Speed Up Windows - Registry Hack

I had already posted two articles on Windows Vista recently — after all, it is the latest operating system from Microsoft. While it’s the “latest and greatest” as they say, I know many of you still use and prefer Windows XPfirst.

Today i thought about spending some time going over a few Windows XP tips. However its been too long that i posted the last article. Well i was so busy that i didn't had time to blog. Leave it, lets come to the topic. Some of the tips you may be well familiar with as i had even posted them before, while some will be completely new to you.

Most of all these tricks use the Windows Registry Editor. Please now don't ask that what is windows registry editor. If you are my regular reader you may know what it is. For new readers, Welcome, Goto Start --> Run --> Type regedit there and Enter. Thats it, you will see the Registry editor Window.

Note: Please follow the steps as i say, or else i cant help you.

Here are Some Unknown Tips n Tricks:

1. Renaming the Recycle Bin: If you are bored of the old name 'Recycle Bin', change it to something you want.

* Open Registry Editor and goto to 

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ CLSID\ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

* Double-click on (Default), and change the name of the Recycle Bin. Now close the Registry Editor, and press F5 on the desktop to refresh the icon.

2. Network Sharing: When you are looking at files on a network drive you might have noticed that it can take a rather long time (up to 30-40 seconds). What actually happens is XP checks to see if the other PC has any scheduled tasks. You can disable that by as follows.

* Open the Registry Editor and goto to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ RemoteComputer\ NameSpace.

* Delete the {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF} key. Close the Registry.

* While you are there you can also delete the {2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} key if you don’t use printer sharing(It helps Speed up your OS).

* Restart your computer.

3. Excessive Printing: This probably is not for home users, but for all the people out there that do a lot or printing this is something you should consider doing. By tweaking this Registry setting the printing process will have a higher priority.

* Open the Registry Editor and goto to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ Print.

* Create a new DWORD called SpoolerPriority, and give it a value of 1.

* Restart your computer.

4. Disable Last Access Time Stamp: This small little tweak is a great one, because it disables a feature that most people never even use. By default Windows always keeps track of the “Last Accessed” date in the file or folder’s properties. If you are constantly opening and closing files you are causing some additional work for Windows since it has to update the last accessed date each time. If you never use that property feel free to disable it.

* Open the Registry Editor and goto 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ FileSystem.

* Create a new DWORD called NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate, and give it a value of 1.

* Restart your computer.

5. Remove Text from Icons: This is the most funky trick i got. With it you can prevent the text from appearing below icons on the desktop. If you’re looking to clean up yourdesktop a bit this could be the perfect solution.

* Right-click on an icon, and choose the Rename option. Delete all of the text.

* Hold down the Alt key and type 0160 (you shouldn’t see any text being typed). That will essentially make a space character the file name. Press Enter to save the results.

* You can repeat this for all icons in the same folder or Desktop, as its not possible to create two similar file names. To bypass that for a second shortcut you can doAlt+0160 + Alt+0160. That will essentially create two spaces for the file name, and for a third shortcut you could do Alt+0160 + Alt+0160 + Alt+0160. Well i know its little Teddy, but here the topic is on how to Speedup Windows XP.

Some of this tricks also works with Windows Vista. But i can't guarantee about it, as i don't have an Vista OS, so not tested yet. If you think you can handle any errors caused, feel free to try.