Chapter 5: Mapping Tweak UI

Overview

Microsoft Tweak UI is a must-have tool for anyone customizing Microsoft Windows XP. It prevents users from opening the registry and customizing settings that aren't available in the operating system's user interface. Tweak UI started as a grassroots utility built by a handful of rebellious programmers and ended up one of the most popular downloads on the Internet. Microsoft has released versions of this tool for every version of Windows since Microsoft Windows 95. The company even included it on the Microsoft Windows 98 CD. And now, it's available for Windows XP, and it includes even more customizations.

You can download Tweak UI from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads (Microsoft split the original Microsoft Power-Toys programs apart). You can also download it from http://downloads-zdnet.com.com, one of my favorite download Web sites. The file you download is called TweakUiPowertoy-Setup.exe. Run this program to install Tweak UI on your computer. To run Tweak UI, click Start, All Programs, Powertoys for Windows XP, and Tweak UI for Windows XP. In the left pane, click a category, and then in the right pane, edit the settings you want to change. The program is mostly self-explanatory; you see a description of each setting at the bottom of the window. Pay attention to the bottom part of the windows. It tells you whether the settings in that category are per-user or per-machine. Per-user settings sometimes require you to log off and back on to Windows XP in order for them to take affect. Per-machine settings affect every user who logs on to the computer.

This chapter isn't about using Tweak UI—that's too easy. Instead, I'll tell you where in the registry Tweak UI changes each setting. Information like this is powerful. You can script Tweak UI customizations. For example, power users can write a script to apply their favorite Tweak UI settings, and then apply all those settings to every computer they use simply by running the script. The process is streamlined—compare one double-click to dozens of clicks and edits—and the consistency doesn't hurt, either. IT professionals can write a script to deploy useful settings to users or include those settings in default user profiles for new users (see Chapter 10, "Deploying User Profiles"). Scripting these settings is amazingly easy, and you learn how to do that in Chapter 9, "Scripting Registry Changes."

The sections in this chapter correspond to the major categories in Tweak UI. (I skipped the About and Repair categories because they have little to do with the registry. You should look at both, though. The About category contains useful tips for using Windows XP. The Repair category can fix a variety of small problems, including messed up icons, fonts, and folders.) Each section contains a brief description of the settings in that category and how to change them in the registry. In most cases, each section contains a table that describes each setting's value name, value type, and value data. Each table contains subheadings that show the key for the values following it.