saw this on subzerotech
Article: Ultimate Windows XP Tweak Guide
Date: August 08, 2002
Author: Lucas Wong (ouikikazz@subzerotech.com)
&
Dave Sobilo (tripp@subzerotech.com)
Introduction
PLEASE BACKUP YOUR REGISTRY BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY TWEAKS (FILE > EXPORT)
You have just spent your hard earned money on the latest OS out there. You
format, install, and fire it up. Good eh? But without some optimization
and tweakage it certainly isn't running at optimal performance and
definitely not customized! If this sounds like a problem you have then
this is the article that is for you! We here at Subzerotech have went
through a whole lot of tweaks found throughout the web and compiled The
Ultimate Windows XP Tweak Guide which contain tweaks we have found to
work, we did not add tweaks that did not work or are just myth's. From
Booting up to Shutting Down we got it all! Bookmark this guide because you
will always want to come back for more.
Here are a couple of references made throughout the whole article,
Run Box - Press Start (or Windows Key) then select Run or you can press
Windows Key+R
Windows Registry Editor - To get here open the Run Box ^ | then type in
"regedit" (no quotes)
Disclaimer: These are tweaks that can be found throughout the world wide
web, there may be some in house tweaks but we do not take credit for all
of the tweaks. The article is a massive compilation of some of the better
tweaks we have found throughout the web.
One of the first and foremost tweaks, although not really a tweak, that I
would like to bring up is Windows Update. I strongly recommend you go to
Windows Update and update your OS with all the latest patches and
components to ensure everything works correctly.
PLEASE BACKUP YOUR REGISTRY BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY TWEAKS (FILE > EXPORT)
Unlock WinXP's setupp.ini
Windows XP's setupp.ini controls how the CD acts. IE is it an OEM version
or retail?
First, find your setupp.ini file in the i386 directory on your WinXP CD.
Open it up, it'll look something like this:
ExtraData=707A667567736F696F697911AE7E05
Pid=55034000
The Pid value is what we're in this for. What's there now looks like a
standard default, but that is no good. There are special numbers that
determine if it's a retail, OEM, or volume license edition. First, we must
break down that number into two parts. The first five digits determines
how the CD will behave, i.e. is it a retail CD that lets you clean install
or upgrade, or an OEM CD that only lets you perform a clean install? The
last three digits determine what CD key it will accept. You are able to
mix and match these values. For example you could make a Windows XP CD
that acted like a retail CD, but then yet accepted OEM keys.
This is in my opinion a very useful tweak if done properly, so listen up!
Here are the individual values, the first and last values are
interchangeable but you should keep them together.:
Retail = 51882 335
Volume License = 51883 270
OEM = 82503 OEM
Now if you wanted a retail CD that accepted the retail CD key then you
would use.
Pid=51882335
And if you wanted a retail CD that accepted OEM keys, you'd use:
Pid=51882OEM
Very neat eh?
Unattended Installation
Installing Windows XP or any OS for a matter of fact is generally a pain.
Sitting in front of your computer for 45 minutes answering questions isn?t
exactly the best way to spend your time. Finally, There is a Solution.
To do an unattended installation of Windows XP you need to work with the
set up , it is located on the Windows XP CD-ROM in
X:\SupportTools\DEPLOY.CAB (X=CD-ROM drive letter) by default: Extract the
contents of this file and you can find some very useful tools and help
files; the one we need is setupmgr.exe. This is a wizard application that
will take you through the process of creating an answer file called
winnt.sif and it can be used to guide the Windows XP Setup through the
unattended installation. Now, there is still one thing that Setup Manager
doesn't add your cd key. But, you can still add this to the unattend.txt
file manually. Open this file in Notepad and add the following line under
the [UserData] section:
ProductID=xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
Next, copy winnt.sif to a floppy, put your Windows XP CD-ROM in the CD
drive, and reboot: When the CD auto-boots up, it will look for the
unattend.txt file in A: automatically, and use it to answer the Setup
questions if it's there.
EDITORS NOTE: Remember that this will wipe out your system! Back up all
the files you plan on keeping first, and then get familiar with the help
files in DEPLOY.CAB.
Never reactivate after a new installation
If you have to reinstall Windows XP you normally will have to reactivate
your copy. Well not anymore.
Just copy the wpa.dbl file after you activated the first time. It can be
located in the system32 folder.
Now if you reinstall Windows XP just copy the file back and you're all set
to go.
Here's how to check if your copy of XP is Activated:
Go to the Run Box and type in
oobe/msoobe /a
you can also use:
c:\windows\system32\oobe\msoobe /a (change C if you installed Windows on a
different partition)
(thanks for the heads up R.G.S.)
and hit OK
It should look like this:
Auto logon tip for XP
This tweak is fairly simple and easy to complete. To me it is comical
because this is probably the most requested tweak I have seen. It goes
like this:
Go to the Run Box and type "control userpasswords2" - (no quotes)
Click OK
On the Users tab, clear the "Users must enter a user name and password to
use this computer" check box.
A dialog will appear when you click apply or OK that asks you what user
name and password should be used to logon automatically.
Now your Good To Go!!!
Enable Clear Type
ClearType basically works to make text on your screen appear much clearer,
this is a tremendous help for laptop users. It works fairly good for
desktop owners also - as you can observe from the below pictures...
ClearType Off
ClearType On
To turn ClearType on, just go to your Display properties in Control Panel,
then click on the ?Appearances?Etab. Then go to the ?Effects...?Ebutton...
Check use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts and change
the list to ?ClearType?E Then just click OK, Apply, and close down your
dialogs. Some people may not like the cleartype, I am one of them. Test it
out and see if you like it.
Use your Windows Key
Ahh, the beloved windows key. Cherished by some, ignored by most. Use your
key it has some great shortcuts that are extremely useful. Here they are.:
Windows: Display the Start menu
Windows + L: Lock the workstation (Personal Favorite)
Windows + D: Minimize or restore all windows
Windows + E: Display Windows Explorer
Windows + F: Display Search for files
Windows + Ctrl + F: Display Search for computer
Windows + F1: Display Help and Support Center
Windows + R: Display Run dialog box (very useful for this article)
Windows + break: Display System Properties dialog box
Windows + shift + M: Undo minimize all windows
Windows + U: Open Utility Manager
Windows + Q: Quick switching of users (With Powertoys only)
Windows + Q: Hold Windows Key, then tap Q to scroll through different
users on your PC (Only if you have more than One user)
Menu Delays
For some reason Windows has set the menu speed rather slowly by default.
Here is a way that can speed up those slow menus!
If you do not want to have delays when opening your menus, open up the
Windows Registry Editor. Now you will need to change a key which is
located in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
The key that needs changing is called MenuShowDelay ?EEnter the value to 0
and all menu delays will disappear on your next reboot.
Enough!
When a program crashes on your computer, Windows wants to know about it.
Most people find this annoying but I can see Microsoft?s intentions as all
they want to do is get more information for more bug fixes, but anyway
some people find it extremely annoying so here is a way to disable the
Error Reporting.
To disable error reporting, you will need to find the Control Panel ->
System -> Advanced -> then click Error Reporting.
Simply change your options to how you prefer. You will now notice that
Windows will no longer annoy you when a program crashes but now the
question it poses is why is something crashing in the first place?E
Speeding Things Up (not for all users)
First and foremost if you do not know what virtual memory is just skip
this tweak don?t waste your time.
This tweak can be very successful if done properly. Tweaking your virtual
memory can be very effective and help people with slower systems.
To Tweak it go?E
Go to Control Panel - System.
Click on the Advanced Tab
under "Performance" click on the settings button.
Click on the Advanced tab
Click on the "Background Services" button Click OK
While your there you can also adjust your virtual memory by clicking on
?change?Eunder virtual memory.
Again If you do not know what you are doing I would probably suggest that
you either get help from a forum or skip this tweak.
Using MsConfig
Just about everyone knows a little something about MsConfig, which is
basically a built-in system configuration utility for Windows. It is easy
to access, you can do so by going to the Run Box..., then type ?msconfig?E
in the box and tap enter. Now, the tab we are interested in here is the
?Startup?Etab... simply click on it and you should see a screen similar to
the one below (without the words blurred out of course).
This is a list of all of those notorious programs that start up when the
system starts up; most of which do so without you knowing. To get these
evil programs off of your startup just uncheck them. None of these
programs are vital for Windows to run, so you can uncheck programs without
being worried. Experiment around and see what each one does. Some will be
obvious, some will not be. You can see that the programs will not have the
exact name but everything will be pretty close and you can basically
figure out which is which. Now, if you?ve unchecked tons of boxes, Windows
should now start up faster and will use less system resources by not
running these programs in the background.
More Startup Tweaks
Now we?re going to take the tweak above and go a bit further. Go to the
Run Box again, then type ?services.msc?E You should see-
click to enlarge
This window is a very detailed list of the processes that start up with
Windows. The Items marked Automatic are booting with Windows. Click on the
items to find out just what they do. If you want to change a particular
service, you can right-click it and change it?s properties from
?Automatic?Eto ?Manual?E This is basically an MSCONFIG on crack.
Speed Up Share Viewing
This tweak is indeed a valuable one. Basically, when you connect to
another computer with Windows XP, it checks for any Scheduled tasks that
could be on that computer. Basically that is useless and to top it all off
it adds about 25-30 seconds of waiting time on to the other end! It?s
fairly easy to disable this process. To do so go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr ent
Version\Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace
in the Windows Registry Editor.
Below that, there should be a key called
{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}. Delete this key, and after a
restart, Windows won?t be checking for any more scheduled tasks!
Prioritize Individual Processes
When you press Control+Alt+Delete, click on the ?Processes?Etab, you will
get a dialog like the one above. You can see a list of all the processes
running at the current time. Now, if you are running an intensive program
that maybe you would want to dedicate more processing time to, you can
just right-click on the process, and move down to ?Set Priority?E then
decide how high you want that program prioritized.
Prioritizing your IRQs
The essential components in your computer have an IRQ number assigned to
them. With this tweak we can increase the priority given to any IRQ
number, improving the performance of that component. This tweak is
commonly used for the System CMOS/real time clock, which can improve
performance across the board. First of all, decide which one of your
components you want to give a performance boost to. Next, you have to
figure out which IRQ that piece of hardware is using. Doing this is
simple. Just go to Control Panel, then open the System panel (You can also
press the shortcut of Windows Key +Break). Click on the ?Hardware?Etab,
then on the ?Device Manager?Ebutton.
Right click on the component that you want to discover the IRQ for and
then click ?Properties?E and then onto the ?Resources?Etab.
You now can see which IRQ this device is using. Remember this number and
close down all of the dialog boxes that you have opened, fire up RegEdit.
Next, navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\PriorityControl
You will need to create a new DWORD value - called IRQxPriority (?x?Eis
the IRQ number), finally set the data to 1.
Now restart and see the new improved performance. We recommend tweaking
the CMOS, because it improves all around performance but the choice is up
to you. You can prioritize more than 1 IRQ but it is definitely not
recommended. You can easily remove this tweak by simply deleting the value
that you originally created.
Setting DMA Mode on IDE Drives
Possibly one of the most neglected tweaks for the average Joe because they
would assume Windows sets your IDE drives to DMA mode automatically but of
course Window's sometimes "forgets" therefore dragging down your IDE
drives performance and overall system performance. How do you enable DMA
mode you ask? Easy just go to the device manager -
Control Panel > System > Hardware Tab > Device Manager
Then open up 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers'. Double click on 'Primary IDE
Channel' and go to the Advanced Settings and check the Transfer Mode
scroll boxes. Be sure to set them all to DMA If Available, then click OK
to apply changes. Do this for each and every IDE Controller.
Removing Restore Points For Disk Space
Windows XP has a feature to create files containing information of the
setup of your system which are called ?Restore Point?Efiles. This is a
great feature, but, sometimes Windows creates multiple unnecessary restore
points. This can result in gigabytes of used of hard disk space. To delete
all but the most recent restore point, simply go to:
Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup
Select the drive you wish to clean up, then hit 'OK...', and when it
finishes scanning go to the 'More Options" tab. Then on the last row under
System Restore click 'Clean Up'. It's that simple...
XP Prefetching
Windows XP comes with a service called the prefetcher. The prefetcher
monitors which programs initialize when Windows boots, then in future
boots it fetches these programs quicker. Of course, The Prefetcher is
enabled by default, but you can tweak it to improve its performance.
Simply navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory
Management\PrefetchParameters
Find the value EnablePrefetcher. I will probably be set to 3. The best
setting for the prefetcher, in my opinion is 4 but that's my system.
Experiment and find out what works best for you.
NOTE: It is possible to disable the Prefetcher by setting the value to 0,
no real reasons for the average user to do so.
ZIP Folders
It is pretty much unknown that Windows XP has built-in support for .ZIP
files. You can view them as normal folders, however, the system uses a
sizeable portion of resources doing this, so disabling this feature can
increase performance. It's easy to do, you just have to un-register the
zipfldr.dll, by going to the Run Box and type in:
regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll
Then push OK, you should get this prompt:
Unloading DLLs
Explorer can cache DLL files in memory for a length of time after they
have finished being used. This results in giant amounts of memory being
taken up by DLL files that are not even in use. Fix this by going to
Windows Registry Editor and navigating to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer
Create a new sub-key called AlwaysUnloadDLL with a default value of 1.
If you want to disable this, just delete the key you made.
Hibernation
If you're not going to be using Hibernation , make sure it is disabled, as
Windows reserves an amount of Hard Drive space equal to that of your RAM
for hibernation. To disable Hibernation, go to:
Control Panel > Power Options > Hibernate Tab
QoS Tweaking
THIS TWEAK PROVED TO BE USELESS AND MAY CAUSE PROBLEMS IF YOU NEED TO
REVERT BACK PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE TWEAK AND BACKTRACK (apologies for
inconveniences)
Memory Performance Tweaks
There are several memory tweaks that can be performed with Windows XP -
all of them are located in the Windows Registry Editor:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\SessionManager\Memory
Management
Disable Paging Executive
Note: Only users with a large amount of RAM (256MB+) should use this
setting.
By default, XP pages sections from RAM memory to the hard drive. You can
easily keep this happening and keep the data in RAM, resulting in improved
performance. The setting we want to change to disable the ?Paging
Executive?E is called DisablePagingExecutive. Changing the value of this
key from 0 to 1 will stop the memory paging.
System Cache Boost
Note: As with the above tweak, you should have at least 256MB of RAM
before attempting to enable the LargeSystemCache tweak.
When changing the value of the key LargeSystemCache from 0 to 1 you tell
Windows XP to allocate all but 4MB of the systems memory to the file
system cache This simply means that the XP Kernel can run in the memory,
significantly improving overall speed. The 4MB of memory left is used for
disk caching, but if for any reason more is needed, XP allocates more.
This tweak improves performance a bit but can, in some intensive
applications, degrade performance.
Input/Output Performance
Note: As with all these memory tweaks, you should only use this if you
have 256MB or more of RAM.
This tweak is only beneficial to people running a server, it improves
performance while a computer is performing large file transfer operations.
By default, the value does not appear in the registry, so you will have to
create a REG_DWORD value called IOPageLockLimit. The data for this value
is in bytes, and defaults to 512KB on machines that have the value. Most
people using this tweak have found maximum performance in the 8 to 16
megabyte range but you should play around with the value to find what?s
best suited for you. Remember that the value is measured in bytes, so if
you want, 8MB allocated, it?s 8*1024*1024 = 8388608.
L2 Cache Tweak
THIS TWEAK PROVED TO BE USELESS AND MAY CAUSE PROBLEMS IF YOU NEED TO
REVERT BACK PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE TWEAK AND BACKTRACK (apologies for
inconveniences)
Rid of MSN
This is possibly one of the best tweaks I ever found, the annoying MSN
messenger that is installed by default in XP and runs every time I run
Outlook and is just annoying to disable from starting with Windows. (sorry
all MSN Messenger users I?m just not a fan of it) Here?s how to rid of it
for good?E
Go to the Run Box then paste this command:
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%/INF/msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
Now all you have to do is make sure you don?t update messenger with
Windows Update you?ll rid of it for good.
GAIN/Gator Ads Removal (for all OS?s)
Have you been looking for a way to rid of those dang GAIN ads while
keeping the programs they come with? Look no further annoying as they are
it is fairly simple to remove these pesky and annoying popup?s.
Navigate to the Start Menu > Programs > GAIN > About GAIN
When the About Gain window opens, click on Diagnostics tab then click on
the 'Click Here' link to shut down all Gain/Gator components.
Now if you don?t have that listing in the programs menu then open the task
manager and close programs by the name of GMT and/or CMESys by
highlighting and clicking ?End Task?E
Once closed delete the CMEII&GMT folders in Windows Explorer:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\CMEII
C:\Program Files\Common Files\GMT
Only delete the CMEII and the GMT folders and their contents, nothing
above them. Those redundant and annoying ads are now gone, that is until
you install another program that uses GAIN/Gator Ads.
Bypass the Recycle Bin when deleting files (forever)
When you delete files they aren't deleted just yet, instead they are sent
to the Recycle Bin, if you want to make it so the files are deleted right
away instead of hitting the Recycle Bin you could do two things:
The first and safest way (to an extent) if to hold down SHIFT and push
Delete on the keyboard when selecting the file. It will prompt you to
permanently delete the file which would be the last chance you get to say
no.
The other way is less safe because however you delete it does not leave
you with that option to put the file into the Recycle Bin without wasting
time ticking and un-ticking check boxes but here it is anyway:
-Right Click on the recycle bin on the desktop and select properties.
-Uncheck the box where is says Do not move files to the Recycle Bin.
-Click OK and you are finished.
To re-enable the recycle bin, repeat step one and check the box as
indicated to uncheck in step two.
Correcting System Hang at Startup
Does 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 doesn't work for everyone.
Here's what you should do to fix this problem:
-Pull up the Run Box, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
-On the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer'
service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot.
Disable Debug Scripting in Internet Explorer
Does it annoy you as much as it annoys me when you are surfing the web and
a error box pops up and ask's you "Would you like to debug this page?" I
always choose no since choosing yes means another dialog box filed by the
debugger. Such a useless feature for the average user that I don't know
why it is enabled by default. Anyhow here's how you turn it off:
Right Click on Internet Explorer and Click Properties or Open Internet
Explorer. Click Tools > Internet Options
Click The "Advanced" Tab
The 4th Item in "Browsing" should say "Disable Script Debugging"
Check it, yes it's that easy.
Turn off Indexing to speed up XP
To make searching your hard drive faster Windows XP keeps a record of all
the files on the hard drive. The downside to this is it will slow down
normal file commands such as open, close, etc. If you don't do many
searches (like me) it is better to turn off this feature. Here's how:
-Open my computer
-Right click your hard drive icon and select properties.
-At the bottom of the window find "Allow indexing service to index this
disk for faster searches" uncheck this and click ok.
-A new window will pop up, select apply to all folders and subfolders. It
will take a minute or two for the changes to take affect...you are done.
Permanent Acceleration Fix
Even without pointer precision disabled it seems that the mouse under XP
is still affected by an acceleration curve. This is especially noticeable
in games. Here's how you would remove the acceleration via regedit:
Open the Windows Registry Editor and navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\
Modify the SmoothMouseXCurve and SmoothMouseYCurve hexidecimal values to
the following by right clicking:
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
you should see an precision improvement if done correctly
Change IE Logo
Here?s how to change that small logo on the top right of your browser:
1. Go to the Run Box and type (without quotes) ?gpedit.msc?E
2. Click on 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. Choose 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. Choose Yes
Note: The Logo has to be (22X22) Small and (38X38) Large and has to be
bitmap.
When you save your Logo, you have to save in 256 or 16bit color.
Ghetto S0T Logo
Shut Down?EPLEASE!
As you probably already know it takes Windows a long time to shut down and
power off after you tell it to. This is due to the open applications you
have running. To solve this we will need to again edit the registry and
adjust the amount of time Windows takes before it shuts down services and
any applications that you have running at that time.
By doing this Windows shuts down immediately and does not leave you
hanging waiting for your PC to shut down. Here we go?E
Open up the Windows Registry Editor. Find
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\
- Next find the value HungAppTimeout set to 5000. Then locate
WaitToKillAppTimeout which is in the same folder and set it to 4000 from
the default of 20000 .
Then find the following
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\
and look for an option called WaitToKillServiceTimeout and change this to
4000.
When you are shutting down, we all would have experienced this message
before once or twice - that a program is still running and asks us if it
is ok to shut it down.
This feature would be a positive thing if you forget you still have an
important document open and it reminds you it still needs to be saved but
unless your think headed at certain times you do not need it!
To solve this we need to open up the Windows Registry Editor. Find the
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
and then set AutoEndTasks value to 1.
Sit back and watch how fast Windows can Shut Down!
Conclusion
That's the last of the tweaks, if you feel we have left out any really
good tweaks (we might have) please feel free to email it to
ouikikazz@subzerotech.com or
tripp@subzerotech.com and we'll gladly add it!
And save them 
Linear Mode
