We've all got a loyal old PC knocking around in a dark corner at home - one that's a bit of an old dog: arthritic and rather ponderous, but unwaveringly dependable if you can't use your main PC for any reason.
That old machine will almost certainly be running Windows XP. Who not give it a bit of TLC and make it useful again? Here are our Windows XP tips to breathe new life into that machine.
1. Remove the Recycle Bin
If you prefer to work with a completely clear desktop, you can hide the Recycle Bin with a little Registry hack. You can still use the [Shift] + [Delete] shortcut to access the Bin when you need it.
Choose 'Start | Run' and type Regedit in the 'Open' bar. Click 'OK'. Now browse to the following location:
'HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\HideDesktop Icons\NewStartPanel\'
Create a new DWORD value and give it the following name:
'{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}'
Double-click this and change its value to '1'. Quit Registry Editor, then right-click an empty space somewhere on your desktop and choose 'Refresh'. The Recycle Bin icon will magically disappear from the desktop. You can get it back again at any time by changing the value back to '0'.
2. Create your own toolbar
You can turn a folder into a toolbar for quick and easy access to its contents. Right-click the taskbar and choose 'Toolbars | New toolbar' from the menu. This launches the 'New toolbar' dialog.
Select the item that you want to use as a toolbar. If necessary, browse through 'My Documents' or 'My Computer' to find the folder you want. Alternatively, click 'Make new folder' to create a custom one. Click 'OK'. Your new toolbar will appear as a button on the taskbar.
Click this to see an expanding menu of its contents. Subfolders become their own expanding menus. Select a file to open it in its associated application.
3. Use Group Policy Editor
Windows XP Professional Edition includes the Group Policy Editor, which is a very powerful tool that enables you to configure what permissions and access each account has. This isn't available in the Home Edition.
To launch it, Choose 'Start | Run' and enter gpedit. msc in the 'Open' bar. Click 'OK'. Expand 'User Configuration' in the left-hand pane. You'll see subfolders for 'Software settings', 'Windows settings' and 'Administrative templates'.
By expanding these, you can find a range of options to configure. Expand 'Administrative templates', followed by 'Control panel'. Here you can alter what appears in the user's control panel.
One particularly useful setting is the one that prohibits access so you can stop other users changing your settings. Double-click 'Prohibit access to the control panel' in the right-hand pane. This opens a dialog. Select 'Enabled' and click 'OK'. Choose the 'Explain' tab to find out more about this setting.
Each setting listed here has three options for configuration. 'Not configured' means you'll make no change to the current setup. 'Enabled' turns the setting on, and 'Disabled' turns it off again. It's worth exploring the various configurations you can make, but make sure you're fully backed up before you do so.
4. Cut the Start menu delay
There's a slight delay built into the Start menu to give you thinking time. If you know your way around, you can shorten it with a Registry edit.
Open the Registry Editor by choosing 'Start | Run' and entering Regedit in the 'Open' bar, then clicking 'OK'.
Now go to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop'. Double-click the 'MenuShowDelay' value and change it from the default 400 to a lower number of your choice.
5. Disable autorun for discs
Put a disc in your CD/DVD drive and you'll notice an appreciable lag as it spins up, even if you're not just about to use it. If you don't always need your CDs and DVDs to launch automatically when you insert them, the needless spinning up of the discs can slow your machine down.
You can disable CD autorun by modifying this registry key:
'HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current ControlSet\Services\Cdrom'. Double-click the 'AutoRun Dword' value and set it to '0'. Change it to '1' to restore it.
6. Disable menu animation
You can turn off animated menus in Windows XP for faster navigation. In Regedit, open the key 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop' and create the string value 'MinAnimate'. Give it a '0' value. To restore menu animations, delete this string value.
7. Reduce hanging time
By default, Windows waits for five seconds to allow time for any hung applications to be closed properly as you shut down your computer. You can change this hanging time with a registry edit.
Browse to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop' and select the string entry called 'HungApp Timeout'. If you're using Vista, you'll need to create this entry. Right-click this and choose 'Modify'.
The number is in milliseconds, so the default of 5,000 is a wait of five seconds. Simply choose a lower number to shorten the wait time.
8. Remove text from icons
You can improve the general look of your PC's desktop by removing the names of shortcuts, leaving the icons to speak for themselves. If you try renaming a desktop shortcut to a single space, Windows XP won't let you.
However, you can force it to accept a space as the name by holding down [Alt] and typing 255 on the number pad. If you want multiple shortcuts to have blank names, you'll need to give each one a different number of spaces to avoid them having identical names.
9. Create a mute shortcut
You can make a custom shortcut that mutes and unmutes your PC's sound by downloading a small utility called Nircmd, which you can get from www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html.
Download and extract the file contents to 'My Documents'. Next, right-click the desktop and choose 'New | Shortcut'. Enter the following for the shortcut location:
"C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\nircmd\nircmd.exe" mutesysvolume 2.
Ensure that the path points to the location where you extracted the 'Nircmd.exe' file. Name the shortcut 'mute_ unmute'. Double-click it to mute your speakers and do so again to turn them back on.
10. Remove programs from the 'Open With' list
Stop programs appearing on the 'Open with' list when you're trying to open an unrecognised file.
Open Regedit and browse to HKEY_ CLASSES_ROOT\Applications', and you'll see a list of programs that are installed on your PC as subkeys in the left-hand pane. To remove an unwanted program from this list, select it and right-click in the right hand pane.
Choose 'New | String value'. Name it 'NoOpenWith'. Repeat for each application that you want to remove from this list.
11. Correct file sorting
By default, a file named '2.jpg' will be sorted after one called '20.jpg'. Many people work around this by starting single-digit numbers in file names with a leading zero, but you can change this behaviour by making a Registry edit.
Browse to the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explore.
Create a new DWORD value and name it 'NoStrCmpLogical'. Right click and modify its value to '1'.
12. Add new 'Copy to' key
Add a 'Copy to folder' option to the right-click context menu so that you can quickly copy a file by right-clicking it.
In the Registry Editor, browse to 'HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers' and create a new key called 'Copy to'. Change its default value to '{C2FBB630-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}' and check it works in Windows.
You can also add a 'Move to folder' option in this way. From the same 'ContextMenuHandlers' key, simply create a new key called 'Move to' and then change its default value to '{C2FBB631-2971-11d1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}' to do this.
13. Skip welcome screen
You can choose to log into Windows automatically and bypass the welcome screen by making a simple tweak. To do this, choose 'Start | Run' and enter control userpasswords2 into the 'Open' bar. Click 'OK' to see a dialog showing each user installed on the PC.
Clear the box marked 'Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer'. Click 'OK'. Now restart your PC and you should go directly to your desktop.
14. Display shortcut keys
When you open a menu or My Computer window in XP, you can see what shortcut keys are available by pressing [Alt] once - underlined letters will appear, and pressing that letter will trigger the appropriate shortcut, whether it's ticking a box or selecting a button.
You can make these underlined letters appear automatically from the 'Appearance' tab under the 'Desktop' control panel. Click the 'Effects' button and remove the tick next to the box marked 'Hide underlined letters for keyboard navigation until I press the Alt key'. Click 'OK' twice.
15. Say 'No to all' requests
When you're copying or moving a group of files, you'll sometimes be prompted to provide a 'Yes' or a 'Yes to all' response - if you need to give permission for a process to to overwrite existing files, for example.
Choose the latter option and similar files that prompt the same question will be ignored in future. But what if you want 'No to all' instead? There's no visible option, but you can select 'No to all' by simply holding the [Shift] key as you click 'No'.
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