Tweak Windows XP settings with TweakUI

Posted on October 14, 2007 at 1:43 pm

Make sure to read other posts from the Tweak Windows XP & Vista series!

Since I just wrote a post on how to tweak Windows Vista, I thought I would throw in some power toys for the Windows XP users. Windows XP is not going to disappear any time soon, so if you still have not gotten around to customizing it the way you want, take a minute and read through this article.

One of the best programs for tweaking Windows XP is the TweakUI PowerToy utility from Microsoft. Using this nifty little program, you can fine-tune many Windows settings quickly and easily. You can many settings, from how to group items in the taskbar to disabling or getting rid of those annoying shortcut icon arrows on the desktop.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the other settings you can configure:

Tweak number of applications for the Alt + Tab dialog

This if very useful if you’re like me and always have about 20 windows open in your taskbar. Even with the taskbar grouping, it can become a pain to find the program you’re looking for. Using this, you can increase the number of programs that show up when your press Alt + Tab.

Change number of lines your mouse wheels scrolls

Reduce the quality of thumbnails in Explorer to increase performance

Disable/Customize shortcut icon arrows

Customize locations for the Places Bar

The Places Bar is what shows up on the left side of the Open and Save file dialogs from Word, Excel, etc. The usual options are Desktop, My Documents, My Computer and My Network Places, but you can add your own custom locations using this option.

Hide a Control Panel Applet/Extension

You can hide Control Panel items so that they do not show up when you go to the Control Panel dialog. However, this does not uninstall it or prevent someone from opening it via the command prompt. Only useful if you want to hide it from users who don’t know what they are doing.

Automatically log into Windows as any user

This will allow you to log into Windows automatically, even if your computer is on a domain. Also, the password is stored in encrypted format.

Mange Access Control and security for Administrative functions

You can also control access to many of the Administrative tasks using TweakUI. For example, you can control who can manage file and printer sharing, manage disks, manage shares, etc.

Repair Windows files

Finally, you can use TweakUI to repair Windows in case something has become corrupted. You can rebuild icons, repair the font, My Music, My Pictures, My videos folders, and more.

Overall, a very handy utility that Microsoft provides for free. Should be something built into the Control Panel, but for now you’ll have to download it!

Source via LifeHacker

Technorati Tags: customize windows xp, tweak windows xp, windows xp tweaks, windows xp performance tweaks, powertoys windows xp, optimize windows xp

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» Filed Under Windows XP

7 Responses to “Tweak Windows XP settings with TweakUI”

ram said on : October 15th, 2007 at 7:47 am

Good article buddy. XP powertoys are nice small utilities. TweakUI i never used so far, i use image resizer and power calc for my work. Taskbar magnifier is also a good one, but it is slow than normal one

Richard Fdisk said on : October 19th, 2007 at 7:56 pm

I use it, it’s an excellent program and

You can also use it to completely bomb the
“autorun / autoplay” from snooping your CD’s / DVD’s and external drives like USB chips and HD’s which can be extremely resource and time consuming if you plug in your 200+GB backup drive that contains all of your photos and mp3 etc. files

it’s under the section
“My Computer > Autoplay”
(it’s shown in the 8th screen shot or second from the last one)

the first time you access the setting it asks you what drives you want to turn on / off

I turned off drives A: - Z:
and I’ll never get that autoplay window again,
nor will an autorun.inf ever be run on my machine either.

autorun.inf is used to automatically run a program when you insert a CD/DVD, USB chip etc.
usually it’s for the purpose of helping you install your app. but it can also cause a lot of grief, like the “Sony Root Kit” CD’s did for so many people who just wanted to play the music, but had to say “Yes” to the install of the “copy prevention” Root Kit, before the cd was allowed to be played

the other issue with an autorun.inf is that it can be used to install / run other types of malware like spyware, adware, and even a virus,
or a specially formed command line that wipes off your HD before you even have a chance to blink most of the important stuff is gone and only XP and up will let you know sort of what’s going on as soon as “Windows File Protection” detects a change in a file that’s in the “Protected” list, but the average user wouldn’t know what was happening as their desktop and taskbar shortcuts disappear.

I won’t post the command(s) here since it could be used to create the “ultimate CD/DVD of death”.

I did however test one of the commands directly and in all but a few seconds the drive was wiped almost completely clean with the exception of a few “locked / in use” files.
and because the commands are “Legitimate” windows / DOS OS programs no AV program would even detect it as a “threat”

Cheers
◄RfD►
[sorry this is so long]

(Aseem, email me if you want me to tell you the details)

martin said on : December 27th, 2007 at 6:31 am

I’ve just run TweakUI and …*&^*&% when I press repair the icons they all disappear, even those in the start menu ? Why?

Baffled said on : February 7th, 2008 at 8:31 am

Is there any way to make a backup or copy of Tweak’s setting so that I can add them to another system’s copy of Tweak UI?

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