Useful Tips

1-Increasing System Performance

If you have 512 megs or more of memory, you can increase system performance by having the core system kept in memory.

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive
3. Set the value to be 1
4. Reboot the computer

2-Removing the MSN Messenger

If you want to remove the MSN Messenger from always starting in the system tray, do

1. Start / Run
2. Then enter in the following string: RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

To remove it completely, see the section Adding / Removing Additional Programs Remove the hide from the line: msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7

3-Common Command Console Utilities

WindowsXP comes with quite a few console utilities you can easily run from the command line: Computer Management - compmgmt.msc

Disk Managment - diskmgmt.msc

Device Manager - devmgmt.msc

Disk Defrag - dfrg.msc

Event Viewer - eventvwr.msc

Shared Folders - fsmgmt.msc

Group Policies - gpedit.msc

Local Users and Groups - lusrmgr.msc

Performance Monitor - perfmon.msc

Resultant Set of Policies - rsop.msc

Local Security Settings - secpol.msc

Services - services.msc

Component Services - comexp.msc

4- Hide/Unhide Logon Names

If you want to hide or unhide the names of users that are displayed on the initial logon screen:

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon \ SpecialAccounts \ UserList
3. Add a DWORD with the name of the user account you want to hide
4. Make sure it has a value of 0
5. If there is an existing account, you can unhide it by giving it a value of 1

5- Renaming the Start Button

To rename the start button, you will need a hex editor. My preference is UltraEdit

1. Copy the \windows\explore.exe file to a new name (e.g. explorer_1.exe)
2. With the hex editor, open that file and go to offset 412b6
3. You will see the word start with blanks between each letter
4. Edit it be any 5 characters or less
5. Save the file
6. Boot to DOS
7. Copy the existing c:\windows\explorer.exe to explorer.org
8. Copy explorer_1.exe to explorer.exe
9. You will also need to replace the explorer.exe in the c:\windows\system32\dllcache file as well with the new one.

Note: If the partition is NTFS and you can't access the files from DOS:

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon.
3. Change the value of Shell from Explorer.exe to explorer_1.exe