Registry tweaking

I like modifying things to make them work better so tweaking Windows has become a favourite pastime.

Some of you found last week's article on registry editing helpful but a little frustrating, because I told you how to do it without citing examples to try yourself. Here then are some lightweight registry tweaks that are relatively safe and easy to do.

If you haven't backed up the registry, you'd better do it now, or use the registry hive export method I showed you last week before each tweak.

The following should work with XP, Vista and maybe Windows 7.

Proceed at your own risk and remember, most tweaks require a system restart (or logging off) to take effect.

1. Speed up menus - this tweak makes opening menus faster. Open regedit and find: HKEY-CURRENT-USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Double click on the entry MenuShowDelay in the right- hand window and change to a lower number; I recommend 0 (instant opening).

2. Unload unused dlls from memory - Windows retains certain dll files in memory, even though the application using them has closed. This tweak unloads dlls as soon as they are no longer required, improving memory management and performance.

Open regedit and find:

HKEY–LOCAL– MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. Create a new DWORD value called AlwaysUnloadDll and set the value to 1.

3. Change or add text to the Internet Explorer title bar. Not that you should be using this browser but, if you do, make it cooler by adding your own title to the title bar. Open regedit and find: HKEY– CURRENT– USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main. Create (or modify) a String Value called Window Title. Double click the new string and add whatever text you want to appear in the title bar. Useless, but cool.

4. If you purchased your computer from a retailer and the registered user for Windows is something lame, like "Owner", "User" or "HP customer", or you simply want to change who Windows is registered to, here's how. By the way, this has nothing to do with Windows activation and cannot be used to illegally register copies of Windows (that's a whole other tweak).

Open regedit and find: HKEY–LOCAL– MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. Modify the values under RegisteredOrganisation and RegisteredOwner to your own chosen values.

5. This last tweak is more a series of tweaks. Many of us don't use (or want) all the items displayed in the start menu. You can hide those you don't want by opening regedit and finding this key: HKEY– CURRENT– USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. In the right-hand pane, you will see entries similar to: NoFind, NoRun, Intellimenus etc. Simply change the value to 1 to activate the setting or 0 to deactivate.

Setting NoRun to 1, for example, will remove the "Run" command from the start menu and setting it to 0 will return it. Setting Intellimenus to 1 will enable intellimenus and 0 will disable it and so on. Be very careful and do one tweak at a time so you can backtrack should things go wrong. You can also prevent Windows creating the start menu list of recently open documents by adding a new DWORD NoRecentDocsMenu and setting it to 1.

Google "windows registry tweaks" for literally hundreds more, but whatever you do, back up and be very careful.

You can always buy one of the tweaking applications out there but you'll find all the best tweaks are freely available on the web and can be done by hand.

* Dave Thompson runs a computer-services company in Christchurch. Contact: dave@computerkungfu.com

- © Fairfax NZ News