Windows XP Repair-Tweaks for Windows XP 2

LuvComputers PC Repair Tweak-NO.2

Ok, so in Tweak-No.1, we performed a couple of changes to Windows XP to improve your overall quality of your session experience a bit. In tweak No.2 we are going to expand on this a little bit, but we are also going to improve the shutdown time of your computer measurably.

This tweak is going to involve getting into the registry, so heed my warning from Tweak No.1.

Please do not perform this tweak if your at all uncomfortable about going into the registry, OK!

Tweak-No.2 Now, to get into the registry in Windows XP, we first need to access our Run box. To access the Run box: Press Start

Find Run in the first menu that opens up, and then click Run!

Now we are in the Run box, simple hey.

Ok, now that we are in the run box, we want to type in the phrase "regedit", without the apostrophes of course.

When you access the registry you will notice under the My Computer icon, the different subsections of the registry. These include:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

HKEY_CURRENT_USER

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

HKEY_USERS

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG

In this tweak we want to click the plus sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER folder.

This opens up to all the different folders stored in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER parent folder.

Scroll down to the folder that is labeled, Control Panel, then click the plus sign to open the subfolders of the Control Panel folder.

Once this is finished, you'll notice many folders, Accessibility, Appearance, Colors etc. For the purpose of this tweak we are going to open the Desktop folder.

If you look to the right of your screen in the registry editor, there are many, many different things you could play around with in here. Please don't! Let's just concentrate on the few that we are going to change for the purpose of this tweak.

1. The first value we are going to change is MenuShowDisplay. Basically what this little feature does is, governs the amount of time it takes to open up your menu's on your desktop. The default value is set to 400. We can change this value, simply by double clicking the actual heading, MenuShowDisplay.

So once you have double clicked it, reset it too, 200, this will improve the speed at which your menu's open on your desktop. I usually set mine to 150, but this opens them up pretty fast. You can play around with different values here, but anything lower than 150 is usually opening up your menu's to fast.

So like I say, you can play around with the value a bit, to your liking.

2. If you scroll up from MenuShowDisplay, the value we are going to change next is AutoEndTasks. The default value for this is 0. We are going to switch this to 1. The same as we did the first one, just double click the heading, then change it, and then click OK. Basically this is like a switch, as in binary, 0 being off, and 1 means on. Changing this value to one will automatically shutdown a hungup program for you.

3. Now were going to go down the list a little bit, to HungUpAppTimeout. The default of this value is 5000. Switch this to 1000.

Note:Be a little bit careful with this one. If for some reason you might have a program that runs very slowly in WinXP, on your machine, the operating might falsely think that the program is hung up. In such a case, you can increase this value in increments of 1000, until the false hang ups stop.

4. Lastly, to finish off, we are going to change one more value. This being the value of WaitToKillAppTimeout, the default for this is 20000. Set this value to 4000. There really shouldn't be any reason to go back and switch this later on, as with HungAppTimeout. This will close your programs much faster, and great when shutting down if you haven't closed a program before trying to shutdown your computer.

A couple of things you should know about the Registry is that these changes take effect immediately, and there isn't anyway to undue the changes in the way you might be used to. The only way to change them back to default is if you remember what the defaults are. Well, actually that's not true. There is a way, but that is beyong the scope of this little tweak section were doing. If your unsure, and are worried about the effects, of some of these changes, I suggest you write them down somewhere, just in case for some reason you would like to go back to Windows XP's original settings.

One more thing, always back up the registry before making any changes such as these. I'm quite sure you will appreciate the responsiveness that these changes in the registry have on your computer.

Let's move onto the third part of LuvComputers PC Repair-Windows XP tweaks .

Davin Ogden

LuvComputer's PC Repair

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Davin_Ogden