Registry Tweaks

In this page you will find some of the many useful tricks that you can make to your registry to customise your PC to your needs. This page is a part of the guide to running your computer smoothly, all parts of which are available on my homepage on geocities. Please visit my site for more stuff and send your comments, suggetsions or questions to [email protected] or [email protected]

Before modifying your registry always make a backup by going to Start--->Run--->regedit. Then click on File and select Export. Then choose some location where you want the backup to be stored. By doing this you can restore the registry to its original state if you do something messy.

Also when I say "make a new key" just right-click the parent key and select New-->Key. to create an entry,first select key in the left column, then right click in right column and select the data type of entry to be selected.

Many of us want to rename recycle bin to something flashy. But just rightclicking and clicking rename doesnt work. To do that you will have to modify the registry.

Open regedit by typing regedit in the Run menu.Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT then Open "CLSID"

Now find folder: {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
This long number is the Recycle Bin's global unique identifier. Every sytem folder has an unique identifier. Double-click Shellfolder.and On the right side and look for Attributes. Right-click Attributes and select Modify. Change the binary data from "40 01 00 20" to "70 01 00 20". Keep an eye on the number and type it exactly as here. Click "OK" and close regedit.

Now right-click on it and select explore. From the file menu, now rename it to anything you want

2. Rename Start button

Well what abou renaming start button?? Its a bit more complicated than recyle bin You need a utilty called Resource hacker.

1.After you have downloaded Resource Hacker go to windows folder and first make a back up of C:\Windows\Explorer.exe. Then open it in resource hacker.

Find category "String Table." Find string 37,expand it and highlight 1033. Now go to 578 and double click start and change it to anything you want.

Click on "compile script" on the right side. Go to File menu, select Save as and save it in windows folder as anyname.exe. (anyname=your choice, like explorer1.exe, something easy)

Open regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon. On the right side, double click, Shell and in the value data box type whatever name you chose .

Press OK and restart your computer. You will find start changed. What about changing it to my name??? ;)

3. Speed Up Start Menu

Now that you've renamed start menu you might also want to speed it up to. Specially in XP start menu takes quite some time to show the list of programs which while being quite irritating has very little to do with amount of RAM or CPU speed.

Well, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\desktop. In the right panel double-click on "menushowdelay". In the value dat box change it to anything less than the default 400 ms. Setting it too low will make it difficult to navigate in the menu..but thats entirely upto you.

4. Group Or Ungroup Taskbar Items

If you have more than 3 windows of any application open at the same time they will be grouped together by default in XP. To prevent that select Takbar Properties and unselect the grouping option from there.

But if you want to change the number of windows go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CureentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Taskbar Groupsize.

Change the value of the taskbar group size to whatever you like.

5. Changing The Size Of Desktop Icons

By this tweak you'll be able to get any size for the desktop icons.

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics. Now create sting "ShellIconSize". In some cases its already there. Now input the value of size of desktop icons. Please keep in mind that these values are in pixels.

If you want the image to be a tile or stretched, set the value 'WallpaerStyle' entry to 1 and 2 respectively.

Disable it by typing in the Start-->Run, regsvr32/u%windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll and click OK. To enable it again type regsvr32 %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll

To disable this feature go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. Create a DWORD entry 'NoCDBurning'. A value of '1' disables while '0' enables CD burning.

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControllerSet\Control\sessionManager\Environment. Find or create a string entry 'DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS'. Give this tring a value of 1 to display the Details tab , otherwise set it to 0

This tweak enables you to remove those program entries which remain in Add\Remove Programs list after a bad uninstall.

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. There you'll find keys for each installed program. Right click and delete those entries which you want to remove from ADD\Remove programs list.

To add 'Copy To' command, go to H_KEY_CLASS_ROOT\Directory\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers and create a subkey 'Copy To'. Select the new key created and in the right column modify 'Default' entry to '{C2FBB630297111d1A18C00C04FD75D13}'.

Now go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers and create a subkey named 'Copy To' and give the same default value as above.

For the 'Move To' , repeat the steps above but rename subkeys as 'Move To' and set default values as '{C2FBB631-2971-11d1-A18C-00CO4FD75D13}'

If you always delete files permanently by bypassing the Recycle bin, this setting will allow you to delete files directly without sendng them to recycle bin first. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BitBucket and create a new key 'NukeOnDelete'. Give this a value of 1 to disable and 0 to enable the recycle bin.