properties. Check the box against Enable thumbnail view and click Ok to exit the dialog box. Now, from the View menu, select Thumbnails.



A clean registry
A computer's registry accumulates a lot of corrupted, unused, and unnecessary registry keys, especially if keys are not removed when you uninstall a program. As a result, you may begin to experience problems and your machine might function slower than expected.
The latest version of Microsoft's RegClean could delete a lot of such registry junk. You can download this from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/REGCLEAN.EXE.

System Configuration
A very useful tool included with Win98 is the System Configuration Utility. Select Start > Run and type msconfig in the Open box to launch the application. The System Configuration Utility makes fiddling with programs to launch at Startup or editing autoexec.bat, config.sys etc. a lot easier. The System Configuration Utility also allows you to create a backup of your system files ? it would be a good idea to use this before you begin making changes. Be careful with what you enable or disable. Do not touch anything that you may not understand.

Optimising the Swap File
With most resource hungry applications today, the RAM is not enough to hold all its data. Windows uses a portion of the hard disk as RAM, constantly swapping data between the RAM and the hard disk as required. The speed of your hard disk is nearly 1000 times slower than that of your main memory. Inefficient use of the swap file could considerably slow down your system to a very great extent.
One of the best ways to speed up the swap file usage is to create a permanent swap file. In a permanent swap file, the file used for swapping information has a fixed size and location on your hard disk. When a temporary swap file is used, the location and size of the file is determined by the application being used and is not predictable. Also, since a temporary swap file is constantly written to and is not fixed in size, it would be highly fragmented across the partition that holds it.
A better option is to create the swap file on a dedicated partition on your hard disk. By doing this, the swap file will never be fragmented since that partition is only being utilised by the swap file itself. You can configure the swap file size and location from Control Panel > System > Performance > Virtual Memory. The size of the swap file should be around 2.5 times the amount of RAM on the system.

Direct Memory Access
The advantage of using Direct Memory Access (DMA) with IDE CD-ROM and disk drives is that it lowers CPU usage during I/O transfers. This drastically improves performance when using these devices.
Ensure that your drive supports DMA before making these changes, otherwise it could lead to unpredictable results. To use DMA:
1. Open Control Panel > System > Device Manager.
2. Click the + sign next to the Disk drives entry.
3. Select the drive you want to enable DMA for and click Properties.
4. On the Settings tab, there should be a DMA check box. You can enable this to enable DMS for the drive.
Note: If there is no check box (or it is greyed out), your motherboard chipset does not support the feature. If the check box is not checked after you restart your system, your hard disk probably has been automatically disabled again because the hard disk may not support DMA. If you are unable to restart Windows after the change is applied, boot to Safe Mode and disable DMA from here.

Improve Removable Disk Drive Performance
Windows 98 gives you the option to use write-behind caching to improve the performance of removable disk drives.
1. Open Control Panel > System > Performance and click on File System.
2. Check the Enable write-behind caching on all removable disk drives check box under the Removable Disk tab and click OK.
Note: If this results in a problem with disk operations, uncheck the Enable write-behind caching on all removable disk drives check box.

Change the Typical role of your computer
If you have 24MB or more RAM, you can optimise performance by selecting Network server as the typical role of your computer.
1. Open Control Panel > System > Performance > File System.
2. On the Hard Disk Tab, select Network Server as Typical role of this computer.
The setting you use controls the size of various internal data structures used by the 32-bit file access driver (VFAT).
When you use the Mobile Or Docking System setting, VFAT allocates memory to record the 16 most recently accessed folders and the 337 most recently accessed files. This consumes approximately 4KB of memory.
When you use the Desktop Computer setting, VFAT allocates memory to record the 32 most recently accessed folders and the 677 most recently accessed files. This consumes approximately 8KB of memory.
When you use the Network Server setting, VFAT allocates memory to record the 64 most recently accessed folders and the 2729 most recently accessed files. This consumes approximately 16KB of memory.

MS Office memory hoggers
A typical installation of MS Office installs Find Fast, an indexing utility that loads at startup. This hogs system resources by regularly indexing the entire hard disk(s). You can improve performance of your computer by removing Find Fast from your StartUp folder. To reclaim the space used by the Find Fast index, open Control Panel > Find Fast, select your hard drive(s) and from the Index menu, click on Delete Index. When you've deleted your Index, click on Close and Stop from the Index menu.
Another item installed in the StartUp folder is named Microsoft Office. This does nothing apart from loading all MS Office libraries at startup to speed up launching of any Office applications. Since this is not necessary, you can delete this shortcut, too.

Restart only Windows
When restarting Windows, you don’t always need to go through the BIOS initialisation and POST. Instead of simply clicking on Restart from the Shut Down Windows dialog box, hold down the Shift key as you click on Ok. This will restart only Windows. This is particularly useful when you change some registry entries or a few system settings.

Stop Automatic Dialling
Many Internet applications or software are often set to automatically dial up and connect. To stop automatic dialling, open Control Panel > Internet Options. Under the Connections tab, enable Never dial a connection.

Automatic maintenance
The Windows Maintenance Wizard can automate a lot of the routine system maintenance tasks. To open this wizard, choose Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Maintenance Wizard. It sets up the Task Scheduler to regularly run Scandisk, Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup.

Using two monitors
You can install two display adapters (AGP or PCI) and connect them to two monitors to increase screen display area. First, install a single display adapter with its drivers. Shut down Windows, install the second card and start the machine. When you turn on your system, Windows will recognise the new video card and the attached monitor and install drivers for both. You'll then be prompted to restart your system. You'll see both your video cards in the Device Manager tree once the drivers are installed.
If everything is functioning correctly, as Windows is loading, you'll see a message that reads "If you can read this..." on the second monitor. Once Windows loads, right-click on the desktop and click on Properties and then the Settings tab. You'll now see two monitors in the middle of the page. Click on the second monitor icon. When you do so, a message box prompts you to enable the second monitor. To continue, click Yes.
Make sure that the monitor icons correctly represent your actual monitor's physical positions. The icons' positions control how you drag icons and windows from one monitor to the other. Right-click on the first monitor icon and select the Identify command from the shortcut menu. If the monitor icons are in the wrong positions, simply click on one of them and drag it to the correct position.
After you're finished, click Apply.

Customise the Start menu
You can customise the start menu to show only certain items.
Open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
To remove the Run command, create a new DWORD value and name it NoRun. Double-click it and change it’s value to 1.
To remove the Documents folder, create a new DWORD value and name it NoRecentDocsMenu. Double-click it and change it’s value to 1.
To remove the Favorites folder, create a new DWORD value and name it NoFavoritesMenu. Double-click it and change it’s value to 1.
To remove the Log Off … command, create a new DWORD value and name it NoLogOff. Double-click it and change it’s value to 1.
Restart Windows once you are finished.

Clean Desktop
To hide all the icons on your Desktop, open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\Explorer. Add a DWORD value and name it NoDesktop. Change it’s value to 1. Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows.

Bitmaps as icons
You can preview bitmaps (.BMP files) as icons in Explorer instead of the default icon of the application it is associated with. Open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Paint.Picture\DefaultIcon. Double-click the Default string and change it’s value to ‘%1’ (without double-quotes). Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows.

ToolTips
To disable ToolTips in Windows, open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop. Double-click UserPreferencemask and change its value to 3E 00 00 00. Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows.

[vjsreevs]

yathish gr8 post ... thnx ... keep posting much tricks ....

[yathish]

its ok sree..........