D.1. Inside TweakUI
TweakUI is a handy tool that provides more control over a wide variety of Windows settings than is available through the standard Windows XP interface. The tips are arranged into the following categories:
The Tips subsection lets you peruse the collection of Windows tips that, by default, are displayed every time you start Windows XP. These tips can be edited by opening the Registry Editor ( regedit.exe ) and going to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Tips .
The Policy subsection simply provides a link to the Group Policy editor discussed in Chapter 4.
Among the more interesting settings in this category are options that allow you to turn off the PC Speaker beep (which doesn't always work), selectively disable certain types of animation, and keep Windows from stealing the focus while you're working.
Move the Menu Speed control all the way to the left (Fast) to eliminate the delay when opening menus . The other options allow you to fine-tune how Windows responds to double-clicks, mouse hover, and the mouse wheel.
The settings in this category allow you to hide additional entries from the Start menu, disable the Documents history, turn off the "Shortcut to" prefix for new shortcuts, program your keyboard's navigation keys, and even revert the Search tool to the "classic" style found in Windows 2000/Me.
This extremely useful category (see Figure D-1Figure D-1) lets you customize the "Places Bar" shown in most File Open and File Save dialog boxes. Just select "Custom places bar" and type your five most frequently used folders in the spaces provided.
See http://www.annoyances.org/ exec /show/article08-804 for a similar procedure involving Microsoft Office file dialogs.
Selectively hide certain applications from the Frequently Used Programs section of the XP-style Start menu, as well as fine-tune the grouping of similar Taskbar buttons .
Selectively show or hide certain built-in Desktop icons, and choose whether the My Documents or My Computer icon appears first when auto-sorting Desktop icons.
Show or hide drives and other icons in the My Computer window. Additionally, the AutoPlay subcategory allows you to control or even disable the feature that plays CDs and DVDs automatically when they're inserted in your drive.
Hide unused icons in your Control Panel.
Selectively remove unwanted items from Explorer's New menu, or add new entries and even specify blank files (templates) to use.
Choose bitmap backgrounds for the toolbars in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer, add new web sites to search for keywords typed into the Address Bar, and choose the text editor used for Internet Explorer's View Source feature.
Control the filename and directory completion for the Command Prompt window.
The Autologon subcategory allows you to save a username and password, eliminating the need to log in manually every time you start Windows XP. This functionality was built into Windows 2000, but removed in Windows XP.
Note that using TweakUI to bypass the logon screen in Windows XP is known to cause boot-up delays of up to several minutes on some computers.
If you find that certain Desktop icons seem to be broken, your Fonts folder (see Chapter 4) isn't behaving, the unread mail count appears to be wrong, or certain information is missing from the Registry Editor, use the options in this category to affect repairs .