How to maximize your Netbook's performance

The advent of netbooks has recently taken the PC market by storm. Unfortunately, these mini-notebooks are a little slower than their full PC cousins, but with the right tweaks, you can squeeze the last bit of speed and functionality out of these small machines. This post shows you the best ways to optimize your netbook.

7 great tips and tricks to optimize your netbook :

1. Use a lightweight Media Player and codec pack to play all your favorite videos and music (e.g. Cole2k Codec Pack and Media Player Classic HC 1.2).

2. Uninstall programs you no longer use, especially trial software, as these can clutter up the drive. TuneUp Uninstall Manager of our TuneUp Utilities 2009 helps you immensely with that, because it tells you which programs you regularly use and which you don't.

3. Defrag the hard drive to better manage your data and keep your computer running fast. We recommend using TuneUp Utilities 2009 to safely and consistently do this on a regular basis.

4. Reduce the user interface of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and other Web browsers to better utilize the smaller “real estate” on your netbook. Right-click on the upper menu bar of your browser and uncheck unnecessary menu items.

5. Go back to the classic Windows look and feel. Animations can hinder the system's performance. To do that, right-click on your desktop and go to “Properties” (XP) or “Personalize” (Vista). Under the “Design” entry, select the classic design and hit “OK.”

6. Disable unnecessary devices, such as Bluetooth, FireWire, and Wi-Fi, to save battery power.

7. Don't run too many applications at the same time. Multitasking is better suited for a laptop, whereas netbooks are designed for basic use such as word processing and simple Web browsing.

Registry hacks to Improve performance of Windows XP

1. Load Applications Faster

The Windows prefetcher aims to load applications faster by “pre-fetching” the application and storing it in the pre-fetch cache. You can speed up application loading by changing the default value of one the settings under the relevant key.

Navigate to:

HLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

The default value for the EnablePrefetchersetting is 3.Change this value to 5to make applications load faster. You can experiment with higher values—up to 9—and see if you get a further

improvement.Since this relates to the system, a reboot is required for the change to take effect.

2. Optimisation Of The Boot Files

Normal file fragmentation scatters the pieces of a file all over your hard disk. This invariably also affects the files that load at boot time. You can defragment the files that load at system startup to enable faster loading.

Navigate to:

HLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction

A setting called Enable under this key needs to be set to Y (forYes). This setting defragments the boot files, and it might relocate startup files into contiguous clusters on the volume, reducing the

movement of the disk head when reading the volume.

With the setting at Y, boot file optimisation occurs automatically if the system is idle for 10 minutes. A reboot is required for the change to take effect.

3. Unload Unused DLLs

After an application is closed, XP has the annoying habit of leaving the associated DLL files in memory. This can hog precious resources and memory, and also cause stability problems. Make

the DLLs unload themselves from memory after the program is done running.

Navigate to:

HLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AlwaysUnloadDLL

If the DWORD Always UnloadDLL is not present, you will need to create it. Set the Value of the “(Default)” setting to 1. Application-associated DLLs will get unloaded when the application is closed.

4. Disable User Tracking

Useless to most users—except perhaps for system administrators—XP’s inbuilt user tracking system uses up precious resources.The system keeps track of the programs run by a user, the

paths followed, and the documents used. (Did you know your XP was spying on you all this while?) Disable this to free up system resources.

Navigate to:

HCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Set the DWORD NoInstrumentationto 1. This will disable most of the user tracking features of XP.

5. Run 16-bit Apps In Their Own Processes

Use this hack if you have more than one 16-bit application left over from the days of your nostalgia. XP runs all 16-bit applications in a single process. Having a separate process for each application can increase their stability and process.

Navigate to:

HLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WOW

Browse to the String DefaultSeparateVDM. If it’s not there, you’ll need to create it. Set its value to Yes.

6. Load Kernel Into RAM

In Windows 98, programs could be loaded and kept in RAM for as long as you wanted. You could even load a video clip into RAMdirectly and have it play from there! XP is much more restrictive,

mostly due to security reasons. But when it comes to the Windows XP kernel, there’s something you can do. By default, XP only loads the required parts of the kernel into RAM at boot time, and calls the other parts as and when needed. Having the entire kernel available in memory speeds up processing.

Navigate to:

HLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management

Set the value of the DisablePagingExecutive key to 1. This will make the entire kernel be loaded in memory. A reboot is required for the changes to take effect.

Only use this hack if you have sufficient memory. Recommended: 512 MB or more. Also, this hack may affect some programs that use the Windows swap file directly, such as Adobe Photoshop.

7. Edit The Startup Programs List

Many of the programs that start up at boot time do not figure in the Startup folder. If you want to stop more than one application from loading at bootup, you will normally need to go and turn off the preference in each application one by one. Tedious and time consuming. This hack can help you do this in one go.

Navigate to:

HLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

And to:

HCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

All the programs that load at boot time will be specified under these two keys. Review the applications listed in this list and delete all the entries you don’t want started up at boot time. Next bootup, they’ll be gone.

Be careful not to delete needed programs such as anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. You should be able to identify them by their path if not by the file name.

8. Optimise The System Cache

Desktop systems are normally optimised for applications, and servers for file caching. Depending on how you use your system, you may want to optimise your system for either.

Navigate to:

HLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management

Find the setting LargeSystemCache. Set this DWORD value to 1 for server behaviour or to 0 for desktop behaviour.

Some programs such as SQL Server and Exchange Server set this value during installation and override the change.

9. Turn Off Windows Animation

Windows animations—like those that happen when you minimise or maximise windows—look good, but only if you have the processing power and/or RAM. To get the most performance

out of your system turn off this setting. You could do it via a host of settings in the GUI, but this Registry hack does it all in one fell swoop.

Navigate to:

HCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

Change the value called MinAnimate to 0 to disable Windows

Animation. A restart is required.

Bypass Windows File Protection in Windows XP

There are two different solutions, depending on whether you have SP2 installed or not.

If you don’t have SP2 installed

Locate the file sfc_os.dll, which should be in your System32 folder. Copy it and name it sfc_os.bak. Open this file using a hex editor such as XVI32,which is an excellent freeware. This is an extremely simple edit and does not require an editor with advanced features. All you need to do is change two values. The location of these values will vary depending on whether you’re using Windows XP without a Service Pack or Windows XP with SP1, but the actual hex values to change will be the same.For Windows XP with no Service Pack installed, go to offset 0000E2B8 (E2B8 hex). For Windows XP with SP1, go to offset 0000E3BB (E3BB hex). At those offsets, change the hex values 8BC6 to 9090.Note: Depending on your hex editor, you may see the value separated by a space, as in “8B C6”. If you can’t find the values, do not proceed. It could be that your version of XP is different. The edit as described here only applies to English retail versions of Windows XP.

If you have SP2 installed

Disabling System File Protection in XP prior to SP2 involved editing the sfc_os.dll file, but the version of sfc_os.dll that comes with SP2 is different, and you cannot disable file protection with it. With SP2, you need to use the previous version of the sfc_os.dll file, which is 5.1.2600.1106 (the one with SP2 is5.1.2600.2180). Open sfc_os.dll with a hex editor and go to offset 0xECE9. The values to change are 33 C0 40. Change these to 90 90 90. Save your changes. Rename the file with a .bak extension (sfc_os.bak). The original exists in two locations: the\Windows\System32 folder, and the\Windows\System32\dllcache folder. Place a copy of sfc_oc.bak in both these folders. Then in the dllcache folder, look for cmd.exe, double-click it, and enter this command: copy SFC_OS.BAK SFC_OS.DLL /Y Next, go to your System32 folder and do the same thing. Look for cmd.exe, double- click it, and enter exactly the samecommand.

Points to remember

* If you have a problem overwriting the files, you can do the copying within the Recovery Console, or you can try Safe Mode.

*The dllcache folder is a hidden folder.

*It is important to copy the file to yourdllcache folder first.

*If you’re prompted to pop in your Windows CD, click Cancel.

Once the files have been copied, shut down your computer and restart it. The final step is to disable System File Protection in the Registry. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\

Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. In the right-hand pane, if it doesn’t exist, create a new DWORD value named SFCDisable. Double-click it and ente “FFFFFF9D”. Exit the Registry Editor and reboot. You’re done.

Creating A Windows XP SP2 Bootable CD

1. First, create a folder on your hard drive e.g. D:\XPCD. Now, copy the entire contents of existing Windows XP CD to this folder. The Windows XP SP2 executable file is an archive of the Service Pack 2 files, so you can use WinZip and extract SP2 files to another folder say D:\SP2. Now, locate update.exe under D:\SP2. This can be found inside the sub-folder named ‘update’. Go to the DOS command prompt and change your directory to this ‘update’ folder. Run the commandcommand “update where/integrate:"(dir)" “(dir)” is the directory you saved the Windows XP CD files to, ( “D:\XPCD” in ourcase). This will start integrating SP2 into the Windows XP Installation files saved at D:\XPCD. You should get message box confirmation that integration was successful.Now the D:\XPCD folder contains Windows XP installation files with SP2 integrated.

2. Extracting the boot image from the existing Windows XP bootable CD is easy. You need to use software that can do this. Bart’s Boot Image Extractor (BBIE) is a simple but useful utility and isavailable for download from http://nu2.abwehr.net/bbie10.zip. Insert the Windows XP CD into the CD drive, and go to the command prompt and change directory to the folder where BBIE is located. Run “bbie -v (CD drive letter)” e.g. “bbie -v F:”. You should now find a file named

‘image1.bin’ being created in the same folder from where bbie.exe was run. This file is the

Windows XP Boot image.

3. Insert a blank CD-R media into your CD Writer. Use burning software such as Nero to create your boot CD. Go to File >> New, select ‘Boot CD’ and select the boot image file that you created in Step 2. Make sure that emulation is set to ‘No emulation’. The boot segment is automatically filled in by Nero—all you need to do is set the number of loaded sectors to 4. Select Mode1 and ISO Level 2, from under the ISO tab. Enable all options under ‘Relax ISO Restrictions’, and use the ISO 9660 Character set. Under the Label tab, enter the same label name as that of theoriginal CD. To find this, just insert the Windows XP Installation CD into your CD- ROM drive and open Windows Explorer to see the name displayed against your CD drive. Click ‘New’ to open the File Explorer browser. In the file browser, select all the XP Installation files with SP2 integrated (from D:\XPCD in our example) for writing to a new CD. Finally open the CD Write dialog box, and under the ‘Burn’ tab, enable the Finalize CD option. Now, write the compilation to the blank CD-R. You have successfully created a bootable Windows XP installation CD with SP2.

Create A Bootable XP CD That Pre-installs Additional Programs

To create a bootable XP CD that pre-installs additional programs, first install Windows Unattended CD Creator (WUCC). You need to have Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 or higher installed.Windows Unattended CD Creator is a very small application that will help you create an user-customized Windows bootable CD. You can choose which drivers, components or hotfixes to be installed and you can even set your network settings. All you need to do in a normal Windows installation is taken cared of by this little application, so you can install your operating system in the fastest way possible.

Download: http://www.ziddu.com/download/3808480/WUCDCreatorSetup-1.0.2-Beta-10.exe.html

When you open WUCC, you will be asked for the Windows CD or the directory of the Windows install files (the CD must be bootable). To add these files, click Select. Afteradding the install files, select a targetdirectory for the new Windows CD (or you can modify the source directory provided it is not read-only). If you going to “Select target directory”, then it is better to use a new directory rather than an existing one. The target directory will be a temporary location the software will use to create your disc image.After you create your disc, you candelete this

directory.

Now,you can add Windows hot-fixes like those to Internet Explorer, WMP, DirectX, etc. Find

these in the Hotfixes tab. Click the Select button to import the .exe files. When you select one, it will ask for a short name in 8.3 format, like “Explorer.exe”. After confirming the name, click Add.Change to the Software tab. Here you add the software you want to install along with the Windows installation. Provide a name for the software in the Software Description box.Then “Select” the software type (Files Only or Directory). You’ll see that the files are being added to the program list. Click a program from the list and then click Select to enter the program’s start parameters (basically, the path from where it will be installed). Repeat this for every program in the program list.

The start parameter is like

“%CDROM%\Software\...”If you don’t want to copy the programs to the Windows CD, click

the checkbox titled “Install directly from…”, but when you repeat the step where you provide the start parameters, you must type a valid source path. Change the default “%CDROM%\Software\...”to the actual path, say: “C:\My Software\...\...”

When all your programs have been provided with their start parameters, switch to the Done tab. Here you’ll see the list of directories that will be included in the Windows CD. If the size of the disc you’ve made is larger than the disc size (usually 700 MB), you can delete unnecessary directories, or you can split the files according to the disc size. You can also use a DVD.

Finally, click “Create ISO-image” to create the image for the new Windows bootable CD. Write this image onto a disc. You can now delete the temporary folder (the target directory in the “Source-CD” tab) you created.

Create A Special Folder In Windows Explorer

We can create a folder like My Documents one that will appear as a system folder in XP by doing the following steps...

1.In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID. Create a new1 key with a Globally Unique Identifier(GUID). The GUID is a 128-bit identifier that is usually generated by Windows. This can be a random number that is used touniquely identify COM objects. Create a key using this random GUID:{FD4DF9E0-E3DE-11CE-BFCF-ABCD1DE12345}

2.Set the value of the “(Default)” setting for this key to the name of the folder, say “My Personal Data”. Create a new sub-key under the main key and call it “DefaultIcon”. That is, create a key called:HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FD4DF9E0-E3DE-11CE-BFCFABCD1DE12345}\

DefaultIcon

Set the value of “(DefaultIcon)”to the filename and path of the icon file you want to use for the folder, for example,“C:\Topsec.ico”, without the quotes. If you don’t specify a path to an iconfile, Windows will use its default folder icon instead.

3 .Create another sub-key under the main key called “InprocServer32”, that is, create the

key called HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FD4DF9E0-E3DE-11CE-BFCF-ABCD1DE12345}\

InprocServer32

Set the“(default)” setting here to“shell32.dll”.Create another string value called ThreadingModel and set its value to “Apartment”. There’s one more: create another sub-key called

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FD4DF9E0-E3DE-11CE-BFCF-ABCD1DE12345}\Shell\

Open MyFolder\Command

Set the “(Default)” value here to the command that should be executed when the folder is clicked. In this case, it would be “explorer /root,c:\My Personal Data”.

4.There’s more keys to be created:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FD4DF9E0-E3DE-11CE-BFCF-ABCD1DE12345}\ShellEx\

PropertySheetHandlers\{FD4DF9EO-E3DE-11CE-BFCF-ABCD1DE12345} and

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FD4DF9E0-E3DE-11CE-BFCF-ABCD1DE12345}\

ShellFolder. Under this key, create a new binary value called“Attributes” with the value

“00 00 00 00”.

5.To place the folder in My Computer, add the original key to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\

MyComputer\Namespace\

So the key value will be

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\

MyComputer\Namespace\{FD4DF9E0-E3DE-11CE-BFCF-ABCD1DE12345}

Now go to My Computer, and you’ll see a new custom folder!

How to recover deleted files?

How files are deleted ?

When a file is deleted from your computer it is not really deleted. It is simply removed from the directory of files in the folder. Even though you can no longer see the file in the folder, its contents still exist 100% intact at this point.

If you're using Windows and you deleted the file using Windows Explorer, the file will have been moved to the Recycle Bin. If you're a Mac user, it's moved to the Trash. If you use Linux KDE, it's the Wastebin. Whatever the bucket shaped object is called, as long as a file remains there it can easily be restored in its entirety, with no problem at all. So the first thing to do when you want to recover a deleted file is look in the Recycle Bin / Trash / Wastebin.

If you emptied the bin, used Shift Delete to get rid of the file, deleted it from within an application or used some other method of removing it that bypassed the bin, then it is still almost certainly recoverable. When you empty the Recycle Bin or delete a file using another method, the file is still not really deleted. The file no longer exists as far as the operating system is concerned and the space it occupied becomes available for re-use by other files. But the disk space does not get re-used straight away, so the data contained in the deleted file will stay on your hard drive for some time to come.

Chances of recovery

Because the operating system doesn't immediately re-use space from deleted files, a file can be recovered or undeleted right after it has gone, and for a considerable time afterwards. But the chances of a perfect undelete decrease the longer you leave it, because eventually some or all of that space will be re-used.

The chances of recovery also depend on how full your computer's hard drive is. Windows tries to avoid re-using disk space that has recently been freed, to give deleted file recovery software a better chance of working. But the fuller a drive is, the sooner the free space is going to be used by other files.

If you have defragmented the hard drive since the file was deleted, then this will severely harm the chances of a successful recovery. Current files will have been moved into the free space left by deleted files in order to reduce fragmentation, making it much less likely that undelete software will be able to find anything useful.

Recovering deleted files

Tools that can help you undelete files are not provided as standard in any operating system. So you will need to use undelete software from a third party.

Undelete software understands the internals of the system used to store files on a disk (the file system) and uses this knowledge to locate the disk space that was occupied by a deleted file. Because another file may have used some or all of this disk space, there is no guarantee that a deleted file can be recovered. But because the space isn't re-used straight away, there is a very good chance that you will succeed. In fact, users of our recommended Windows undelete software Uneraser have often been amazed to find that it recovers files that were deleted months or even years ago. The best undelete programs give you an indication of the chances of recovering a file intact, and even provide file viewers so you can check the contents before recovery.

Undelete software for Windows

If you're running Microsoft Windows then Uneraser is the best undelete software you can buy. It is developed by a company that specializes solely in data recovery products. Uneraser uses the deepest search methods and the most sophisticated recovery algorithms to give you the best possible chance of recovering your files. It also has powerful tools to help you find the files you want from among the thousands on the average hard disk.

Uneraser has the widest range of built-in viewers to let you examine the files it finds before recovery. You can try it with no risk. A free trial version lets you see for yourself whether it can recover the files you lost. If a file looks perfect in the viewer then recovery is 100% guaranteed.

See a tutorial showing how to recover deleted files using Uneraser

Download a free trial of Uneraser

See more information about Uneraser

Another reliable and effective Windows undelete software is Data Recovery Wizard. It is a full data recovery product that can even restore files from lost or corrupted partitions. Just like Uneraser you can try before you buy.

See a tutorial showing how to recover deleted files using Data Recovery Wizard

Download a free trial of Data Recovery Wizard

See more information about Data Recovery Wizard

Undelete software for Mac OS

For Apple Mac users we recommend Data Rescue II. This is a powerful, professional data recovery software that can be relied upon to restore your deleted files if at all possible.

Download a free trial of Data Rescue II

See more information about Data Rescue II

An alternative, easy to use uneraser for Mac users is File Recovery for Mac. This will recover your files in no time.

See a tutorial showing how to recover deleted files using File Recovery for Mac

Download a free trial of File Recovery for Mac

See more information about File Recovery for Mac

If you are able to connect your Mac disk drive to a Windows PC then you could also use the Windows based Uneraser to perform data recovery on it. The new Uneraser 4.0 can recover deleted files from Mac HPFS+ and Linux ext2/ext3 file systems, as well as FAT and NTFS.

Saving the recovered data

One of the cardinal rules of data recovery is that you must never write to the disk that contains the files you want to recover. This is because anything that gets written to the drive could potentially be written to the space that was holding the data you hope to recover. You should save the files that have been recovered to a different drive to the one they were recovered from. This could be an external drive or a network share, even a USB memory stick.

All of the undelete software products that Tech-Pro.net recommend will prompt you to save recovered data to a different location, but Uneraser has the greatest number of options. It has the ability to burn files direct to writeable CD or DVD without creating any temporary files on the hard drive. You can even save the files recovered to an FTP server.

How to make your own theme?

Theme Name

Decide what you want to call the Theme. Create a folder in C:\Program Files\PLUS!\Themes name it what you want the name of your theme to be. This keeps everything in one place for you to keep everything organized.

Wallpaper

Chose your background picture. Make sure it is in .bmp form. Place your bitmap into your new folder you created. You might want to then change the name to the same name as you named your Theme. For example if your theme is going to be called Mountain then rename this bitmap to say Mountain.bmp. Right click on your desktop, click properties, then click on Background browse to you new folder and choose your wallpaper.

Color Scheme

Right click on your desktop, click on properties, then click on appearances. You can chose the colors and fonts you want that complements the new wallpaper. After you've picked your new colors and fonts then click on the save as and save it with the name of your new theme. Example: Mountain. Click on apply.

Cursors and Icons

I use MicroAngelo 98 and IconEasel 98 to create my cursors (creates animated cursors too) and icons. These are very good products well worth the money. If you would like to try it out there is a demo version to download click on their names above. If your not going to create your own, you can find lots of cursors and icon packages on the internet. These packages are usually free for personal use. If you use cursors or icons from these packages or from another theme make sure they are not copyrighted and rename them with your new theme name and short description. Example: Mountain wait.cur then move it to your new theme folder. This makes it much easier to put all your theme components into your theme, and for the people who download your theme to recognize which files go to which themes.

You can draw it yourself or copy and paste a piece of clipart or photo; and then fix it up with a cursor and icon software product.

Sounds

you can find these wav. files on the internet or create your own. There are products like Gold wave or Cool edit you can use to edit and manipulate wav. files. Then name them after your new theme. Example: Mountain recycle.wav. Move them to your new theme folder. The trick to deciding on your sound is choosing ones to fit each event. Don't make these too long because it gets on peoples nerves and they will download a different theme to replace yours.

Screen Savers

You need a software program to help you with this part. There are so many I couldn't even list them.

Now all you have to do is make it a theme. We are going to apply all your components to your desktop and create the theme file. Right click on your desktop, click on properties and then backgrounds choose your new bmp. file under wallpapers and click on apply (if you haven't already done so.). While your here decide if you would like it to be tiled or centered. Click on the one you decided on.

Now while your still in there go to the appearances tab and choose the scheme you saved earlier, click on apply.

Now go to the Plus! tab still in the properties window. Click on change icon and browse for your new icons that you saved in your new theme folder.

Now click on start, then settings, then control panel and select the mouse. Go to the pointers tab an go down the list and browse for each of your new cursors in your new theme folder. Click save as, naming it after your new theme, and then click on apply.

Now go to the control panel again this time select sounds. Go down the list and browse for each sound in your new theme folder. Click on save as, naming it after your new theme name, then click on apply.

Finally, go to the control panel again and select desktop themes. Click on save as, now naming your theme, then click on apply.

Startup/Shutdown Screens

If you are interested in creating Win 95/98 Startup/Shutdown screens to go with your theme you need to create or edit a picture you have in your graphic editor such as Paint shop or Photoshop and make sure this image is 320x400 pixels and saved as 256 color RGB Encoded Bitmap. Then you can put them in your theme folder and open up a utility like ZD logo animator and resave the startup screen as logo.sys and the wait screen as logow.sys and the safe to shutdown screen as logos.sys, you can also use this utility to animate your logo screens. To implement them into your desktop:

*.sys file type is usually hidden in most people's computers under Win95. You might have trouble in finding *.sys files for copying files. Go to Explorer choose View menu, then select Options... in the dialog, enable "Show all files" or use a DOS window, in which most *.sys files can be viewed normally. I usually just use the find function entering c:*sys (or whatever is your hard drive) This file is usually in c: or in c:\windows Extract the new .SYS file to a temporary directory.

Move (backup) original "start-up" logo, "LOGO.SYS" from the root directory of your boot drive, usually C:\ to another temporary directory. (If you are using a compression utility or cannot locate the logo.sys file, please see the notes below.)

Use DOS window or Explorer to copy new logo file to the root directory, renaming the new copy to "LOGO.SYS" (If you are using a compression utility, please see the notes below.) Example of DOS command: copy c:\temp_dir\xrxlogo.sys c:\logo.sys

Restart your computer and you're done!

* Note *

If you are using a compression utility on your boot drive, you must put logo.sys in the host for that drive. (For example, if drive C: is compressed and its host is the G: drive, then logo.sys should be placed in the root directory of the G: drive.)

The default logo.sys is embedded in io.sys file. If you cannot find logo.sys in your drives, including the host drive (see above), chances are Win95 is using the logo that is embedded in io.sys as your start up logo. In this case, you don't have logo.sys to backup. Simply place the new logo.sys

in the root directory of your boot (host) drive. Logo.sys in the root directory will take precedence of the one embedded in io.sys file. To get back to the original win95 logo, simply rename the logo.sys to other name.

* To restore the original win95 logo, you must save (backup) the

file in step 1. Then just copy the original logo to the

designated directory.

Thanks to Rob Chen for these instruction on installing *.sys files.

NOW YOUR DONE!! ONE FINAL STEP!!

15 Top Windows XP Secrets

1. Useful key shortcuts available:
   • Windows key + D - shows the desktop.
   • Windows key + M - minimizes all open windows.
   • Windows key + Shift + M - maximizes all open windows.
   • Windows key + E - Runs Windows Explorer.
   • Windows key + R - shows the RUN dialog.
   • Windows key + F - shows Search window.
   • Windows key + Break - shows System Properties box.
   • Windows key + TAB - Go through taskbar applications.
   • Windows key + PAUSE Display the System Properties dialog box.
   • Windows key + U Open Utility Manager.
   • ALT + TAB - Cycle through opened applications.
   • Hold down CTRL while dragging an item to Copy it.
   • CTRL + ESC Display the Start menu.
   • ALT + ENTER View the properties for the selected item.
   • F4 key Display the Address bar list in My Computer or
   • NUM LOCK + Asterisk (*) Display all of the subfolders that are under the selected folder.
2. Lock Windows to protect computer :
   You can lock Windows to protect the computer when leaving the station easily by creating a shortcut with the path rundll32.exeuser32.dll, LockWorkStation. The Windows key + L is also a shortcut to this feature.
3. Edit sysoc.inf to list all software :
   To show all software that can be removed from your computer (including protected Windows services), you can manually edit (using notepad for example) the sysoc.inf file located in Windows\inf\. Just remove the word hide next to the software pack.
   Note - use this at your own risk. Removing critical components of the system will make Windows instable.
4. Windows XP comes with IPv4 and IPv6 :
   Windows XP comes both IPv4 and IPv6 support. To enable IPv6, you can install the protocols needed with the command "ipv6 install" in the command-prompt. Then type ipv6 /? to see the options. The installation will not remove the IPv4 protocols so your current configuration will still work.
5. Access Task Manager with shortcut :
   To access the Task Manager easier, you can make a shortcut that points to %windir%\system32\taskmgr.exe.
6. Stop treating ZIP files like Folders :
   If you don't want your Windows XP to treat ZIP files like folders, you can disable this component by running regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll at the command prompt or Run dialog. If you start missing it, you can enable it by typing regsvr32 zipfldr.dll.
7. Run program as diffrent user :
   You can run a program as a different user. Right click an application and select Run As command.
8. Switch users leaving applications opened :
   You can switch users leaving the applications opened too (*NOTE* use this only when needed since it could lead to system instability).
   Go to Task Manager - processes and end the process explorer.exe. This will end only your session and not all applications. Then go to Applications tab, click New task and type runas /user:domainname\username explorer.exe. A password prompt will appear to login to the desired username. The user's session will start, with all your previously applications running.
   I recommend to open first a command-line prompt and type runas /? to see all the options available.
9. Rename multiple files in Windows at once :
   Rename multiple files in Windows at once. Select them all, right click and select Rename. Enter the desired name. They will be renamed using what you specified, with a number in brackets to distinguish them.
10. Task kill feature in Windows :
    Windows has a task kill feature similar to Linux. Go to a command prompt and run the command tasklist to see running processes with PID numbers. Then type tskill to end the specific task. This forces an instant closing of the task.
11. Edit features with GPEDIT.MSC :
    You can edit many features by running gpedit.msc. You can add log on/log off scripts here and many features.
12. Edit accounts in the command prompt :
    You can edit accounts by running "control userpasswords2" at the command prompt.
13. Use systeminfo.exe to see System Information :
    You can use the systeminfo.exe command in the command prompt to see System Information, including all Windows updates and hotfixes.
14. Disable system services for maximum performance :
    There are system services that you can disable to free up the system's load. To access the interface that permits you to make changes to system's services, type services.msc and the command prompt.
    This is a list of services that are *usually* useless and can be safely disabled.
    • Alerter
    • Application Layer Gateway Service,
    • Application Management
    • Automatic Updates
    • Background Intelligent Transfer
    • Clipbook
    • Distributed Link Tracking Client
    • Distributed Transaction Coordinater
    • Error Reporting Service
    • Fast User Switching Compatibility
    • IMAPI CD-Burning
    • Indexing Service
    • IPSEC Services
    • Messenger
    • Net Logon
    • Net Meeting
    • Remote Desktop Sharing
    • Network DDE
    • Network DDE DSDM
    • Portable Media Serial Number
    • Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
    • Remote Registry
    • Secondary Logon
    • Smartcard
    • SSDP Discovery Service
    • Uninterruptible Power Supply
    • Universal Plug and Play Device Host
    • Upload Manager
    • Webclient
    • Wireless Zero Configuration
    • WMI Performance Adaptor
    NOTE: Make sure you don't need them since some applications you're using could depend on them. If you make any application to fail by disabling any of the services, go back and enable it again.
    
15. Repair Windows XP by using the XP installation CD:
    If your system failes to start due to an error related to missing HAL.DLL, invalid Boot.ini or any other critical system boot files you can repair this by using the XP installation CD. Simply boot from your XP Setup CD and enter the Recovery Console. Then run "attrib -H -R -S" on the C:\Boot.ini file and delete it. Run "Bootcfg /Rebuild" and then Fixboot.