WINDOWS XP - Tips & Tricks

Network

Faster Network Browsing : If you’re on a network and are
tired of waiting for ages for all the network shares to load, this is a tip you’ll love. There are four basic things you need to do in order to speed up network access:

1. Remove all shortcuts in My Network Places. These are automatically generated, and if a few ofthem aren’t shared anymore, Windows will keep searching for them anyway. So just select them all and delete them.
2. Stop Windows from automatically adding these shortcuts to shared folders, otherwise you’ll just end up having to delete the shortcuts everytime you open My Network Places. This is a registry hack, so make sure you backup your registry. First, go to
Start > Run, type in “regedit” and press [Enter].Navigate to
HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\. Here, create two new DWORD values (if they don’t alreadyexist) called “NoRecentDocsNetHood”and “UseDesktopIniCache”, and set
them to “1”.
3. Have everyone on your networkincrease the send buffer for networkdata. Tell everyone who shares files or folder to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\. Create a DWORD value called “SizReqBuf”, andassign its Hex value to “FFFF”.
4. Just stop using My NetworkPlaces for folders you access on a regular basis, and instead, map the drive by going to Tools > Map Network Drive in Windows Explorer.

A Shortcut To Shares

Sometimes we get a little too click happy sharing folders, and soon we  realise that we have shared too many. The most common thing is to share folders, within shared folders, within other shared folders. For example, we’ve very  often come across people sharing
D:\XYZ\123\, D:\XYZ\, and the root D: drive as well. You need to monitor your  shared folders on a regular basis, and for this, the easiest thing to do is create a shortcut on your Desktop to the Shared Folders tool. You can either just go to Start > Run and run “fsmgmt.msc”, or create a shortcut that points to
“fsmgmt.msc”. Now you can quickly check what’s shared and what’s not.

Guest Access

Quite often, in offices, you will try   and access a shared folder on the network, only to be greeted by a Login/Password prompt. The login is usually <Name>/Guest. This is very frustrating for people trying to access your shares for work. You can get rid of this by going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security
Policy > Local Policy > Security Options. Here, double-click on
“Network access: Sharing and security model for local accounts,” and select the option “Classic - local users authenticate as themselves” from the drop-down box. Apply the settings and
you’re done.

Hiding From Network Neighborhood

If you want to share folders on your computer but do not want them to be visible to others when they go to Network Neighbourhood, just go to Start > Run, type in “net config server
/hidden:yes”, and press [Enter]. So Long, Shared Documents
By default, your Shared Documents folder is shared over the
network. This is irritating because if one computer in the network gets a virus or worm, it usually ends up in everyone’s Shared Documents folder. There are two ways to go about avoiding this. Find this folder in Documents and Settings, right-click on
it and select “Sharing and Security…”. Share the folder over the network as docs$, or something with a “$” sign at the end. This will make it invisible to the rest of the network. You can also
set it to share as read only by unchecking the “Allow Network Users
to Change my Files” box. The second way is to open the
Registry Editor, navigate to KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\
Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\, create a new DWORD Value (if it doesn’t already exist) called
“NoSharedDocuments”, set its value to “1”, and then reboot the computer.

Troubleshooting

Tools
There are a few interesting troubleshooting tools that are not
installed in the default installation of Windows XP. If you have the
installation CD, you will find them in the \Support\Tools\ directory. Just run SETUP.EXE in this directory to install them. Here are a few examples:
diruse: This utility shows you the disk usage of your drives
dupfinder: Identify duplicate files, so you can free up disk space
getmac: A simply utility that will tell you the MAC address of your NIC  (network card)
netdiag: Tests and diagnoses your  network components
pviewer: Shows you a list of processes, and allows you to see how much memory each process uses, and to kill processes individually

Driver List 

You can troubleshoot driver issues by using the “driverquery” utility. The easiest way to do this is to use the
utility to output its data to a CSV (comma separated value) file, so that you can import it into MS Excel, and get a nice, clean results table. The command to do this is “driverquery /v /fo > drivers.csv”. Here, you can substitute “drivers.csv” with any filename you like.
Hidden Devices

There is a list of hidden devices that do not normally show up in the
Device Manager. You can get XP to reveal these by either changing a Registry entry, or by creating a batch file to launch the Device Manager with the correct options. If you’re comfortable with the
Registry, open the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Sessio
n Manager\Environment\. Here, create  String Value called DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES, and give it a Value of 1. If you’d rather create a batch file, open Notepad, and type in the
following:
@Echo Off
Prompt $p$g
set
DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVIC
ES=1
start devmgmt.msc
exit
Then save it as “devmgmt.bat”. You  can use any descriptive filename you  like with the .bat extension.
Shortcuts
Quick Access To Control Panel  Applets
If you’re a keyboard warrior and don’t really like going to Control Panel >Add/Remove Programs, or the likes, you will love these shortcuts. Just press [Windows] + [R], type in one of the  following, and press [Enter].
appwiz.cpl will open the Add/Remove Programs dialog
desk.cpl will open the Display Properties dialog
firewall.cpl opens your Windows Firewall settings
inetcpl.cpl will take you straight to Internet Options
mmsys.cpl will open the Sound and Audio Devices controller
ncpa.cpl will open Network Connections
nusrmgr.cpl opens the User Accounts window
powercfg.cpl will take you to the Power Options Properties dialog
sysdm.cpl will open System Properties.
You can also just use [Windows] + [Pause/Break]!
wscui.cpl opens up the Security Center
wuaucpl.cpl opens up the Automatic Updates Configuration window

Suspend Shortcut

If you like to use Windows XP’s  Suspend feature so that you can
quickly get back to what you were doing, instead of shutting down and then rebooting every time, you can create a shortcut on your desktop for this task in one easy step: Right-click on your desktop, select New > Shortcut, and in the item location field, type in “rundll32.exe PowrProf.dll, SetSuspendState” (without the quotes), give the shortcut a descriptive name—generally
“Suspend”—and click Finish. Now, when you want to suspend the system, just double-click this shortcut.

Irritants

Windows Explorer has a feature called thumbnail view, which shows you thumbnails of all pictures in the current folder. Some people love it, others hate it. If you have pictures that you’d rather everyone around you not see, even by accident, you probably hate the thumbnail view. If so, instead of cursing at it under your breath, just get rid of it for good! Start the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explo rer\Advanced\, and change the value of the ClassicViewState key to “1”.

No More Zip Files As Folders?

Windows XP natively supports extracting from or compressing into ZIP files. However, it treats ZIP files as folders, and if you double-click on a ZIP file, you get to see the contents, instead of unzipping it. You can prevent this from happening by running the appropriate command. Go to Start > Run, type in “regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll” (without the quotes) and press [Enter]

Thumbs.db Irritants

It’s probably happened to all of us at some point or another, especially those of us who work with a lot of images: When Windows XP forgets to update a folder’s Thumbs.db file after you have overwritten some image files, you end up with some wrong thumbnails associated with the wrong images.

This is because the Thumbs.db file has outdated data, and you have to delete it for Windows to get it right again. If you’d rather Windows got it right always instead of just doing it fast, you can stop the generation of Thumbs.db files altogether, forcing Windows to read every image in the folder you access, every single time. We warn you, this is slower as Windows generates the thumbnails afresh every time. In Windows Explorer, go to Tools > Folder Options > View. Look for the option called “Do not cache thumbnails” and check the box associated with it. Click OK and then search your entire computer for “thumb.db”. delete all the search results once it’s done searching, and you will never find another thumbs.db file on your system ever again

Delay Desktop Cleanup

Ever so often you get this little irritating pop-up that tells you that you have unused items on your desktop, and asks whether you want to delete them. This is the Windows Desktop Cleanup Wizard, and it is set to run every 60 days by default. It’s irritating to most, and feels a lot less than 60 days because of this. You can get rid of it forever by right-clicking on the desktop, selecting Properties, going to the Desktop tab and clicking on “Customize Desktop…”. Here you will see a little checkbox that says “Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days”; uncheck it and click OK.

Tricks

Cleaning the Prefetch Directory

Windows XP keeps shortcuts to recently launched programs in the \Windows\Prefetch\ directory, which can take up some space, but helps find and launch applications faster. After a while, however, some really old programs which you may not even be using anymore can still be found in the Prefetch directory. Also, you may experience system slowdowns when booting or when launching applications, because Windows is sifting through a large bunch of Prefetch files. So, as you can see, a large Prefetch can do more harm than good. It’s best that you delete all the files in here about once a month, or once in two months. The first time you boot, or start applications after you delete all Prefetch files, it may be even slower than before, but this is normal: Windows is adding shortcuts and data into the Prefetch again. After the third of fourth time you boot up, things should be back to normal speeds, because Windows will have finished rebuilding the Prefetch cache. To delete your Prefetch files, just go to \Windows\Prefetch\, do a [Ctrl] + [A], and press [Shift] + [Delete].

Speedier Boot

If you feel your computer takes too long to boot, you can use a tool that Microsoft provides to monitor your bootup. The tool is called BootVis, and is available from www.onecomputerguy. com/software/bootvis.exe. Uncompress the self-extracting archive and run it. Go to Trace > Next Boot + Driver Delays. Next, reboot your computer and wait for BootVis to provide you with the results. You will see some graphs of your system startup, and then go to Trace > Optimize System. The system will reboot again. Re-run the Next Boot + Driver Delays and see how much time has been saved.

End-Task Automatically

Windows waits too long before killing a non-responsive task. To remedy this, in the Registry Editor, go to HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Control Panel\Desktop\, change the value of the “AutoEndTasks” key to “1”. Here, also change the “WaitToKillApp Timeout” key’s value to the number you want. The default is 20000 milliseconds

Additional Programs?

You don’t see all the programs in the Add/Remove Programs list because Windows hides a lot of Windows components. If you want to see everything, open the \Windows\inf\ sysoc.inf file, press [Ctrl] + [H] (find and replace), search for “hide”, and leave the “replace” field blank. Choose to replace all, and then save the file. The file lists Components in the following order: [Components] NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4 WBEM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wbemoc.inf,hid e,7 Whatever was previously hidden in the Windows Components section will all now be visible in the same section in the Add/Remove Programs list.

Get Rid Of The Arrow

Shortcuts have an arrow, and it’s irritating to a few people. If you want to remove the arrows, open the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Expl orer\Shell Icons. If this key does not exist, create it. Now, create a new String value inside this key and name it “29”. Set the value of this String value to “C:\Windows\System32\ shell32.dll,52”, which is basically an empty icon. Now close the Registry Editor and restart your computer to see the arrows disappear. If you’re doing something important, and don’t want to restart just yet, you can force Windows to redraw all the icons by doing the following: Right-click on the Desktop, select Properties. Now click on the

Appearance tab and click Advanced From the drop-down list, choose icon, and change the value (the default is 32). Click OK and then Apply. Now go back and restore the value to 32 and click OK, Apply, and then OK. This will bring you back to your desktop, and you will find all those pesky arrows gone. You can also replace the arrows with something else. Just change the path provided in the Registry hack mentioned earlier (“C:\Windows\System32\ shell32.dll,50”) to the path of the icon you want to use.

Category: Tricks, Tutorial, Windows