Load Applications Faster - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

The Windows prefetcher aims to load applications faster by “prefetching” 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\ Session Manager\ Memory Management\ PrefetchParameters

The default value for the EnablePrefetcher setting is 3. Change this value to 5 to 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.

Some Notes before you go ahead with the Windows XP Registry Hacks

This blog covers a range of Registry edits, ranging from those for Internet software, to those related to personal computer security, and so forth. Included in this chapter, therefore, are those hacks that are applicable to XP but which don't fall into any other category.



hacks For Windows XP

So you're ready now—a little basic knowledge goes a long way. You want to speed things up, you want to make XP more intuitive to your personal way of doing things, you want to make it look pretty and impress your khandhan and friends…



But needless to say (at least now, after a dozen warnings!), delving into the Registry is not for the careless or faint of heart. The first and last rule when hacking XP's innards is to back up before doing anything. Ideally, keep a little noteblog with you. Note down the changes you're making and the backup file prior to the change. This will help you quickly roll back to an earlier backup if things should go wrong.



A few general rules: if you make a change, it is best to reboot. If you are going to make a bunch of changes, do them all at one go and reboot. In most cases, you shouldn't face any problems. If you do, roll back to the last backup and go through the list again one by one between each reboot, until you reach the offensive hack. Sometimes you will need to re-create the String / DWORD / Binary values under a key, or even the key itself.



If a setting does not work as discussed, or, even worse, does the opposite of what was intended, reset it to the previous setting.

Third-party Registry Editors - Windows XP Registry Hack Tutorials

Regedit is fine as long as you don't tinker with the registry much, but there are several reasons you might want other Registry-related software. Here we explain why you can't do with just Regedit, what software are available, and what they do.



Beyond Regedit

Once you get into editing the Registry regularly, you will notice a whole lot of things that you want to do differently or in a better way. You will want to move around the Registry faster, and speed up searches within the Registry, for example. You will also want to find out what applications are using the Registry and how, what changes are being made, and by which application. Then, of course, you will notice the continual bloating of the Registry due to entries left over from uninstalled applications that have not deleted their entries, from changes made by users, hardware additions, hardware removal, system configuration changes, and so forth.



You might, therefore, need tools beyond Regedit. There are three classes of applications we talk about now: third-party Registry editors, Registry trackers, and Registry cleaners.



3.1 Third-party Registry Editors

Regedit is a pretty basic tool provided by Microsoft. In most cases this should be more than sufficient for the job, since the Registry is not accessed regularly in most cases. But Registry hackers dispel with that convention in pursuit of the ultimate fine-tuned Registry, and in the pursuit of wanting to get things done faster! This is where third-party Registry editors step in.



These editors extend the standard functionality of Regedit by including powerful productivity enhancements such as faster search, cut/copy/paste functions, bookmarks, and undo options, amongst others.

Creating And Using .Reg Files - Windows XP Registry Hack Tutorials

Now that you have an understanding of how the Registry operates, you are ready to start |-hacking it! hackers are not just those who create malicious viruses or attempt to break into systems. In fact, anyone who decides to get under the hood of any system to discover how it works, tweaks it to gain some advantage, or does it just out of curiosity to see what happens when something is changed, can be considered as a hacker. The hacker is more interested in the mechanics of the hack rather than the result. Once you get into the Registry and change things around, you may want to create your own .reg files to distribute to friends or publish it on your Web site or blog. Use this capability with caution, and be extra sure of what you are doing. A wrong entry here can potentially wreak havoc on a user's system.



The .reg file is actually a text file which will open in any ASCII editor like Notepad. It uses a specific syntax that the registry recognizes. Following the rules of this syntax you can create and publish your own registry hack.



The .reg file uses the syntax:

RegistryEditorVersion

Blank line

[RegistryPath1]

"DataItemName1"="DataType1:DataValue1"

"DataItemName2"="DataType2:DataValue2"

Blank line

[RegistryPath2]

"DataItemName3"="DataType3:DataValue3"



For Windows XP and Windows 2000, the header RegistryEditorVersion should always read "Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00". You can also create .reg files for use on older Windows 98 and Windows NT4.0 systems. REGEDIT4 is the version entry in the header of the .reg file for Windows 98 and NT4.0 systems.



Typical entries in a .reg file



A .reg file with the REGEDIT4 header will work both on Windows XP/2000 as well as on Windows 98/NT4.0 systems, since the Registry is backwards-compatible. However, .reg files with the header "Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00" will only work on Windows XP/2000 based systems.



Note that when creating a hack on Windows XP/2000 targeted at earlier versions of Windows, you should always test whether these hacks will work on those earlier OSes. If you are unable to test it on earlier Windows versions, release the .reg file with the header "Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00" to prevent accidental updates into the registries of those earlier Windows versions. If you are quite certain that the hack is harmless to Windows 98/NT4.0 machines, and you do want to release it to that group of users as well, then at the very least, include a disclaimer such as "Not tested on Windows 98/NT4.0; deploy at your own risk!" so that the user is sufficiently warned about what he is about to do.



The Blank line informs the Registry of the start of a new Registry path. Every key and sub-key starts with a new Registry path and helps you identify the location of each of the entries in the registry when examining the contents of the .reg file.



RegistryPathx is the path to the location in the Registry of the particular key or sub-key whose values you will be adding, modi- Typical entries in a .reg file fying or deleting. The path has to be enclosed in square brackets, and each sub-key level is separated by a backslash. For example:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International]. If the subkey in the path does not exist, it will be created—hence it is important that you follow the correct order in specifying the path. For example, if you erroneously create the path as [HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\International\Control Panel], then a new key called International will be created under HKEY_CURRENT_USER with a sub-key called Control Panel. Multiple entries in the .reg file will each start with their own paths separated by blank lines.



The "DataItemName1"="DataType1:DataValue1" determines the specific values of the key (or sub-key). Each key can have one or more DataItemName. This is the specified name of the data, and is enclosed in quotation marks. It is immediately followed by an equals sign. To the right of the equals sign, the data type (DWORD or hexadecimal) is specified, followed by the actual data. If the data is of the String type, then no data type is specified, and the Registry will understand that the data type is String. The data type and the data value are separated by colons, and the entire entry is enclosed in quotations. Here's an example.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Appearance]

"Current"="Windows 2000"

"PreviewMode"=hex:04,00,00,00

"ShowNewProcesses"=dword:00000000



Here, the data name Current has a string value: "Windows 2000". The data name PreviewMode has a binary value represented in hexadecimal. The data name ShowNewProcesses has a DWORD value of 00000000.



If the data name does not exist it will be created in the sub-key specified in the path; if it exists, it will overwrite the existing value with the new values. If you want to delete entries in the Registry with a .reg file, you can use the hyphen symbol. For example, [-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Test] will delete the "Test" key in the specified path. To delete a value, put the hyphen symbol immediately after the equals sign of the data name. For example…

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Test]

"TestItem"=-



…will delete the TestItem data name in the Test sub-key of the Control Panel key in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive.



To rename an entry, first delete the entry using the above procedure, then specify the new name and values in the same .reg file. Both entries have to be separated by blank lines. An example:



[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\Pager\

IMVironments\baseball3]



[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\Pager\IMVironments\baseball4]

"promo"=dword:00000002

"name"="Precious Moments"



[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\Pager\IMVironments\baseball4]

"promo"=dword:00000002

"name"=-



In this example, the sub-key "baseball3" will get deleted first. Then, the sub-key "baseball4" will be created with the data names "promo" and "name" containing a DWORD value of 00000002, and a String value called "Precious Moments" respectively. Then the data name "name" will get deleted from the sub-key "baseball4".



It is good practice to distribute your .reg file as a zipped archive to prevent accidental insertion into the Registry. Even though the user will be prompted before adding the .reg file to the registry, using the archive method will act as double insurance against carelessness on the user's part. The user will need to unzip the .reg file and double-click on it. Then, he will be prompted to add the information in the .reg file to the Registry.



If you right click on a .reg file, the first three options will allow you to either Merge the file with the Registry (which is the same as double-clicking on it), print out the text, or edit it with your text editor—usually Notepad or WordPad.



To even make it safer still, you might want to change the default double-click action of merging the .reg file with the Registry to be changed to open it in Notepad. Look for this tweak in what follows!

Editing The Registry - Windows XP Registry Hack Tutorials

Using Regedit you can add, delete, edit or rename a sub-key or value. Navigate to the appropriate section of the Registry that you wish to edit. This is similar to the folder and sub-folder concept in Explorer, and clicking on the hive's "+" sign will make it expand to show the keys. Clicking on the "+" sign for each key will further expand them to show the sub-keys, and so on. If you are following instructions from a manual, the hive names are sometimes abbreviated as follows:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT: HKCR

HKEY_CURRENT_USER: HKCU

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE: HKLM

HKEY_USERS: HKU



Thus, the hive location HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Accessibility\HighContrast will be abbreviated as HKCU\Control Panel\Accessibility\HighContrast.



Note: In all the Registry hacks that begin in Chapter 4, we have used the following abbreviations:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT: "HCR"

HKEY_CURRENT_USER: "HCU"

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE: "HLM"



Clicking on a key or sub-key will show, in the right pane, the values it holds. If it contains no values, at the minimum it will show a "(Default)" setting entry, which will not contain any data. DoubleII click each individual setting to open its data values. You can then edit the value as required.



Double click setting to edit value



To add a key, right-click on the parent key (similar to the parent folder in Explorer) and select New > Key. Enter the name of the key and press [Enter]. To add a value, select the key, rightclick and select NEW, and the data type for the new value. Give a name for the value and press [Enter]. Double-clicking the value will enable you to modify it.



New Key



As mentioned in Chapter 1, the value type is determined by the context, and there are three basic data types: String, DWORD, and Binary.



New key created



"String" is a human-readable text entry and is used for most user-defined entries such as text, filenames, file paths, and so on. DWORD is a Boolean entry, which is usually a set of values such as yes, no, 0, 1, 2, 3, and so forth. Binary is raw binary data stored directly as 1s and 0s (binary format) and is entered either in binary or in hexadecimal format. New Key Modifying a newly added value setting .



Adding a Key value setting



Modifying a newly added value setting