Change Certain Folder Locations - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Special folders such as My Documents, Desktop, and so on can be changed to any other location from that set by the default instalHACKS lation. There’s a way to do this without a registry hack, but using the following hack is simpler. First, just move the required folders to the new locations. Then…

Navigate to:

HCU\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ User Shell Folders

Open this Registry key and edit the full path for each special folder with the corresponding new path. For example, the default location of the My Documents folder is “C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents. Move the folder to, say, “F:\Documents”, and update the value for the “Personal” setting with the new path, that is, “F:\My Documents”, without the quotes.

The change should take effect immediately.

Control Auto-Reboot After A Crash - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

When Windows crashes due to application, hardware or any other system fault, it is by default set to automatically reboot. In some cases, if the crashing is persistent and you want to troubleshoot your PC, you might not want the system to go into autoreboot mode.

Navigate to:

HLM\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ CrashControl

Change the value of AutoReboot to 0 to prevent an automatic reboot after a crash.

Die A Faster Death - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

If an application does not respond during shutdown, XP will normally wait for a while to see if open applications shut down safely.

Use this hack to shut down straightaway and not wait for any response from the application.

Navigate to:

HCU\ Control Panel\ Desktop

And to:

HKEY_USERS\ .DEFAULT\ Control Panel\ Desktop

The first key is user-specific, and the second is system-wide. In both these locations, change the String value called AutoEndTasks to 1 to kill the application immediately, or 0 to prompt for user action. WaitToKillAppTimeout controls the default time, in milliseconds, before killing the application. Reduce this time to further speed up the process.

Automatic Window Refresh - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Normally, there is a small delay after some information changes before it reflects in the GUI. If you need to see the information right away, you would need to press [F5]. The following will enable the system to do faster updates.

Navigate to:
HLM\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ Update

For faster updates, change the DWORD value called UpdateMode to 0. The default is 1.

A reboot will be required for the changes to take effect. Note that there is a likelihood of conflict if this setting is applied with system policies running: the UpdateMode value is used by system policies to Disable, Automatically or Manually check for a connection to the NETLOGON share of a domain controller. Change it back to the default if you are running system policies or are connected to a domain controller.

Control Master File Table Zone Reservation - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

On NTFS-enabled XP systems, you can control the amount of space allocated to the MFT. The MFT contains reference entries to all the files on the system. This can get fragmented over time and affect system performance. Use this hack to allocate sufficient space for the MFT.

Navigate to:

HLM\ System\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ FileSystem

Modify NtfsMftZoneReservation to a value between 1 and 4. For most users, a value of 2 is good enough. However, in this day of humongous hard disks, a better bet would be to set it at 4.

To be completely effective, this setting should be specified at the time the volume is formatted.