Win XP Won't Completely Shutdown

Go to Control Panel, then go to Power Options.
•Click on the APM tab, then check the "Enable Advanced Power Management support."
•Shut down your PC.
It should now successfully complete the Shut Down process.

Performance Increase Through My Computer

Easy enough tweak to usually find out about it on your own, but still, some of us
still don't find it right away. So here it is:
•Start > right-click on My Computer and select Properties.
•Click on the "Advanced" tab.
•See the "Performance" section? Click "Settings".
•Disable the following:

Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show Shadows under menus
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type
Use common tasks in folders
There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster.

Deal with System Hang at Startup

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start
button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent
Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't
work for me.
Here's what you do:
•Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
•Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service.
•Disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

Turn Off System Restore to Save Space

Turn Off System Restore to Save Space when you are out of space on your operating system drive.

By default, Windows XP keeps a backup of system files in the System Volume Information
folder. This can eat up valuable space on your hard drive. If you don't want Windows to
back up your system files:
•Open the Control Panel.
•Double-click on System.
•Click the System Restore tab.
•Check "Turn off System Restore on all drives".
•Hit Apply.
•You may now delete the System Volume Information folder.
Warning! If you turn this off you will not be able to use Windows System Restore to
restore your system in case of failure.

Speeding Up Your Pentium 2 by 50%

We all know that you really shouldn't try to run Windows XP on anything less that
about a Pentium 3 of some sort if you are out for speedy operations and amazing reaction times, but for those of us with the good old Pentium 2's who want to see just how well we can run XP, we have to tweak as much as we can where-ever we can.

A real killer to the system's performance is Windows Media Player. Although it may look desirable and fancy with it's rounded off edges and 3rd-Dimensional appearance, the truth is, it takes up a large amount of that precious processing power.
All of these troubles however, lead to one thing in particular with this 'new-look' over-rated music and video player...the Visualizations.
The look-great I'll admit but like a lot of software these days, it has no purpose. If you run the task manager, and click the Performance tab along the top, you'll see that when Windows Media Player is running and nothing else is active, it takes up around 50% of the processors power.
Once these visualizations are turned off, it barely takes up 2-3% of the processors power, which leaves much more room for other applications to work efficiently.


Here's how to disable the feature:
•Open Media Player.
•Make sure the Now Playing tab on the left is selected.
•Click the View menu along the top.
•Go down to Now Playing Tools.
•In the sub-menu that has just 'popped-out', uncheck Show Visualization

Rename Windows Xp Start button to any desired Name

I’ve read a number of articles on the internet about changing the text on the Start button in XP. On more than one occasion I’ve seen references to a five (5) letter limitation when the button is renamed. I always wondered if this was true or just an assumption someone made because the default ‘start’ just happened to fit the button size. So, I decided to run a test and see if there really was a five character limit.

First of all just u need to do is download Resource hacker.

Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating systems.

ll its just 541Kb in the size.. Click here to go to the Download Page




Download Resource Hacker

First Step The first step is to make a backup copy of the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer. Place it in a folder somewhere on your hard drive where it will be safe. Start Resource Hacker and open explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer.exe
The category we are going to be using is String Table In Resource Hacker. Expand it by clicking the plus sign then navigate down to and expand string 37 followed by highlighting 1033. If you are using the Classic Layout rather than the XP Layout, use number 38. The right hand pane will display the stringtable as shown in Fig. 02. We’re going to modify item 578, currently showing the word “start” just as it displays on the current Start button.

There is no magic here. Just double click on the word “start” so that it’s highlighted, making sure the quotation marks are not part of the highlight. They need to remain in place, surrounding the new text that you’ll type. Go ahead and type your new entry

Second Step – Modify the Registry Now that the modified explorer.exe has been created it’s necessary to modify the registry so the file will be recognized when the user logs on to the system. If you don’t know how to access the registry I’m not sure this article is for you, but just in case it’s a temporary memory lapse, go to Start (soon to be something else) Run and type regedit in the Open: field. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon

the Right pane , double click the Shell entry to open the Edit String dialog box as shown in . In Value data: line, enter the name that was used to save the modified explorer.exe file. Click OK.

Close Registry Editor and either log off the system and log back in, or reboot the entire system if that’s your preference. If all went as planned you should see your new Start button with the revised text.

Make A Autorun File For any Cd

Did You Notice, whenever You Insert any game 0r software cd, or simply consider Windows Xp Operating system cd. As soon as You Insert the disk in CD-ROM, It automatically runs the cd.

If you want to make a autorun file for that CD you are ready to burn just read this...

1) You open notepad
2) now you writ: [autorun]
OPEN=INSTALL\Setup_filename.EXE
ICON=INSTALL\Setup_filename.EXE

Now save it but not as a .txt file but as a .inf file.

But remember! The "Setup_filename.EXE" MUST be replaced with the name of the setup file. And you also need to rember that it is not all of the setup files there are called '.exe but some are called '.msi

3) Now burn your CD with the autorun .inf file included.

4) Now set the CD in you CD drive and wait for the autorun to begin or if nothing happens just double-click on the CD drive in "This Computer"

Change Drive Icon. Looks cool

First of all copy a icon file to the root of the drive.
example: c:\icon.ico

Then create a file called: autorun.inf in c:\autorun.inf
then open that file and type the following:

[autorun]
icon=icon.ico

save and close the file.

Now open my computer and refresh.. and woh! icon changed....
you can apply to other drives too.

be careful:
"autorun.inf" and "ico.ico" must be in the root of the drive.
example: c:\autorun.inf and c:\icon.ico.
same on the root.

Microsoft PowerToys to Customize Windows XP

PowerToys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience. What are they? PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released.

Alt-Tab Replacement
With this PowerToy, in addition to seeing the icon of the application window you are switching to, you will also see a preview of the page. This helps particularly when multiple sessions of an application are open.
Download

Virtual Desktop Manager

Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy.
Download

Webcam Timershot
This PowerToy lets you take pictures at specified time intervals from a Webcam connected to your computer and save them to a location that you designate.
Download

Tweak UI
This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.
Download

For more Info, Visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx