Change Internet Explorer Title

With this tweak you can customize Internet Explorer by adding your own window title for your internet explorer. Open regedit. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MainOn the right pane, create or modify the string value name "Window Title". Double click "Window Title" and enter the text desired In Title Bar. Close regedit.

How to restore the original Guest account picture

When you change the Picture for the Guest account, via User Accounts applet, the original guest.bmp (with the briefcase icon) gets replaced. If you want to revert back to the same old icon for your Guest account, download Guest.bmp and then place the file in the following folder: "%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\User Account Pictures"Type the above in Start -> Run dialog. Then place the downloaded guest.bmp file in that location. Overwrite if prompted. Note that the following folder holds all the default picture files, except guest.bmp - %allusersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\Default Pictures

Remembering Folder Settings

If your OS is Windows XP and does not remember your folder settings, delete or rename the following registry keys[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU][HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\Bags]

Re-Enabling System Restore

If you previously disabled system restore through the Group Policy Editor, the option to start it again does not show in the System Properties, You can re-enable it again by following the below steps :1. Go to Start - > Run and then type gpedit.msc, press enter and wait for Group Policy Editor window2. Go to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> System Restore. Double-click on system restore and set Turn off System Restore and Turn off Configuration to Disable.3. Go to Start - > Run and then type services.msc, press enter and wait for Services window4. Scroll down to System Restore Service and set it for Automatic and then click on the Start button to start the service. Now close the Services window5. In the Group Policy Editor, set both Turn off System Restore and Turn off Configuration to Not configured and close Group Policy Editor.Now when you right click on My Computer and then properties, there should be a tab for System Restore where you can configure system restore.Note: You must be having administrator rights to do this.

Quick Minimize all open windows

Control all open windows using windows shortcut keys To minimize and maximize all your active windows programs you may usually use your mouse, but if you want to do this with keyboard Shortcut, simply press "Windows key+D" to minimize all windows, pressing the same key combination again will maximize all the windows that were maximized before.

Disabling Logon, Logoff, Startup and Shutdown Status Messages

These status messages are shown at the system logon and logoff screen. If you want to turn these off follow the below steps :Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\systemsearch for DWORD value DisableStatusMessages and change its data to 1. If you cannot find the DWORD value, create one by right clicking on the white space at the right side and give it a value 1.
Note: You must have administrative right to do this.

Saving Desktop Settings

If the desktop or folders on your computer does not retain their settings, follow the below steps to fix it:Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Program Manager\RestrictionsCreate or edit the DWORD value NoSaveSettings and give it a value of 0.

Setting Swap File Size (Pagefile)

When you start your computer for the first time, a swap file will be created. You can speed the boot process by specifying this as the minimum swap file size. Boot your system and don't open any applications Note the size of your swap file (WIN386.SWP) Open the System Properties dialog box (right click on My Computer and select Properties) Click on the Performance tab Click on the Virtual Memory button Check Let me specify my own virtual memory settings If you have a hard drive or partition that is not over used, you can change the location For the minimum size, select the size (or slightly larger) of the swap file when you first booted. Don't select a maximum. Let it default to the rest of your hard drive space.

Place volume icon in the taskbar

If you do not see a volume control icon in the taskbar and if your sound drivers are installed correctly, go to the Sounds and Audio Devices in Control Panel and select "Place volume icon in the taskbar".

Fax Utility in Windows XP

You need not install separate software to send or receive fax, Fax utility is integrated in Windows XP which is not installed by default. To install it follow these steps
* Click the Start button and select "Control Panel"* From the Control Panel, open "Add or Remove Programs"* Click "Add/Remove Windows Components" (on the left side of the Add or Remove Programs dialog)* Place a check mark in the "Fax Services" check box and click next * Windows may prompt you for your Windows XP CD ROM, so place it in your CD ROM, drive when needed and click ok * When Windows is done copying files, click "Finish"

Create personalized screensaver.

To create a screensaver that contains photos of your choice, put all your selected photos in the My Pictures folder in My Documents and then change the screensaver to "My Pictures Slideshow" in the screensaver tab or desktop properties.

Quickly add to Favorites

In your browser, press Ctrl+D to add the any webpage to your Favorites. The same Ctrl+D can be used to delete files and folders in your computer (explorer).

XP Hidden Back-up utility

There is a hidden backup utility in Windows XP. You can have a look at it by clicking the Start -> Run and then type "ntbackup" and then press enter, the wizard will help you backup or restore files on your computer.

Shut down/Restart/Hibernate via Remote Desktop

To Shut down/Restart/Hibernate via Remote Desktop, click on desktop, then press Alt+F4, you can now see the shutdown dialog box. Alternate way to shutdown via remote desktop is Go to start -> Run and then type "shutdown -s -t 0".

Improving browsing performance for Internet Explorer.

You can improve Internet Explorer's browsing performance by disabling graphics, sound, music, video, and other multimedia files. This will allow you to browse faster and more efficiently if you are just interested in getting text. To do this: Click Options from the Tools menu -> Click the Advanced Tab and in the Multimedia section you can deselect the options you don't want to have from the Multimedia section.

Hiding "Manage" on Right-Click context menu of My Computer

If you want to remove Manage from Right-Click context menu of My Computer, Start Regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorerand create a DWORD value called NoManageMyComputerVerb and set the value to 1. You need to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.

Browse the Network Faster

If you have little bit of knowledge with system registry, open regedit and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace and then Delete subkeys {2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} and {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}. This will speed up network browsing of old Windows machines on the LAN by ignoring their scheduled tasks and printers.

Browse the Network Faster

If you have little bit of knowledge with system registry, open regedit and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace and then Delete subkeys {2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} and {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}. This will speed up network browsing of old Windows machines on the LAN by ignoring their scheduled tasks and printers.

Safer Registry Editing

If you are a novice with system registry, make sure that you back up the registry before you make any changes in the registry. Registry contains all information of how your system runs. Backing up Registry will help you to restore Registry in case any problem occurs after modifying. You can backup the whole Registry or only Registry sub keys. Go to File menu option then click on Export option for backup and save it with on any in a safe place. To restore the backed up registry, just double click the reg file that you backed up.

Changing the Icon Spacing

You can change the size and in between space of icons, to do this first Right click on your desktop then click on Properties option, then click the Appearance tab then Advance, here you change the spacing or size of your icons. Don't forget to Click on apply before close the dialog boxes.

Turn off CD Auto Play

To turn of CD Auto play, open My Computer Right click on your CD ROM and choose Properties Click on the Auto Play tab In the drop down box you can choose the Action for each choice shown in the drop down box or Go to Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc Computer Config -> Administrative Template -> System Double click Turn off Auto play Enable it.

Power Surfing

This will be useful if you have large monitor and run at a high resolution... If you want to really power surf the web, open up more than one browser. Arrange them on the screen so that you can see at least part of each one at all times. Once this is done, you can now drag links from one browser to another. This saves you from having to use the back button constantly, especially if you are on a page like a search engine, where there are lots of links and you want to try a bunch of them. Also, if you encounter a web page with frames, and you want to break out of the frames, you can drag a link to a new browser. No more frames. (You can also right-click a link and choose "Open in New Browser".)
Here's an example of using two browsers... Let's say you are going to be use a search engine for the next hour or so. Start two browsers and tile them vertically. (Minimize all programs except the two browsers, and right click a blank spot on the taskbar, then choose 'tile vertically'). Now drag the edges of the browsers so that the browser on the left is about 3 inches wide. Drag the edges of the browser on the right so that it takes up the rest of the screen. Now, using the browser on the left, open your favorite search engine and do a search. When the list of hits are displayed, drag a link into the browser on the right. This lets you see all the hits from the search engine while you are surfing those sites... no more hitting the 'back' button all day long.

Hide or Show User Names on Logon Screen

If you want to hide or Show the names of all or any of the user in your computer on the logon screen, follow the below steps :Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserListCreate a DWORD with the name of the user account you want to hide and give it a value of 0, you can unhide it by giving it a value of 1.Note: You must be having administrative rights to do this.

Easy Way to Share Multiple Folders

If you need to share multiple folders, running the program SHRPUBW.EXE at Start -> run, will bring up a simple dialog box to let you:
Browse to the folder you want to shareEnter in a Share nameEnter in a Share descriptionSet permissions.
Several choices are available. Restart the process from within the same program

Viewing Installed Drivers

If you want to see a list of installed drivers, you can run the driverquery program in windows XP There are a lot of available switches to view different types of information. One use can be to export to a CSV file for viewing in Excel An example would then be: Driverquery /v /fo csv > drivers.csv

Quickly start screensaver

If you want to instantly activate screensaver, Go to Start -> Run and type the name of the screensaver and press enter. The default screensavers name in XP is "logon.scr"

Disable Cache Thumbnails to save disks pace

If you have the knowledge of windows registry: Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advancedthen add or Edit DWORD value DisableThumbnailCache and set the Value to 1 to disable thumbnails in Windows and save hard disk space. Change the value to 0 to enable thumbnail view.
Note: If you disable Caching of thumbnails, you can no more see the thumbnails of your images in a folder.

Change the CHKDSK countdown time

Change the CHKDSK countdown time When you schedule CHKDSK to run at the next boot, by default the system will prompt you to press a key within 10 seconds to cancel the CHKDSK operation. You can change this value in the system registry underHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\AutoChkTimeOutThe value allowed is between 0 and 259,200 seconds (3 days). With a timeout of zero, there is no countdown and you cannot cancel the operation and the CHKDSK runs immediately.
It is recommended not to cancel CHKDSK as CHKDSK is needed to recover from errors that might have occurred on your hard drives.

Hidden FDISK Switches

Here are a few additional switches that can be used with FDISK: /Status - Give the status of the partitions. Similar to option #4 /FPRMT - FAT32 in drivers smaller than 512 MB /MBR - Fix master boot record /PRI:xx - Primary partition of size XX in megs /EXT:xx - Extended partition/LOG:xx - Logical drive in extended partition

Add Insert to Right-click menu of CD/DVD Drive

Did you know that you can eject the CD/DVD drive by right clicking on the CD / DVD drive and then Eject. But there is no option to insert the ejected CD/DVD drive. Here is small utility which adds Insert to the right click menu of the CD/DVD drive which will insert it. Follow the below steps.1. Download cdtraycontrol.zip2. Extract the content of the downloaded zip file to C:\Windows\System32\ (Change the drive letter if your windows is not installed on C Drive)3. Run cdtraycontrol.reg file, click Yes and then OK when prompted.Now you can see Insert on the right click menu of the CD Drive.Note: You must have administrator rights to do this.

Remove Compression Option at Disk Cleanup

If you want to avoid the compression analysis when you start disk cleanup, you can disable it by navigating to the following key in registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Compress old files and then delete the "Default" Value Key.

Easily navigate Back & Forth in Internet Explorer

To navigate to the previous or next page in Internet Explorer, hold the Shift key while turning the mouse wheel

Adding Shortcuts to Desktop Without "Shortcut To" text

Whenever you create a shortcut on your computer, you see the 'Shortcut To' prefix added to the file or folder that you created shortcut of. It is possible to remove the Shortcut To prefix, to do thisOpen Registry Editor and then navigate to HKEY_USERS\ .Default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorerand change the binary value of "link" to "00,00,00,00" Now You can make Shortcuts to desktop without 'Shortcut To' text.Note: You must restart computer or logoff and login once for the changes to take effect

Adding Shortcuts to Desktop Without "Shortcut To" text

Whenever you create a shortcut on your computer, you see the 'Shortcut To' prefix added to the file or folder that you created shortcut of. It is possible to remove the Shortcut To prefix, to do thisOpen Registry Editor and then navigate to HKEY_USERS\ .Default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorerand change the binary value of "link" to "00,00,00,00" Now You can make Shortcuts to desktop without 'Shortcut To' text.

Clicking on Pop-ups is not always safe.

It is not safe to click on pop-ups, doing so your computer might get infected with ad-wares or spyware's. Remember, no trusted site's will show pop-ups. To safely close Pop-ups highlight the popup by clicking on the taskbar and then press Alt+F4, if this does not work, open task manager and in the applications tab right click on the pop-up window and then "Go To Process" this will highlight the process of the popup window, now end this process.

Changing 256 color icons to 16-Bit color icons

Open the Registry Hit Ctrl+F Type "Shell Icon BPP"When found, right click the Shell Icon BPP icon Click Modify Change the value from 4 to 16 Click Ok Close the registry and restart computer for the changes to take effect

Disable Search from Looking in ZIP Files (make faster search)

Compressing files, folders, and programs decreases their size and reduces the amount of space they use on your drives or removable storage devices. Drive compression decreases the amount of space used by all of the files and folders stored on that drive. Windows XP Search can get slow if you have a lot of compressed files on your hard drive. You can speed up your searches by disabling this. Click Start - Run. Type: regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\zipfldr.dll /u Click OK.
To turn this feature back on: Click Start - Run. Type: regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\zipfldr.dll Click OK.

RESTORING MEDIA PLAYER CLASSIC

If you did not like the Windows Media Player that you just updated or for any other reason you wanted your previous version of media player back, you can restore it by the following steps: Insert the the XP CD into the CD drive (if auto starts, click exit). Go to Start -> Run and then type "rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection InstallWMP7 132 c:\windows\inf\wmp.inf"and enter.

Faster Start Menu

If you are familiar with windows registry. Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktopand change the value of MenuShowDelay to 0 or any lesser value than 400 (the value you enter is taken as milliseconds)

Create a Shortcut to Start Remote Desktop

You can quickly start Remote Desktop and connect to your remote computer by adding a shortcut of the remote desktop on your desktop. To create a shortcut icon Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Communications and then click on Remote Desktop Connection. Click Options. Configure settings for the connection to your office computer. Click Save As, and enter desired name and click Save. Now Open the Remote Desktops folder, Right-click on the file you just named and then click Create Shortcut or drag the file onto the desktop to create a shortcut. Now you can quickly startt Remote Desktop and connect to your remote computer by double-clicking the shortcut.

Do not open file that you received from a stranger

E-mail and instant messaging (IM) can spread viruses and worms if you aren't careful. Most e-mail viruses are spread by people who are tricked into opening an infected file. Never open a file attached to an e-mail or a file that you received while chatting until you scan them with a good virus scanner. If you do not have a good virus scanner, you can scan the file online by online scanners like http://virustotal.com. It is still not safe to open the file that you received from a known person too, the person may not know that he/she has sent an infected file.

Change or Choose the default Sounds in Windows XP

It is possible to change logon, logoff or any window event sounds in windows XP. There are two ways to change these sounds as explained below.1) Go to Start -> Run and type Media and press enter now in the media folder you can see all the sound files. Replace these files with the sound files of your choice and close it. Note: It is safe to back up all the sound files before you make any changes through this method.2) Open Sound and Audio Devices in the Control Panel and in the sounds tab you can change the sounds that your windows makes.

Customizing XP Boot Screen

Ever wonder what's going on behind the boot screen? to find that out, right-click on My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery -> Edit. wait until the BOOT.INI is opened in a notepad. Add "/SOS" right after "/fastdetect" with a space in between and save it. The line will look something like this: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /SOS Note: the value in between the Open and close braces (0) will not be the same on all computers

Disable Zip Folders if you don't use it.

If you use third party software to handle your Zip files and do not like Zip Folders in XP, you can disable it by: Start -> Run and then type "regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll" and enter To enable Zip folders: Start -> Run and then type "regsvr32 zipfldr.dll" and enter

Logging in as Administrator

The inbuilt user 'Administrator' is by default not shown on the welcome screen in Windows XP. If you want to log in as Administrator, hold the Ctrl - Alt key and press Del twice, this will bring up the classic logon screen which lets you type username and password to login. Type the username as Administrator and provide the password if set.
If you want to see the Administrator account along with all the users at the logon screen, Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList Create a DWORD value called Administrator if not found, give it a value 1. Now logoff to check the Administrator account on the logon screen.
Note: You must be having Administrative right to do this.

Shortcut for System Properties Dialogue box

To get system properties dialogue box, you have to either right-click on My Computer icon and then select properties or open Control Panel and then double-click on System icon.There are easier ways to open the system properties dialogue box which are mentioned below.1. Press Win Logo key and Pause Break key simultaneously 2. Hold the alt key and double-click on the My Computer icon on your desktop3. Click on start button --> Run and then type sysdm.cpl Pressing Win Logo key and Pause Break is the easiest

Terminate Crashed Applications faster

Terminating crashed Applications quick will not make you wait until the it closes by itself, you can change the wait time in system registry. To do this, Open Regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktopand change the value of "HungAppTimeout" key to 500 or 1000500 = .5 seconds