Customize Your Start Button

First you need a tool called "Resource Hacker". This free program allows you to change resources in any .exe file such as "Explorer.exe", which includes the [Start] button's Label. You can visit Download.com and search there for "Resource Hacker".

After you download it, follow the guide here:


Step 1:

A - Run "Resource Hacker" and open the file "%windir%\Explorer.exe".
B - You see a Tree of all Resources in this file, expand the "String Table"
C - Find the "start" and replace it with your own text. then press the [Compile Script] button.
D - Save "Explorer.exe" as "MyStart.exe" DONT save it as Explorer.exe, do "save as.." and give it a new name.
E - Quit "Resource Hacker".

Step 2:

A - Click on the [Start] button and choose the "Run..." item from the start menu. (Or use the shortcut key WinKey+R)
B - Type "RegEdit" in the Run "Dialog Box". And then press the [Ok] buton to run the "Registry Editor" program.
C - Go to: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" and find the "Shell" property.
D - Replace value of the "Shell" property to "MyStart.exe".
E - Quit "Registry Editor".
F - Restart your system.

Note about Registry Editor:
If you did not find the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon", you can search the Registry for the "Explorer.exe", to do this use the Edit Menu | Find Next (Ctrl+F).

Delete An "UNDELETABLE" File

1. Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open.

2. Close all open programs.

3. Click Start, Run and enter TASKMGR.EXE

4. Go to the Processes tab and End Process on Explorer.exe.

5. Leave Task Manager open.

6. Go back to the Command Prompt window and change to the directory the AVI (or other undeletable file) is located in.

7. At the command prompt type DEL where is the file you wish to delete.

8. Go back to Task Manager, click File->New Task and enter EXPLORER.EXE to restart the GUI shell.

9. Close Task Manager.

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Or you can also try this:

1. Open Notepad.exe

2. Click File->Save As..

3. Locate the folder where your undeletable file is.

4. Choose 'All files' from the file type box.

5. Click once on the file you want to delete so its name appears in the 'filename' box.

6. put a " at the start and end of the filename
(the filename should have the extension of the undeletable file so it will overwrite it)

7. Click save.

8. It should ask you to overwrite the existing file, choose yes and you can delete it as normal

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Here's a manual way of doing it.

1. Start

2. Run

3. Type: command

4. To move into a directory type: cd c:\*** (The stars stand for your folder)

5. If you cannot access the folder because it has spaces (for example Program Files) you have to do the following: instead of typing in the full folder name only take the first 6 letters then put a ~ and then 1 without spaces. (Example: cd c:\progra~1\kazaal~1)

6. Once your in the folder the non-deletable file it in type in dir - a list will come up with everything inside.

7. Now to delete the file type in del ***.bmp, txt, jpg, avi, etc... And if the file name has spaces you would use the special 1st 6 letters followed by a ~ and a 1 rule. Example: if your file name was bad file.bmp you would type once in the specific folder thorugh command, del badfil~1.bmp and your file should be gone. Make sure to type in the correct extension.

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How To Auto End Tasks to Enable Proper Shutdown

This reg file automatically ends tasks and timeouts that prevent programs from shutting down and clears the Paging File on Exit.

1. Copy the following into notepad:

QUOTE
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"ClearPageFileAtShutdown"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control]
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="1000"

2. Save the file as shutdown.reg

3. Double click the file to import into your registry.

NOTE: If your anti-virus software warns you of a "malicious" script, this is normal if you have "Script Safe" or similar technology enabled.

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Windows XP Hidden Apps

To run any of these apps, go to Start -> Run and type the executable name (e.g. charmap).

1) Character Map = charmap.exe (very useful for finding unusual characters)

2) Disk Cleanup = cleanmgr.exe

3) Clipboard Viewer = clipbrd.exe (views contents of Windows clipboard)

4) Dr Watson = drwtsn32.exe (Troubleshooting tool)

5) DirectX diagnosis = dxdiag.exe (Diagnose & test DirectX, video & sound cards)

6) Private character editor = eudcedit.exe (allows creation or modification of characters)

7) IExpress Wizard = iexpress.exe (Create self-extracting / self-installing package)

8) Microsoft Synchronization Manager = mobsync.exe (appears to allow synchronization of files on the network for when working offline. Apparently undocumented).

9) Windows Media Player 5.1 = mplay32.exe (Retro version of Media Player, very basic).

10) ODBC Data Source Administrator = odbcad32.exe (something to do with databases)

11) Object Packager = packager.exe (to do with packaging objects for insertion in files, appears to have comprehensive help files).

12) System Monitor = perfmon.exe (very useful, highly configurable tool, tells you everything you ever wanted to know about any aspect of PC performance, for uber-geeks only )

13) Program Manager = progman.exe (Legacy Windows 3.x desktop shell).

14) Remote Access phone book = rasphone.exe (documentation is virtually non-existant).

15) Registry Editor = regedt32.exe [also regedit.exe] (for hacking the Windows Registry)

16) Network shared folder wizard = shrpubw.exe (creates shared folders on network).

17) File signature verification tool = sigverif.exe

18) Volume Contro = sndvol32.exe (I've included this for those people that lose it from the System Notification area).

19) System Configuration Editor = sysedit.exe (modify System.ini & Win.ini just like in Win98)

20) Syskey = syskey.exe (Secures XP Account database - use with care, it's virtually undocumented but it appears to encrypt all passwords)

21) Microsoft Telnet Client = telnet.exe

22) Driver Verifier Manager = verifier.exe (seems to be a utility for monitoring the actions of drivers, might be useful for people having driver problems)

23) Windows for Workgroups Chat = winchat.exe (appears to be an old NT utility to allow chat sessions over a LAN)

24) System configuration = msconfig.exe (can use to control starup programs)

25) gpedit.msc used to manage group policies, and permissions

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How To Optimize DSL-CABLE Connection Speed

First, u need to go to Start, then run. (or click windows icon + r)

Type in regedit in the box.
Next, goto the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\VxD\MSTCP.
Find the string DefaultRcvWindow.
Now, edit the number to 64240 then restart your computer.
Original value is 373360.
That's it.


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Speed Up Your Computer By Customizing Your Start Up

First, in the bottom right hand corner of your computer, if you see a lot of icons there when you start your computer then this will do the trick.

Press your Start Button (bottom left) and go to "run"
now type in: msconfig
You will get a box that pops up. Choose Start Up tab.
Remove the check on programs that you don't prefer to have on your Start Up and then hit apply and Close.
Restart.


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How To Create Shutdown and Reboot Shortcuts

First, create a shortcut on your desktop by right-clicking on the desktop, choosing New, and then choosing Shortcut. The Create Shortcut Wizard appears. In the box asking for the location of the shortcut, type shutdown. After you create the shortcut, double-clicking on it will shut down your PC.

But you can do much more with a shutdown shortcut than merely shut down your PC. You can add any combination of several switches to do extra duty, like this:

shutdown -r -t 01 -c "Rebooting your PC"
Double-clicking on that shortcut will reboot your PC after a one-second delay and display the message "Rebooting your PC." The shutdown command includes a variety of switches you can use to customize it. Table 1-3 lists all of them and describes their use.
You can also use:
shutdown -s -t 03 -c "preferred message here"
shutdown -r -t 03 -c "preferred message here"

About The Codes:
-s
Shuts down the PC.

-l
Logs off the current user.

-t nn
Indicates the duration of delay, in seconds, before performing the action.

-c "messagetext"
Displays a message in the System Shutdown window. A maximum of 127 characters can be used. The message must be enclosed in quotation marks.

-f
Forces any running applications to shut down.

-r
Reboots the PC.


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How To Speed Up Menus

This is for Windows XP.

Go to Start --> Run --> Regedt32

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Locate the key called "MenuShowDelay" and it is probably set to 400.

Change that value to 150.

Reboot your computer.

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Speed Up Your Network and Internet Access

This is for Windows XP.

Does your computer slow down when you browse your local area network and connect to other computers that are sharing data? One of the most common causes of this slowdown is a feature of Windows Explorer that looks for scheduled tasks on remote computers. This effort can take some time on some computers and can really slow down your browsing. The window with which you are browsing the network may appear to freeze momentarily, as the system is waiting for a response from the remote computer.

Windows XP: Speeding Disk Access

Although this problem is a complex one, the solution is very simple. Instead of having to wait for the remote scheduled tasks, which is useless information to anyone who is not a system administrator remotely configuring scheduled tasks, you can disable this feature.

In order to do this, you will have to change the System Registry and delete a reference to a key so that this feature will not be loaded. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open up the Registry Editor by clicking the Start Menu and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the text box and click the OK button.

2. Once the Registry Editor has loaded, expand the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key.

3. Next, expand Software and then Microsoft.

4. Locate Windows and expand that as well.

5. You will want to be editing the main system files, so expand CurrentVersion.

6. Because this feature is a feature of the Windows component known as Explorer, expand the Explorer key.

7. Next, you will want to modify the remote computer settings, so expand the RemoteComputer key and then expand the NameSpace key to show all of the features that are enabled when you browse to a remote computer.

8. In the NameSpace folder you will find two entries. One is "{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}" which tells Explorer to show printers shared on the remote machine. The other, "{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}," tells Explorer to show remote scheduled tasks. This is the one that you should delete. This can be done by right-clicking the name of the key and selecting Delete.

Tip:
If you have no use for viewing remote shared printers and are really only interested in shared files, consider deleting the printers key, "{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}", as well. This will also boost your browsing speed.

Once you have deleted the key, you just need to restart and the changes will be in effect. Now your network computer browsing will be without needless delays.

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Change Your IP Address (Less Than 1 Minute)

1. Click on "Start" in the bottom left hand corner of screen

2. Click on "Run"

3. Type in "command" and hit ok

You should now be at an MSDOS prompt screen.

4. Type "ipconfig /release" just like that, and hit "enter"

5. Type "exit" and leave the prompt

6. Right-click on "Network Places" or "My Network Places" on your desktop.

7. Click on "properties"

You should now be on a screen with something titled "Local Area Connection", or something close to that, and, if you have a network hooked up, all of your other networks.

8. Right click on "Local Area Connection" and click "properties"

9. Double-click on the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" from the list under the "General" tab

10. Click on "Use the following IP address" under the "General" tab

11. Create an IP address (it doesn't matter what it is).

12. Press "Tab" and it should automatically fill in the "Subnet Mask" section with default numbers.

13. Hit the "Ok" button

14. Hit the "Ok" button again

You should now be back to the "Local Area Connection" screen.

15. Right-click back on "Local Area Connection" and go to properties again.

16. Go back to the "TCP/IP" settings

17. This time, select "Obtain an IP address automatically"
tongue.gif 18. Hit "Ok"

19. Hit "Ok" again

20. You now have a new IP address

This only changes your dynamic IP address.

Ways To Speed Up Windows XP

1.) To decrease a system's boot time and increase system performance, use the money you save by not buying defragmentation software -- the built-in Windows defragmenter works just fine -- and instead equip the computer with an Ultra-133 or Serial ATA hard drive with 8-MB cache buffer.

2.) If a PC has less than 512 MB of RAM, add more memory. This is a relatively inexpensive and easy upgrade that can dramatically improve system performance.

3.) Ensure that Windows XP is utilizing the NTFS file system. If you're not sure, here's how to check: First, double-click the My Computer icon, right-click on the C: Drive, then select Properties. Next, examine the File System type; if it says FAT32, then back-up any important data. Next, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and then click OK. At the prompt, type CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS and press the Enter key. This process may take a while; it's important that the computer be uninterrupted and virus-free. The file system used by the bootable drive will be either FAT32 or NTFS. I highly recommend NTFS for its superior security, reliability, and efficiency with larger disk drives.

4.) Disable file indexing. The indexing service extracts information from documents and other files on the hard drive and creates a "searchable keyword index." As you can imagine, this process can be quite taxing on any system.

The idea is that the user can search for a word, phrase, or property inside a document, should they have hundreds or thousands of documents and not know the file name of the document they want. Windows XP's built-in search functionality can still perform these kinds of searches without the Indexing service. It just takes longer. The OS has to open each file at the time of the request to help find what the user is looking for.

Most people never need this feature of search. Those who do are typically in a large corporate environment where thousands of documents are located on at least one server. But if you're a typical system builder, most of your clients are small and medium businesses. And if your clients have no need for this search feature, I recommend disabling it.

Here's how: First, double-click the My Computer icon. Next, right-click on the C: Drive, then select Properties. Uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching." Next, apply changes to "C: subfolders and files," and click OK. If a warning or error message appears (such as "Access is denied"), click the Ignore All button.

5.) Update the PC's video and motherboard chipset drivers. Also, update and configure the BIOS. For more information on how to configure your BIOS properly, see this article on my site.

6.) Empty the Windows Prefetch folder every three months or so. Windows XP can "prefetch" portions of data and applications that are used frequently. This makes processes appear to load faster when called upon by the user. That's fine. But over time, the prefetch folder may become overloaded with references to files and applications no longer in use. When that happens, Windows XP is wasting time, and slowing system performance, by pre-loading them. Nothing critical is in this folder, and the entire contents are safe to delete.

7.) Once a month, run a disk cleanup. Here's how: Double-click the My Computer icon. Then right-click on the C: drive and select Properties. Click the Disk Cleanup button -- it's just to the right of the Capacity pie graph -- and delete all temporary files.

8.) In your Device Manager, double-click on the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers device, and ensure that DMA is enabled for each drive you have connected to the Primary and Secondary controller. Do this by double-clicking on Primary IDE Channel. Then click the Advanced Settings tab. Ensure the Transfer Mode is set to "DMA if available" for both Device 0 and Device 1. Then repeat this process with the Secondary IDE Channel.

9.) Upgrade the cabling. As hard-drive technology improves, the cabling requirements to achieve these performance boosts have become more stringent. Be sure to use 80-wire Ultra-133 cables on all of your IDE devices with the connectors properly assigned to the matching Master/Slave/Motherboard sockets. A single device must be at the end of the cable; connecting a single drive to the middle connector on a ribbon cable will cause signaling problems. With Ultra DMA hard drives, these signaling problems will prevent the drive from performing at its maximum potential. Also, because these cables inherently support "cable select," the location of each drive on the cable is important. For these reasons, the cable is designed so drive positioning is explicitly clear.

10.) Remove all spyware from the computer. Use free programs such as AdAware by Lavasoft or SpyBot Search & Destroy. Once these programs are installed, be sure to check for and download any updates before starting your search. Anything either program finds can be safely removed. Any free software that requires spyware to run will no longer function once the spyware portion has been removed; if your customer really wants the program even though it contains spyware, simply reinstall it. For more information on removing Spyware visit this Web Pro News page.

11.) Remove any unnecessary programs and/or items from Windows Startup routine using the MSCONFIG utility. Here's how: First, click Start, click Run, type MSCONFIG, and click OK. Click the StartUp tab, then uncheck any items you don't want to start when Windows starts. Unsure what some items are? Visit the WinTasks Process Library. It contains known system processes, applications, as well as spyware references and explanations. Or quickly identify them by searching for the filenames using Google or another Web search engine.

12.) Remove any unnecessary or unused programs from the Add/Remove Programs section of the Control Panel.

13.) Turn off any and all unnecessary animations, and disable active desktop. In fact, for optimal performance, turn off all animations. Windows XP offers many different settings in this area. Here's how to do it: First click on the System icon in the Control Panel. Next, click on the Advanced tab. Select the Settings button located under Performance. Feel free to play around with the options offered here, as nothing you can change will alter the reliability of the computer -- only its responsiveness.

14.) If your customer is an advanced user who is comfortable editing their registry, try some of the performance registry tweaks offered at Tweak XP.

15.) Visit Microsoft's Windows update site regularly, and download all updates labeled Critical. Download any optional updates at your discretion.

16.) Update the customer's anti-virus software on a weekly, even daily, basis. Make sure they have only one anti-virus software package installed. Mixing anti-virus software is a sure way to spell disaster for performance and reliability.

17.) Make sure the customer has fewer than 500 type fonts installed on their computer. The more fonts they have, the slower the system will become. While Windows XP handles fonts much more efficiently than did the previous versions of Windows, too many fonts -- that is, anything over 500 -- will noticeably tax the system.

18.) Do not partition the hard drive. Windows XP's NTFS file system runs more efficiently on one large partition. The data is no safer on a separate partition, and a reformat is never necessary to reinstall an operating system. The same excuses people offer for using partitions apply to using a folder instead. For example, instead of putting all your data on the D: drive, put it in a folder called "D drive." You'll achieve the same organizational benefits that a separate partition offers, but without the degradation in system performance. Also, your free space won't be limited by the size of the partition; instead, it will be limited by the size of the entire hard drive. This means you won't need to resize any partitions, ever. That task can be time-consuming and also can result in lost data.

19.) Check the system's RAM to ensure it is operating properly. I recommend using a free program called MemTest86. The download will make a bootable CD or diskette (your choice), which will run 10 extensive tests on the PC's memory automatically after you boot to the disk you created. Allow all tests to run until at least three passes of the 10 tests are completed. If the program encounters any errors, turn off and unplug the computer, remove a stick of memory (assuming you have more than one), and run the test again. Remember, bad memory cannot be repaired, but only replaced.

20.) If the PC has a CD or DVD recorder, check the drive manufacturer's Web site for updated firmware. In some cases you'll be able to upgrade the recorder to a faster speed. Best of all, it's free.

21.) Disable unnecessary services. Windows XP loads a lot of services that your customer most likely does not need. To determine which services you can disable for your client, visit the Black Viper site for Windows XP configurations.

22.) If you're sick of a single Windows Explorer window crashing and then taking the rest of your OS down with it, then follow this tip: open My Computer, click on Tools, then Folder Options. Now click on the View tab. Scroll down to "Launch folder windows in a separate process," and enable this option. You'll have to reboot your machine for this option to take effect.

23.) At least once a year, open the computer's cases and blow out all the dust and debris. While you're in there, check that all the fans are turning properly. Also inspect the motherboard capacitors for bulging or leaks. For more information on this leaking-capacitor phenomena, you can read numerous articles on my site.

Increase Your Internet Speed By 20%

If you use Windows XP Professional then it is possible to squeeze an extra 20% out of your internet connection. By default, Windows XP Pro holds back 20% of your Internet speed for various services like windows update and spyware checks.

If you want to tap into this locked speed then make the following changes:

1. Go to Start-> Run-> and type gpedit.msc

2. Expand the Administrative Templates branch

3. Expand the Network tab

4. Highlight QoS Packet Scheduler

5. Click on Limit Reservable Bandwidth and check the ‘enabled’ box

6. Then Change the Bandwidth limit from % to 0 %

Once you’ve done, this click apply and restart your PC. After rebooting you should see a noticeable improvement in your net speed.