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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:59:37 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Windows XP Fixes
From: "Hugh Sparks" <hugh@csparks.com>
To: <Rod.Larson@mts.com>
Importance: Normal
X-Mailer: SquirrelMail (version 1.2.11)

I may have a new one of these for you at home...

# Fixing Windows XP
# How to eliminate the Fisher-Price user interface in Windows XP.
# Version 1.2 2003-05-22, H.V. Sparks

Preliminaries

	You will need the "TweakUI" utility for Windows XP.
	It can be downloaded at:

	http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

Restoring the appearance of the desktop

	Bring up the Display control panel.
	Select the "Apperance" tab.

	On the "Windows and Buttons" menu, chooose:

		"Windows Classic Style".

	On the Color Scheme menu, choose:

		"Windows Standard"


Getting rid of "Personalized Menus" and related start menu ilth:

	This is an almost unbelieveably annoying feature
	recently added to Windows. It sorts the entries in
	the start menu and hides the things you don't use
	very often. (They might not be good for you.)

	Right-click on the task bar and select "Properties".
	Choose the "Start Menu" tab.
	Select:

		"Classic Start menu"

	Press the "Customize" button.
	In the scrolling list at the bottom of the window:
	Uncheck:

		"Use Personalized Menus"

	Check all of the options that expand menus:

		"Expand..."

	Check

		"Display Administrative Tools."

	People with normal eyesight will prefer to check:

		"Show Small Icons in Start menu."

	You have to do this again in Explorer:
	Run Explorer and choose Tools/Internet Options/Advanced:
	In the "Browsing" section, uncheck:

		"Enable Personalized Favorites Menu"

Getting rid of the "Little Dog" file search utility

	Using TweakUI, select the main Explorer section.
	Check:

		"Use Classic Search in Explorer"

	Check:
		"Use Classic Search in Internet Explorer"

Elminating the "Shortcut to" prefix when you create shortcuts

	Using TweakUI, choose the main Explorer section.
	Uncheck:

		 "Prefix 'Shortcut to' on new shortcuts"

	Shortcuts will now be created with a small arrow
	overlaying the icon. This is sufficient to identify
	the shortcut and takes up a lot less space than
	"Shortcut to XXXXX"

Enable Command Window Tab completion

	This is a bit hard to explain, but you'll like it a lot
	if you every use the Command Window.

	Linux users will recognize this feature from using
	the Bash shell.

	When you are typing in the command window, you only
	need to type the first few letters of a file name or
	directory. Then press tab: the rest of the name will
	be entered for you.

	Using TweakUI, choose the Command Window section.
	Select "Tab" for both filename and directory completion.

	If the same prefix matches several names, only the
	common part will be automatically entered for you.
	You then type a few more letters to uniquely identify
	the name and press tab again to complete the path name.

Getting FTP to work in Explorer

	In the Explorer address bar you can type an ftp URL to
	see a regular Explorer file & folder listing of an ftp site.
	Unfortunately, this feature is broken if you are inside
	a corporate firewall. To enable this feature:

	Run Explorer and choose Tools/Internet Options/Advanced:
	In the "Browsing" section, check:

		"Enable folder view for FTP sites"
		"Use passive FTP"

	You can include a username and password for non-anonymous
	ftp sites. Here is a complete ftp url example:

		ftp:\\username:password@mymachine.mydomain.com

Known bugs

	As of Windows XP, SP1 & all hot fixes up to December 16, 2002:

	The Explorer desktop crashes frequently.
	Often, it restarts itself without crashing the system.
	You see this as a 'blink': The desktop & icons flash and
	redraw themselves.

	USB mice and PS-2 keyboards 'go away'. If you run "Add
	Hardware" from the control panel and then bail out, sometimes
	they immediately start working. Sometimes you have to reboot.
	Recently, I needed to remove my keyboard device driver (PS-2)
	and reboot twice to restore the keyboard.


REALLY Getting rid of Windows Messenger

	Unless you really love to use Windows Messenger, you will want to
	remove it because is seriously compromises your system and
	exposes you to spam, demands for updates & other distractions
	EVEN IF YOU NEVER TOUCH the task bar icon. Microsoft prevents
	you from removing Messenger because they see it as marketing vehicle
	they can exploit or resell to computer vendors.

	Edit the files C:\Windows\inf\sysoc.inf with a plain-text editor.
	(Notepad for example.)

	In the section for [Components], find the line that begins with
	msmsgs. Remove the word "hide" but leave the commas on either side:
	",hide," becomes just ",,".

	Now you can use Add/Remove Software on the Control Panel to remove
	Windows Messenger. (It appears in the "Windows Components" section,
	not the main appliction list.)

An older and more complex way to remove Windows Messenger

	I include this because it has a description of how to deal with
	side-effects after removing Windows Messenger. I haven't needed
	to do this, so you may never need deal with this method either:

	1) If you have not previously turned off the task bar icon for
	Windows Messenger, do so now. It isn't necessary to go into the
	menus, just select "Exit".

	2) Quit ALL applications that have an interface to Windows Messenger.
	This includes all flavors of Outlook, Internet Explorer & probably
	other Office components. To be on the safe side, I suggest you quit
	everything.

	3) Pull up the "Run" dialog from the Start Menu and execute this command:

	RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

	4) At this point you have removed Windows Messenger, but Outlook Express
	& Outlook will still look for it when they display their Contacts
	screen. This will cause a long delay. To fix this, you need a registry edit:


	Select "Run" from the Start Menu and start the program regedit.
	Navigate to:

		HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express

	Right click in the right-hand window pane and select New, Dword value.
	Give it the name:

		Hide Messenger

	Double click this new entry and set its value to 2.
	Exit Regedit.

Reducing overhead in Windows Explorer

	This seems like a small matter when we have 2 GHz machines, but
	it turns out that a lot of the Windows Explorer animations and
	other foof also compromise stability and contribute to frequent
	restarts. To disable most of these features, try this step:

	Under System Properties/Advanced/Performance
	Select "Adjust for best performance".

	Unless you are looking closely, you won't miss any of this stuff.

Taking control of your start menu

	When applications are installed, they usually make
	a big mess in the Start Menu. Generally, they create
	a folder named after the company that made the software.
	Then they fill this folder with more-or-less useless
	document shortcuts.

	Most of us don't need to be reminded every day that the
	"North American Weevil Spritzer Corporation" made our
	favorite program. We just want to find the start
	shortcut and run the program.

	Similarly, the Uninstall shortcut is (or ought to be)
	useless because we can uninstall programs using the
	Control Panel.

	In most cases, you need only one menu item in the Start
	Menu for each program you install:

	Open the start menu by right-clicking and
	selecting "Open All Users".

	Open the "Programs Folder".

	Create two new folders:

	"ZZ Startup Refuse" and "ZZ Menu Refuse"

	Open the "Startup" folder and drag out everything
	you don't want to automatically startup and put it
	in the "ZZ Startup Refuse" folder.

	Drag each of the folders associated with an
	application into the "ZZ Menu Refuse" folder.

	Go into the "ZZ Menu Refuse folder" by <CTRL> clicking.
	This will leave the parent folder window open as well.

	Go into each application folder and copy out the One
	Useful Shortcut. Put it at the top level of
	the Programs folder. If you have a very large number
	of application, you may prefer to create folders to
	organize your applications by what they do: Utilities,
	Internet, Graphics, etc.

	When you open the start menu normally, you can change
	the order of the application shortcuts or folders by
	dragging them to a new position. Drag "ZZ Menu Refuse"
	and "ZZ Startup Refuse" to the bottom of the list.
	Arrange your other shortcuts and folders in an order
	that pleases you.

	You now have a neat-looking Start menu that only displays
	items of value to you. Should you ever need one of the
	other items included by the software manufacturer, they
	are still available one level down in the "ZZ Menu Refuse"
	folder.

	=> When you uninstall an application, you have to remember
	to trash the start menu item and "ZZ Menu Refuse" folder
	by hand. The uninstaller script won't be able to find
	these items after you move them around.

2003-04-16

	New: GPEDIT.MSC will allow you "enable" keeping messenger
	from running. This might be better than trying to remove
	it for some people.

	Some people suggest renaming msmsgs.exe to prevent the
	delay in starting outlook.

Good luck with you new machine,

-Hugh