In cadrul seriei Optimizarea WindowsXP vom prezenta mai multi pasi de optimizare a acestui sistem de operare.

Sa incepem cu primul si anume dezactivarea serviciului de indexare.
Windows XP include un program pentru optimizarea cautarilor interne, care utilizeaza destula memorie RAM, actualizand continuu fisierele modificate.
Astfel, daca nu efectuati des cautari pe calculatorul personal, puteti dezactiva acest program astfel:

Click Star Menu > Settings > Control Panel.

In Control Panel click Add / Remove Programs.

Din meniul din stanga selectati Add/Remove Windows Components.

In fereastra care se deschide, debifati Indexing services, dupa care click Next:

 

Delete Prefetch Automat
1. Mergi in My Computer and si intra intr-o partitie de pe hard drive D,E etc.

2. Click-dreapta oriunde nu se afla un fisier si selecteaza 'New' in submeniu apoi da click pe 'Text Document' .

3. Pune numele acestui  fisier "deleteprefetch"

4. Doublu-click pe fisierul text nou creat.

5. Copiati in acesta comanda "del C:WindowsPrefetch*.*" (fara  ghilimele).

6. Mergeti la > Save As... si alegeti "All Files" de la "Save as Type" si salvati cu urmatorul nume dintre ghilimele  "deleteprefetch.bat"

7. Tocmai ati creat un fisier batch fisier care in mod automat va sterge toate fisierele din folderul dumneavoastra Prefetch.

Motivul pentru care Windows XP a schimbat driverele dumneavoastra IDE in drivere PIO in loc de  DMA! Remediu? Mergeti la device manager apasand click dreapta pe “my computer” si alegeti “properties” apoi “hardware”.
Doublu click on the “IDE primary drive” si apoi “advanced settings”. Acolo puteti vedea setarile curente setari pentru master si slave in primul canal IDE . Acolo puteti alege modul de transferare. Daca e setat pe  “PIO only”, alegeti “DMA if available” salvati si restartati computerul! 


Daca computerul persista si alege doar modul PIO dupa restart chiar daca hard diskul este in flash super ATA133 si transfera modul setat “DMA if available”, atunci faceti urmatoarele:
Scoateti deviceul  primar din device manager si restartati! Acum hardwareul dumneavoastra ar trebui sa functioneze in modul DMA.



Repeat on the secondary IDE channel if necessary.  Clear Unwanted Entries from Add/Remove Programs Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT).
Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Uninstall, and remove any unwanted keys under "Uninstall."  Make icons in windows appear quicker In Windows XP everytime you open My Computer to browse folders XP automatically searches for network files and printers. This causes a delay in displaying your icons. You probably see the "default" windows icon and as you scroll it changes to the correct icon. This is how to stop that...

1. Open My Computer
2. Click on the Tools menu and select Folder Options...
3. Under Folder Options select the view tab.
4. Uncheck the very first box that reads "Automatically search for network folders and printers".
5. Click "Apply" or "OK"

You should see a dramatic increase in speed when Windows displays your icons. Swap File Tweak For Users with 256 MB RAM or more this tweak will boost their Windows- and Game-Performance.
What it does: It tells Windows not to use any Swap File until there is really no more free RAM left.

Open the System Configuration Utility by typing msconfig.exe in the RUN command. There in your System.ini you have to add "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" under the 386enh section.

Restart your Windows and enjoy better Game performance Shutdown XP using your keyboard! 1. Right click on your desktop. Go to new, and then click on shortcut.
2. A window comes up. Type in “shutdown” (without quotes) add a space and enter one of the following commands. Sutdown XP faster 2 Like previous versions of windows, it takes long time to restart or shutdown windows xp when the "Exit Windows" sound is enabled. to solve this problem you must disable this useless sound.

click start button then go to settings -> control panel -> Sound,Speech and Audio devices -> Sounds and Audio Devices -> Sounds, then under program events and windows menu click on "Exit Windows" sub-menu and highlight it.now from sounds you can select,choose "none" and then click apply and ok.
now you can see some improvements when shutting down your system.Shutdown XP Faster Start Regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control.
Click on the "Control" Folder.
Select "WaitToKillServiceTimeout"
Right click on it and select Modify.
Set it a value lower than 2000 (Mine is set to 200). Easily Disable Messenger Go into: C:/Program Files/Messenger. Rename the Messenger folder to "MessengerOFF" This does not slow down Outlook Express or hinder system performance.Correcting System Hang at Startup If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't work for me. Here's what you do:

1. Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
2. Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot.   Disable Debug Scripting in Internet Explorer Don't you hate it when you are browsing a page it asks you "Would you like to debug this page?" Well here's a nifty and easy way to turn it off.

Right Click on Internet Explorer and Click Properties
----- or -----
Open Internet Explorer. Click Tools CD ROM Stops AutoPlaying... ...and the AutoPlay Tab has disappeared in My Computer, Devices With Removable Storage, Right Click on CDROM, Properties.

Solution:
The service: "Shell Hardware Detection" has been set to Manual or Disabled. Go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services. Return this service to "Automatic".Turn off Indexing to speed up XP Windows XP keeps a record of all files on the hard disk so when you do a search on the hard drive it is faster. There is a downside to this and because the computer has to index all files, it will slow down normal file commands like open, close, etc. If you do not do a whole lot of searches on your hard drive then I suggest turnning this feature off:

1. Open my computer
2. Right click your hard drive icon and select properties.
3. At the bottom of the window you'll see "Allow indexing service to index this disk for faster searches," uncheck this and click ok.
4. A new window will pop up and select apply to all folders and subfolders. It will take a minute or two for the changes to take affect but then you should enjoy slightly faster performanceClean your prefetch to improve performance This is an unique technique for WinXP. We know that it is necessary to wash registry and TEMP files for Win9X/ME/2000 periodly. Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP. However, after using XP some time, the prefetch directory can get full of junk and obsolete links in the Prefetch catalog, which can slow down your computer notablely. My suggestion is: open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete those junk and obsolete files,reboot. It is recommended that you do this every month.Disable auto-reboot When Running windows and it crashes you will get a blue screen and it will automatically restart, ofter it will restart too fast for you to see the error message. You could check the error log in this case but that is too easy. We are going to disable auto restart on system failure.

1. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> System (Windows+Pause works, too)
2. Go to Advanced
3. Under the Startup and Recovery section, click Settings...
4. Under System Failure un-check "Automatically restart"No more low disk space messages go into registry with REGEDIT.EXE, go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer
and (if not already there) add DWORD (without quotes) "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" and change the value to 1. Restart.Virtual Paging File This tweak can increase the amount of RAM significantly used on your computer. What this tweak actually does is it uses your hard-drive disk-space to emulate RAM. This is called caching, or in Microsoft terms - The Virtual Paging File Size.

1.) Go into Control Panel and into Performance and Maintenance
2.) Get into System
3.) Click the Advanced Tab
4.) In the Performance Frame, click on Settings
5.) Once in Settings click on the Advanced Tab
6.) Now under Virutal Memory click on Change
7.) Here you can set your RAM value. The recommended increase you should make should be achieved by multiplying your RAM by 1.5. This is already done if you have a System Managed file size. I like to increase it by 1/5 of my actual hard-drive space. This will drastically increase performance, because the system will now have a pool of cache to retrieve memory from. 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.mscFix Outlook's slow load time without editing registry There has already been one suggestion for fixing Outlook's load time after uninstalling Messenger, however if you don’t feel comfortable editing the registry simply open OE, click on the Tools menu, then Options, then go to the 'Other' tab, then un-check the box at the bottom that reads "Enable instant messaging in Microsoft Outlook".View and manage startup programs Type msconfig in run and then go to the startup tab here you can select which programs you want enabling and which you want to be disabled from starting up.  Speed up Network Browsing There was a bug in windows 2000 that would cause the scheduled tasks folder to be searched when ever the user would browse network drives. Microsoft developed a fix for this bug. The fix fixed the problem and it also had nice side affect of speeding up browsing of Microsoft networks. Below are instructions how to apply the fix.

1. Open up regedit.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace.
3. Find a key named {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}.
4. Right click on it and delete it.
5. Restart System Configuration Utility To Get to the System Configuration Utility
Click Start
Click Help and Support
Click Tools
On the left Select System Configuration UtlityDisable unnecessary services to free system resources Click the start button.
Select run from the bottom of the right column.
Then type services.msc in the box and click ok.
Once the services window has loaded we are ready to turn off unneeded services.
For instructional purposes we are going to turn off the Portable Media Serial Number service.
Find this service in the list and select it with the mouse.
Right click and select Properties.
Once the properties windows has loaded locate the Start up type drop down box and select disable.
Then just click ok and the next time the computer starts the service will not be loaded.Proformance 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 "Perfomance" 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

There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster.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_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorer].
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.

I tried this after running a intense program, then watched the task manager; memory recovered it self. Remove start-up items Having programs run when windows loads slows down your start.

There are two ways do disable programs that may be in your startup (like icq, messanger,)

The easiest is to do the following:
1. start --> run --> msconfig
2. Click on the "startup" tab (furthest right)
3. Unclick any items you don't want to load when windows starts.

The second is by deleting registry entrys, this can be done the following way:
1. Start --> run --> regedit
2. Navigate to : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun
3. Delete any entry's that you don't want to load upStart MS Dos Prompt (Start run CMD)
CHKNTFS/T:4
where 4 is the amount of waity time

CHKNTFS/?
for more infoMicrosoft Speed-Up-Boot Tool Microsoft has designed a tool to help in monitoring the boot up process of your computer. The tool has many cool features that allow you to find out how long each program running at start up is taking to load and when they load. For more information, visit the website: http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.aspDisable automatic updating Open control panel.

Click on performance and maintenance.

Click on System.

Then click on the automatic updates tab and select Turn off automatic updating.

Click Ok. Enable or disable boot defrag Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftDfrgBootOptimizeFunction
Select Enable from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to Y to enable and N to disable.
Reboot your computer. Modify auto-reboot setting Since Microsoft has worked so hard to make this version "the most stable ever," then this tweak is not needed. However, I am fairly sure that they have not perfected millions of lines of code in less than a year. Below you will discover how to turn the auto reboot feature on and off. This allows your computer to instantly reboot upon a system fault. (The blue screen)

Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlCrashControl
Select AutoReboot from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to 0 to disable and 1 to enable.
Reboot your computer. Memory Performance Tweak These Settings will fine tune your systems memory

management -atleast 256MB of ram recccomended

go to startrunregedit -and then to the following key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management

1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive yeilds faster performance.

2.LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory improves system performance alot

3.create a new dword and name it IOPageLockLimit - double click it and set the value in hex - 4000 if you have 128MB of ram or set it to 10000 if you have 256MB set it to 40000 if you have more than 512MB of ram -this tweak will speed up your disckcache

Reboot and watch your system fly Right-click Lets say you have a bout 4-5 very useful applications which you use always. By placing them all on the first level menu will eventually crowd your start menu. Now why not utilize the right-click option instead? The right-click option gives you the ability to Open, Explore and Find. If you can add a shortcut to your application to that menu, it would be great.

To do this, crank up your registry editor and go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryShell. Right-click on Shell and create a new key. Type in an appropriate name for the key. On the right pane, double-click on the Default value, and add a title with a & character in front of the letter as an accelerator key. Right-click on the key you just created and create another key under it called command . For the Default value of command, enter the full path and program you want to execute in the Value data box.

For example, if you wanted Notepad, you would add that as the first key, the default in the right panel would be &Notepad so when you right click on the Start Button, the N would be underlined and you could just press that key. The command would be something like C:Windowsnotepad.exe. Now when you right click on the Start Button, your new program will show up. Locking Computer in XP To lock a computer in XP, as you probably know, you press "L" while holding down "Windows Logo" key on your keyboard. Remove Owner colummn From Explorer's Details view to dramatically speed up display Do you sit and wait while Explorer seems to take it's time showing the owner of each file/directory that is displayed? If so, then you might find the following useful:

1. Open Explorer and select "Details" under the "View" menu
2. Right click on any of the column headers (such as "Name", "Size", or "Owner")
3. Uncheck "Owner"

You should see immediate improvements as you navigate around.

To make this permanent for all folders,

4. Select "Folder Options" from the "Tools" menu
5. Select the "View" tab
6. Click the "Apply to All Folders" button

Now, you will not see "Owner" in any folder. If you want to re-display it, simply follow the instructions above and re-check "Owner" in step 3.Change the Browser Title This tweak Customize the Title of the Internet Explorer.


1. Click Start > Run > Type gpedit.msc
2. Click User Configuration > Windows Setting > Internet Explorer Maintenance > Browser User Interface
3. Double click on Browser Title
4. Click on Customize Title Bars
5. type in whatever you want
6. Click OK

Now you changed the title of your browser and you sure see what you wrote when you
open a New Widow.Change Internet Explorer Logo This Tweak Changes the Small logo at the top right corner of your browser.

1. Click Start > Run > Type gpedit.msc
2. Click User Configuration > Windows Setting > Internet Explorer Maintenance > Browser User erface
3. Double click on Custom Logo
4. Click on Customize The Static Logo Bitmaps
5. Click on Browse...
6. Browser for your new Logo
7. click Ok
8. An error will popup ``You have selected to customize a setting but provided no
value. The behavior of this will be to delete the setting. Are you sure you want
too continue?``
9. Click yes

Note: The Logo have to be (22X22) Small and (38X38) Large and have to be bitmap.
When you save your Logo, you have to save in 256 or 16bit color.This Tweak Changes the Small logo at the top right corner of your browser.

1. Click Start > Run > Type gpedit.msc
2. Click User Configuration > Windows Setting > Internet Explorer Maintenance > Browser User Interface
3. Double click on Custom Logo
4. Click on Customize The Static Logo Bitmaps
5. Click on Browse...
6. Browser for your new Logo
7. click Ok
8. An error will popup ``You have selected to customize a setting but provided no
value. The behavior of this will be to delete the setting. Are you sure you want
too continue?``
9. Click yes

Note: The Logo have to be (22X22) Small and (38X38) Large and have to be bitmap.
When you save your Logo, you have to save in 256 or 16bit colorGetting rid of unwanted items in "open with..." shell extension When rightclicking any file you´re likely to see an option called "open with", which lists any available program on you computer to open the file with. To simply clear up this list of unwanted items, or to remove useless associations, like opening an mp3 file with a paint program, follow these steps:

- Click on the start button, click on Run... and type the word "regedit" (without the quotes) in the box that appears to open the registry editor
- Navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerFileExts"
- Find the extention you wish to edit and click on the "+"-sign to locate the key that says "OpenWithList"
- In the right pane of the registry editor you´ll see a list with the programs in the list, like "paint.exe" or "notepad.exe"
- Simple click on the one you wish to delete and press the delete button on your keyboard

Don´t worry if you´ve removed an entry you rather hadn´t removed. When rightclicking a file there will be another option in the "open with" extension where you can choose any program on your computer. Once used, it will reappear in the list of associated programs. Permanent Acceleration Fix It seems that even without pointer precision disabled, the mouse under XP is still influenced by an acceleration curve. This is especially noticeable in games. To completely remove mouse acceleration from XP, you will need to go into the registry and adjust the SmoothmouseXYCurve values. Here is how its done.

1. Click Start button
2. Select Run
3. Type 'regedit' in the open textbox
4. Open the tree 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER', select control panel, then select mouse
5. Right clicking, modify the SmoothMouseXCurve and SmoothMouseYCurve hexidecimal values to the following:

SmoothMouseXCurve:
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
00,a0,00,00,00,00,00,00
00,40,01,00,00,00,00,00
00,80,02,00,00,00,00,00
00,00,05,00,00,00,00,00

SmoothMouseYCurve:
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
66,a6,02,00,00,00,00,00
cd,4c,05,00,00,00,00,00
a0,99,0a,00,00,00,00,00
38,33,15,00,00,00,00,00

If done correctly, you will notice you are holding a markedly more responsive mouse.Use active desktop to save memory used by wallpapers When you choose a wallpaper using the standard method (selecting a background on the desktop tab, in the properties window), Windows converts this image to a huge .bmp file (even if you selected a .jpg). Then instead of having a nice 220K wallpaper, you get a 3,15MB wallpaper. To get rid of this, try using active desktop's web capabilities, like this:

1. Right click on your desktop and select "properties", then select the "desktop" tab.
2. Click on "Customize Desktop".
3. Select the "Web" tab and click on "New..."
4. Browse for your favorite image and click OK when you are done.
5. Make sure "Lock desktop items" is uncheck.
6. Click OK, and OK again.
7. Now your image is like another window. Drag it to where you want and then right clik over it.
8. Select "arrange icons by" and the check "Lock Web Items on Desktop".
9. That's it. Now you have a "low memory usage wallpaper".

With this you can make interesting things, like using various small wallpapers, or even animated ones!! (you can select an animated .gif too!!). Simply select various images, and when you click OK, drag all them to its right location, and lock the content again.

PS: If you want to check the huge wallpaper windows makes, select a wallpaper the standard way, then browse to "C:Documents and SettingsUSER PROFILELocal SettingsApplication DataMicrosoft" (where USER PROFILE, is the profile you're using, i.e. Administrator). There should be a file called Wallpaper.bmp, open it and you'll see your cureent wallpaper.Show CPU Meter in system tray at all times How to show the built in CPU meter which is part of the Windows Task Manager every time you boot or switch users.

1. Do a search for taskmgr.exe
2. Right click and select Send To - Desktop (Create Shortcut)
3. On the taskmgr shortcut that is on the desktop right click and select Properties - Change the Run Command to - minimized.
4. Rename the shortcut to "Task Manager" or "CPU Meter" and right click and cut the Shortcut.
5. Paste the shortcut into the startup folder by right click on the start menu - Select All Users - Programmes - StartUp.

You should see the Meter in the system tray. If not then:

6. In the Windows Task Manager window select Options - and tick "Minimize On Use" and "Hide When Minimized".
7. Then minimize the Task Manager
 Copy to... and Move to... Context Options To add Copy to... and Move to... context menu options (similar to Win95 Powertoys send to folder option) Create the following registry keys

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellexContextMenuHandlersCopy To
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellexContextMenuHandlersMove To
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlersCopy To
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellexContextMenuHandlersMove To

For the Copy To's set the default value to {C2FBB630-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13} and for the Move To's set the default value to {C2FBB631-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

Now when you right click on a file or folder, above the send to option are two new options: Copy to Folder and Move to Folder
You can copy or move files or directories to other folders with this.Keep high preformance and keep the GUI To increase system performance and keep the GUI:

Right click my computer.
Click properties.
Click advanced.
Click settings (under performance).
Click Adjust for best performance.
Scroll to the bottom and check the last one “use visual styles on windows and buttons”.
 How to Get "Show Hidden Files and Folders" Back if it is Missing If the option to enable "Show Hidden Files and Folders" is MISSING from your Folders Options > View > Advanced Settings, find this key in your registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvancedFolderHidden]

Modify the string value "Type" and enter "group" as value data.

After the edit is complete hit F5 to refresh, and go look in your Folder Options. Easier way to check IP Did you knew you can view it even faster (without opening all the way to cmd or commmand.com ... type "cmd /k ipconfig" thats it.

Preview Multimedia

If you want to quickly view a supported format audio/video file, and don't want to wait until Media Player loads, you can create a new action for these file types, called e.g. "Preview", with "C:WindowsSystem32Mplay32.exe" /Play "%L" as application specification. Oh, yes, that's in Explorer under Tools/Folder Options/File Types/Advanced/New.


Turn off Thumbs.db

Thumbs.db is a file which is created in a folder with Movies or Pictures so that you can view a piece of their content without actualy opening them (you can't see thumbnails unless you have the option to view system files turned on). Thumbs.db is there so that you don't need to reload a thumbnail everytime you browse that folder. Sad fact is, is Thumbs.db takes up about 2kb per file and if you edit a lot of stuff its annoying to keep seeing them popping up all over your computer. You can remove thumbs.db quite easily by following these steps:

1. Go to Run in the startmenu
2. Type gpedit.msc
3. Click OK and the Group Policy will open
4. Go to User Configuration/Administrative Template/Windows Components/Windows Explorer
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the long list of stuff that now shows up in the menu on the right. Double-Click on Turn off caching of thumbnail pictures.
6. Click on Enable then Apply, Ok. And now you no longer have this annoying problem.


Remove windows version from desktop using "regedit.exe"

1.Click on "Start", then "Run.." and type "regedit".
2.Navigate to the registry key:
"HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop".
3.Once there, locate the DWORD value "PaintDesktopVersion".
4.Right click on it and select Modify.
-Value equal to "0" removes Windows version from desktop.
-Value equal to "1" adds Windows version to desktop.
5.Reboot your computer.



avi files causing high cpu usage again with installation of XP SP1

To correct the misbehavior in Windows XP, remove the following registry key.

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesCLSID{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}InProcServer32"

This will prevent Explorer from loading shmedia.dll in response to file property queries on these files. This will not effect your ability to play files, get file attributes, or even view thumbnails. I really think Microsoft is trying to make sure people only use mpeg

This tweak is for those of you who consider right-clicking on My Computer, and then going down to the properties menu, a bit time consuming. Instead, to bring up the System Properties menu faster, do the following:

1. Hold down the Windows Key on the keyboard, and then press Pause/Break. (WinKey + Pause)

That's all there is to it! Have fun avoiding the mouse like I try to do.


winchat

There is an application in XP that allows networked users to to communicate with each other. It is a very simple program located in the Windows System32 directory. A search for "winchat"
will also bring it up. This program can be very usefull to users that work in large office complexes and need to deliver a message to another individual quickly and efficiently. This application also has a real time chat screen, so you can see the other person typing. I have tested this program on 2 computers running XP Pro, not XP Home.

1 start, search, "winchat" (or find in Windows, System 32 directory)
2 right click and select send to desktop (for easy opening)
3 run the program
4 choose dial button at the top
5 choose the computer of the person on the network who you wish to talk to.
6 both users must agree to connect to each other to talk.



Some Shortcut Keys you might enjoy

Windows XP is full of many KEY-Combo Shortcuts to access Feasures quickly. Here are some of the shortcuts you may find most useful.

WINKEY + E =
Opens explorer windows with the folder sidebar enabled

WINKEY + PAUSE/BREAK =
Opens "system propertieS"

SHIFT + DELETE =
Delete a file without sending to Recycler first (NO RECOVERY!)

F5 =
Refresh (Usefull in Internet Explorer)

SHIFT F5 = Reload Webpage from scratch (NO CACHE)
 

CTRL + SHIFT + END =
Highlight everything down a Text page from current possition (USE HOME for up)

ALT + CTRL + DEL =
Ahh, an old favorite. If an App. is being rude, use this to bring the the "Task Manager" (and kill it if you want). There is some other toys here too like, priorities you can set.

Search "Shortcut keys" under "HELP & SUPPORT" for a complete list of Shortcuts, including these.


Speed up your web browsing

Iv'e personally found a dramatic increase in web browsing after clearing the Windows XP DNS cache.

To clear it type the following in a command prompt: ipconfig /flushdns