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Tips from 0025 to 0050:

26. Further speedup broadband cable Internet connection
READ DISCLAIMER FIRST AND THEN FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS BELOW IF APPLICABLE:
A. in the "My Network Places" properties (right click on the desktop icon and choose properties), highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK
B. Continue as indicated below steps:
1. from the Windows XP CD in the support directory from the support cab, extract the file netcap.exe and place it in a directory on your hard drive or even in the root of your C:\ drive.
2. next, open up a command prompt window and change directories to where you put netcap.exe then type "netcap/?". It will list some commands that are available for netcap and a netmon driver will be installed. At the bottom you will see your adapters. You should see two of them if using a 3Com card. One will be for LAN and the other will be for WAN something or other.
3. Next type "netcap/Remove". This will remove the netmon driver.
4. Open up control panel / system / dev man and look at your network adapters. You should now see two of them and one will have a yellow ! on it. Right click on the one without the yellow ! and choose uninstall. YES! you are uninstalling your network adapter, continue with the uninstall. Do not restart yet.
5. Check your connection properties to make sure that no connection exists. If you get a wizard just cancel out of it.
6. Now restart the machine and go to your connection properties again and you should have a new connection called "Local area connection 2". highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK.
8. Choose connection properties and uncheck the "QOS" box
9. Restart the machine and enjoy the increased responsiveness of IE, faster page loading, and a connection speed boost

It seems that Windows XP installs two separate versions of the NIC card. One you do not normally see in any properties. Remember the "netcap/?" command above showing two different adapters? The LAN one is the one you see. The invisible one slows everything down and its like your running two separate cards together, sharing a connection among two cards. This method breaks This"bond" and allows the NIC to run unhindered.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This tweak assumes that you have let Windows XP create a connection on install for your cable modem/NIC combination and that your connection has tcp/ip - QoS - file and print sharing - and client for Microsoft networks ,only installed. It also assumes that winxp will detect your NIC and has in-box drivers for it. If it doesn't do not try This as This may not work.

27. Avoid download of file attachments that may have virus infections
Open Group Policy Editor by going to START - RUN and entering gpedit.msc. This one is easy.. Navigate to USER CONFIGURATION - ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES - WINDOWS COMPONENTS - INTERNET EXPLORER. For This on right hand pane (most likely secondly last line at bottom) you should see an item Configure Outlook Express. Double Click on it and enable it and mark check box that says "Block attachments that may contain virus". OK out and close the global policy editor.

28. Heard of Atomic Clocks? or NIST ? Here is a tip on accurately setting your computer clock
Till yesterday I was using a separate third party utility to synchronize my computer clock precisely. I am not a timely person in all other aspects of life (not a good thing but have to be truthful !) to worry about time that too at atomic level but as it is with many things, it sounds like good a good idea to do it anyway! Thanks to National Institute of Standards and Technology, It has become much easier to do that via Internet. And there is no need for third party tool if you have bought WINDOWS XP Operating System. Just click on the time (right side of your START bar or panel) and click on INTERNET TIME tab. Select the time.nist.gov and click update now. Your are all set. Wait a minute your computer clock is still not that advanced. So you many need to synchronize again and again. But hey, we are in the computer world and who has time for This manual work. So I have a solution for you. OPEN registry editor ( I think you know how to open a registry.. click START-RUN and enter regedit) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ ControlSet001 \ Services \ W32Time \ TimeProviders \ NtpClient. In right pane, you would see "SpecialPollInterval". Double click and set a decimal number (unit is seconds) to the frequency with which you want to have the automatic synchronization carried out.

Also you can add many more time servers directly into registry because by default all that you can see is two time servers in the drop down list. List of many other time servers is available at http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/. To add any other time servers, get details about the server and then navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DateTime\Servers] and adding them into the list.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

29. Do you know there are two different command shell environments in XP ? which one is better ?
In Microsoft Windows XP Pro ( I think this must be true for HOME Edition, but don't quote on me), There is not one but two different command shell environment. One is the old one COMMAND.COM and other one is CMD.EXE. Both would do the job but they do it somewhat differently at a lower level. Which one is better ? I have noticed that CMD.EXE is much better in executing your commands. And this is true. CMD.EXE is the new command shell environment. that is better by design.So if you want to try out even your very old DOS apps, try it first in CMD.EXE. There is a very good chance that it will work and will work better than in your old shell.

30. Ever wondered how come you get into those HTML error pages ? Want to customize them ?
Some times, I type a webpage address and instead of seeing the page, see an error message. Do you know that all these error messages are stored in a DLL file. That is correct ! All of this message are burned into SHDOCLC.DLL file. Here is the syntax to see all of these error messages . If you want to see server busy error message type in Internet address field, res://c:\Windows\System32\SHDOCLC.DLL/servbusy.htm Similarly If you want to try out any other error message simply replace servbusy.htm by that html file (just the names) Here are some complete examples html files that you can try .

http_400.htm, http_404.htm, http_406.htm, http_410.htm, http_500.htm, http_501.htm, http_gen.htm, servbusy.htm, syntax.htm, navcancl.htm, offcancl.htm, policyerror.htm, policylooking.htm, policynone.htm, policysyntaxerror.htm, privacypolicy.dlg, preview.dlg, printerr.htm, printnf.htm, printnof.htm, printunk.htm, wcee.htm, ietext.bmp, ietext256.bmp, world.bmp, world256.gif, ie.gif, ie256.gif, orgfav.dlg, about.dlg, analyze.dlg, bidifind.dlg, docppg.ppg, error.dlg, find.dlg, findic.dlg, ieerror.dlg, imageppg.ppg, orgfav.dlg, and pstemplate.dlg

If you need to customize these messages, write an error message that you want to see as displayed and store it somewhere on your harddisk, open registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and navigate to Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs and changing entries associated with various keys and provide complete path name to your own custom html file.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

31. If you have a lot of RAM, do you really need swap file?
With RAM prices dropping so low ( I saw 256 MB SDRAM for $34 in COMPUSA on Jan 2nd,2002), more and more people are adding RAM to their computer. This is the best upgrade I would suggested to anyone. Well if you have 512MB or 768 MB or a whopping 1GB of RAM, you do not need a swap file (SWAP FILE is the concept of old dayw when RAM was too costly). Try this out. Go to My Computer and right click on properties and get into System Properties window. Go to Advanced tab and click on the Settings button for Performance group, click again on advanced tab and then click on change and choose NO SWAP FILE. I think you would see an improvement. If you don't like the change, follow the same steps and change SWAP FILE size to whatever you want (typically 1.5 * physical RAM). Also you can further gain by applying following changes in registry. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and look for DisablePagingExecutive. On my computer default value is 0. Set it to 1. This will stop paging act as well.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

32. How to boost XP speed by by changing real time clock priority?
I read about this trick the other day over Internet. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl]. If you see an entry by the name IRQ8Priority set it to a value "IRQ8Priority"=dword:00000001 if you don't then click on the right pane and add a new dword entry with given name.. IRQ8 is typically reserved for real time clock in most of the computers. Make sure thats the case (by going to device manager -> system devices -> system COMS/realtime clock -> properties -> resources tab , if it is set to another number try adding an entry with that number N as IRQNPriority) . Generally realtime clock priority boosting helps most but you are free to try others as well.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.
33. Reduce IO and increase turnaround which means faster computer !
I read about this trick the other day over Internet. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit. Depending upon how much RAM you have, you can increase your diskcache size by entering a higher value in IoPageLockLimit. Typically your computer won't come optimized for diskcache and you can set to a value which works best for you by trial and error.Rule of thumb is to have a ratio of 1 or 2 for every 64K chuck. But try out various different values as each case would be a little different

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

34. Correctly set your level 2 cache and improve performance !!
I read about this trick the other day over Internet. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\SecondLevelDataCache. Based on the kind of CPU you have, this value should change. Here are some of the defaults. Intel Celeron - 128 , AMD Duron - 64. PII and Athalon: 512. Cyrix and AMD K6-3 256. Pentium IV-1024. Figure out what your CPU type is and what L2 cache it supports and set it accordingly. It is important to know what critics have to say about this tweak. Opinions vary and I have put following three articles that have been brought to my attention which may help you understand why it may not be effective in some situations:

Do not change the SecondLevelDataCache entry (from Microsoft technet article)
Some third-party sources have erroneously reported that modifying the SecondLevelDataCache registry entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \System \CurrentControlSet \Control \Session Manager\Memory Management can enhance system performance. The second level (L2) cache is recognized by the operating system and is fully utilized regardless of the setting of this parameter.

(from Microsoft knowledge base item Q183063)This is not related to the hardware; it is only useful for computers with direct-mapped L2 caches. Pentium II and later processors do not have direct- mapped L2 caches. SecondLevelDataCache can increase performance by approximately 2 percent in certain cases for older computers with ample memory (more than 64 MB) by scattering physical pages better in the address space so there are not so many L2 cache collisions. Setting SecondLevelDataCache to 256 KB rather than 2 MB (when the computer has a 2 MB L2 cache) would probably have about a 0.4 percent performance penalty.

(From an arstechnica article) One of the most infamous NT tweaks since the introduction of NT4 has got to be the "L2 cache" tweak, a lone registry entry which stipulates the amount of L2 cache (or secondary cache) that the OS will make use of. Well, as with many things in life, the effects of this tweak are not so black and white. If you're using a processor that implements a direct-mapped L2 cache design (like Pentium I's), then this registry adjustment is indeed for you. However, if you own any Intel processor post-PI, or any modern AMD processor (K6-2 and newer), then your processor is using a set-associative L2 cache design, and thus you need not specify your L2 cache size. Let me explain.
If you choose not to futz with the registry key in question, the OS will call on the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for retrieval of the L2 cache size when you boot your computer. If this happens to fail, a default value of 256KB is used for all logon sessions on that boot session. This is where the myth that NT can only use 256KB of L2 cache comes from. But it's false. See, the HAL is able to retrieve the processor (L2) cache from any processor using the set-associative cache design, it's only the relatively few processors out there with direct-mapped L2 caches that the HAL won't chat it up with. Thus, this tweak only applies to a select number of people anymore (like people with Pentium I procs between 166-233MHz, as lower rated procs had only 256KB cache).
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

35. Do you know you can have Virtual Desktops (like in Linux) with PowerToys ?
If you have powertoys installed on Windows XP Its available for free at Microsoft website, visit my downloads webpage address) It is very easy to enable Microsoft Virtual Desktop Feature. Simply right click on the Start Panel Bar also called TaskBar, Click on Tool Bar and select Desktop manager. You would see a set of 5 icons placed on the right portion of the TAskBar. Click on number 1 to 4 to go to any of the desktops. Now you have have four different Active Desktops.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You may see a little degradation in performance but for desktop work it is negligible.
36. How to login as administrator if you don't see it available ?
Unless and until you have run into issues and fixing XP (underwhich case you have to go to Safe Mode to login as Administrator), you can get to administrator screen by simply pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE twice at the main screen.

37. How to avoid password entry at start up ?
Open Administrative tools in control panel and go to Local security policy.Select accounts and within that password policies. Set minimum password length to 0. This should be enough to stop password from being entered at startup.

I have received some criticism for asking users to set their password length to 0 and I agree to some of the potential security risks. Here is one better way to do it. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl]
Select AutoReboot from the list on the right pane. Right click on it and select Modify.
Change the value to 0 to disable and 1 to enable. Reboot your computer

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: (Please make sure that you are doing this to user account and not administrator account. If you do this to administrator account or user accounts that have admin privileges and connect to Internet. and do not have a good firewall installed or enabled, your are exposing yourself to potential risks) XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage. *Also note that default user accounts created by XP are in admin group and have admin privileges so be careful.

Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

38. How to stop new programs installed balloon from coming up?
Right click on START button and select properties. Click on Customize and go to Advanced tab and deselect check box saying "Highlight newly installed programs". This would help you stop this annoying feature from popping up every now and then.

39. How to improve on shutdown time ? Close apps automatically & quickly at shutdown
Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP and look for AutoEndTasks. On my computer default value is 0. Change it to 1. Thats all. Further more you can reduce the time it takes for Windows to issue kill directive to all active/hung applications. In doing this only constraint that you should make sure exists is that HungAppTimeout is greater than WaitToKillAppTimeout. Change the values of WaitToKillAppTimeout to say 3500 (since default value for HungAppTimeout 5000 and for WaitToKillAppTimeout is 20000)

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

40. Speedup boot up sequence by defragmenting all key boot files
Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction. In right hand panel look for Enable. Right click on it and set it 'Y' for enable. This is the way I have it set on my computer. This will help speedup boot time.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

41. Create your own customized legal notice at Windows Startup
This tip won't make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. In right hand panel look for two fields by the name legalnoticecaption and legalnoticetext. Modify legalnoticecaption to what you want popup window caption should read and change legalnoticetext to customize whatever message you want.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

42. One more way to fine tune Internet. Explorer load time
If you do this little trick, application load time may improve significantly. Right Click on shortcut to Internet. Explorer in taskbar ( If you do not see it right click on taskbar,click toolbar and select quicklaunch) , click on properties and under shortcut tab look for Target field. It should say some thing like "C:\Program Files\Internet. Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE". This is typical default. I am suggesting you to put " -nohome" without quotes at the end of this string with one space in between. It should read like this "C:\Program Files\Internet. Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" -nohome. Doing this would help load the application quickly as time would not be wasted in connecting to home page again and again. This is good for normal use as well.

43. Customize Internet. Explorer Title bar
This tip won't make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet. Explorer\Main. In right hand panel look for string "Window Title" and change its value to whatever custom text you want to see. That is it.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.
44. Are you a MP3 fan ? Add ability to rip MP3 songs in Windows Media Player 8
I am not that great a fan of MP3 but do appreciate its power. If you have a truckload of CDs that you would like to listen to but do not want to carry all of them at the same time, you can rip them into MP3. Yes it can be done technically and that too from Windows Media Player even though make sure you have legally on right side of fence, meaning you own the CD that you would rip MP3 from. That said here is the little tweak in registry. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayerSettings\MP3Encoding] and adding following entries
"LowRate"=dword:0000dac0
"MediumRate"=dword:0000fa00
"MediumHighRate"=dword:0001f400
"HighRate"=dword:0002ee00

which corresponds to 56, 64, 128 and 192 Kbps. Following table would help with other settings as well:

320 Kbps = dword:0004e200
256 Kbps = dword:0003e800
224 Kbps = dword:00036b00
160 Kbps = dword:00027100
112 Kbps = dword:0001b580

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk. Also all of your acts must conform to the law of the land.

45. Enable write caching on disk and improve disk performance
I have enable write caching on my disk. This has a significant boost in computer performance Now you may ask why. Write Cache is nothing else but concept of delayed write. As we all know I/O activities are generally slow and hence if they are synchronous can significantly reduce the system performance Hence if system performance has to be improved we have to reduce I/O activities. Now practically we can not ask you to change your habits (meaning start typing like a superman or robot etc.) but we can have a solution. I can regulate the diskwrite at regular intervals. All that we need to write in between the interval would get stored in a write buffer which would be written to the disk at regular intervals or whenever it gets full. This is smart concept with one drawback. There is a chance that you may loose some data in case of critical power loss or system failure but this is not an issue to me or to most of the users. It only is an issue for Mission Critical Business Servers. Any to enable write cache on your disk, go to DEVICE MANAGER. Then select hard disk in the disk drives and right click and select properties. Go to policies tab and select checkbox which say "Enable write caching on the disk". Close out everything and you are done.

46. MFT (Master File Table) manipulations to improve disk performance
MFT stands for Master File Table. Typically in Windows XP , if you are using NTFS ( I would recommend it if you don't) then by default,NTFS would reserve 12.5% of your free diskspace for MFT. MFT fragmentation could also cause a significant slow down. Let me discuss size first. Now if you have installed tons of different programs on your hard disk (or intend to do so), MFT utilization is going to be high. Under such situation, it may be beneficial to increase this percentage to say 25%. If you want to do this, here is the the trick. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem. In right pane, Add one more key by the name "NtfsMftZoneReservation" with the REG_DWORD value of 2. DWORD value of 1 is interpreted as 12.5% ,2 as 25% and so on.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

47. Improve system performance and Reduce MFT fragmentation by disabling DOS 8.3 naming convention
In tip number 46, I briefly mentioned MFT fragmentation. So what is the cause of fragmentation. Well most common cause is too much use. As with anything excessive use causes fragmentation. Activities of add/update/delete to a section of disk would invariable cause it to fragment. So there is no permanent solution as we can not avoid these acts. As such it is a good idea to use disk defragmenter regularly. Contiguous data which results from defragmenting disk, improves system performance considerably. But what I am suggesting you here would prolong intervals between defragmentations resulting in more time for your own productive work. OK! This tip is for those folks would never be using a DOS based program or don't care for connection from DOS based operating systems (example: old games and all things before windows 95). In Windows XP, two file names are created for each file one is the actual name and another one is 8.3 version of that file name for compatibility with DOS based programs. Now this work name in the name of compatibility takes quite a lot of system resources specifically CPU time and disk space.But this is not it, it also increases your MFT utilization and fragmentation. So the solution is to disable it. How to do this ? Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem. In right pane, look for key by the name "NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation" and sets its value to 1. Thats it. You would see improvement in system performance for sure.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

48. Customize logon prompt with your own words
This tip won't make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. In right pane, look for key by the name "LogonPrompt". Set its value to whatever text you want to see displayed at login screen.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

49. Where does Window's ProductId get stored ?
There are two places at least where ProductId gets stored. To see the first place, open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. In right pane, look for key by the name "ProductId". This is your Windows Product Id. Alternatively you can navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion and still find same field with the name ProductId.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

50. Set the low level hook time-out and stop certain programs from crashing or becoming unstable
One of the things that you can do avoid some programs from becoming unstable is to set a low level hook timeout. There are a few programs which use this low level hook timeout. Setting a low value (in milliseconds) means that if the hooked program does not respond within timeout period, one that has set the hook would not become unstable or go in infinite wait but would kill itself saving windows resources and improving performance. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_CURRRENT USER\Control Panel\Desktop\LowLevelHooksTimeout and entering a small number in milliseconds.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.