SUMMARY: Want to know how to tweak Windows XP for faster performance and improved appearance? Yes? Then come on in and see what Osiris found out when he started digging into some of those little secret areas of the newest OS to hit the streets.
This is a handy little trick you can use with Internet Explorer 6 (which ships with XP) to make it boot up extremely fast - instantly, on my system :). This should be familiar to those of you who have created shortcuts for Half-Life mods and the like. For those of you who arent familiar, simply right-click on a shortcut to Internet Explorer (such as the one in the Quicklaunch bar) and add the parameter -nohome to the end of the command line, like so:
Tweak #4 - Menu Delays
Another minor and easy tweak to remove any delay from menus sliding out. For this you will need to use regedit (open regedit by going to Start -> Run..., then typing regedit and pressing enter). The key you need to change is located in HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop. The actual key is called MenuShowDelay - all you have to do is change the value to 0. Remember, you will have to re-boot your computer for this tweak to take effect.
Tweak #5 - GPEDIT.MSC And Autoplay
A great tweaking file that comes with XP is gpedit.msc. Go to Start -> Run... and then type in gpedit.msc and press enter. This is effectively the Policies Editor, and it comes in handy often. For example, if you hate CD autoplay like I do and want to permanently disable it, you can use this tool to do so. Just run gpedit.msc, then go to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System. In here you can see the value Turn Off Autoplay. Right-click on it and then click Properties.
Now you can simply play around with the settings for this and other values in these folders, customizing appearance and performance issues.
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