Take Back Your File Associations

Operating Systems, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro September 2nd, 2004

Don’t you hate it when some program just unilaterally changes your file associations — so all of your music opens up in Windows Media Player, instead of MusicMatch, for example? Well there’s utility that’ll give you back control of how Windows selects programs to open files. In addition to locking down associations, it also lets [...]

Unload .dll’s to Free Memory

General Tips, Operating Systems, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro August 29th, 2004

Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory.
1. Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer].
2. Create a new DWORD sub-key named ‘AlwaysUnloadDLL’ and set the default value to equal ‘1′ to disable Windows caching the DLL [...]

Programs Run Slower After You Install Windows XP SP-1

Operating Systems, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro August 29th, 2004

SYMPTOMS
After you install Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), your programs may take as much as ten times as long to start.
CAUSE
This problem may occur if the programs you run frequently allocate and deallocate large blocks of memory. Changes in Windows XP SP1 in the memory management system have caused this operation to take [...]

Launch apps with desired priority setting

Operating Systems, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro August 29th, 2004

This tweak will launch most executables with the priority setting you want it to have.
Let’s say you have a game installed called HIGH NEEDS and the executable is called HN.exe
Here’s what to do:
-Create a new textfile in the game-app wathever-directory (let’s say C:\HN), but instead of giving it the .txt extension you [...]

Make icons in windows appear quicker

Operating Systems, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro August 29th, 2004

In Windows XP everytime you open My Computer to browse folders XP automatically searches for network files and printers. This causes a delay in displaying your icons. You probably see the “default” windows icon and as you scroll it changes to the correct icon. This is how to stop that…
1. Open My Computer
2. Click [...]

Enable or disable boot defrag

Operating Systems, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro August 1st, 2004

A great new feature in Microsoft Windows XP is the ability to do a boot defragment. This places all boot files next to each other on the disk to allow for faster booting. By default this option in enables but on some builds it is not so below is how to turn it on.
Start Regedit.
Navigate [...]

Memory Performance Tweak

Operating Systems, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro August 1st, 2004

These Settings will fine tune your systems memory
management -atleast 256MB of ram recccomended
go to start runregedit -and then to the following key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management
1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive yeilds faster [...]

Watch movies with “AboveNormal” priority

Operating Systems, Windows XP Pro July 25th, 2004

This tweak will launch WindowsMediaPlayer with the ‘AboveNormal’ priority setting when opening a mediafile.
Having trouble watching a movie when you also have a lot of background processes going on?
Here’s what to do:
1. Create a new textfile in the root of c:, but instead of giving it the .txt extension you name it [...]

Disable Recent Documents History

Operating Systems, Windows XP Pro July 25th, 2004

Normally when you open or access a document or file it is added to the list of recent documents on the Start Menu. This tweak will stop files from being added to the list.
Open your registry and find the key below.
Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value called ‘NoRecentDocsHistory’ set [...]

Automatically Ending Non-Responsive Tasks

Operating Systems, Windows XP Pro July 25th, 2004

You can end non-responsive tasks without hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL with this tweak.
Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktopAutoEndTasks
Set the value to be 1
In the same section, change the WaitToKillAppTimeout to the number of milliseconds you want.