Change Registered Owner And Organisation Name - Miscellaneous Windows XP Registry Hack

If you’ve accepted the default owner name (computer name) in office, say, or if you’ve entered the wrong information during installation—or if you just want to change it to something funny!— you can use this hack to change the details.

Navigate to:
HLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\
CurrentVersion

Modify the String Values RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganization as required. Put in the new values without the quotes.

Convert a FireWire Device To A Dynamic Disk Drive - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

A dynamic disk is a physical disk that provides features that “basic” disks do not, such as support for volumes spanning multiple disks. Such a disk contains dynamic volumes—such as simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. Note that dynamic disks are not supported on notebooks or in XP Home Edition. This hack is for converting a FireWire disk to a dynamic disk.

Navigate to:
HLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dmadmin\
Parameters

Create a new DWORD value here called EnableDynamicConversionFor1394 if it doesn’t exist, or if it does, modify the existing value. 0 is the default value; set it to 1 to enable the conversion to a dynamic disk. You may need to restart or log out for the change to take effect. Do not convert FireWire disk drives to dynamic disk drives if they will be moved to other hosts.

Implement A User-Based Custom Shell - Visual Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Windows allows you to selectively specify the system shell based on the logged-in user. For example, this allows one user to use the standard Explorer interface, and another to use the legacy “progman” shell.

Navigate to:
HCU\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ System

And to:
HLM\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ System

The second value is the system-wide setting, and the first value is for the currently logged-in user.

Create or modify the String Value called Shell and set it to the filename of the replacement shell.

Enable UDMA66 Or UDMA100 Mode - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

DMA stands for Direct Memory Access, and refers to the capability to transfer data directly between, say, two hard disks, without the need for the CPU to interfere (hence “direct”). Now, as hard disks became faster, and as the need to increase transfer speeds came up, it was found that increasing the speed of the interface itself caused problems. The efficiency of the interface itself had to be improved in addition, and what resulted was the creation of new types of DMA transfer modes called Ultra DMA modes. UDMA66 is also called Ultra DMA Mode 4, and also Ultra ATA/66. If you have an Intel chipset that supports UDMA66 or UDMA100 (you can find this out from the manual), you might find that that mode is disabled by default—and you might certainly want to enable it! You could use the Device Manager to do this, but
in some cases, that doesn’t work—in which case you’ll need to modify the Registry. Make sure your Intel chipset supports one of the two modes mentioned above, otherwise bad things might happen. Naturally, since this is a low-level hardware hack, you’ll need to restart after making the change.
Navigate to:

HLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\
{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000

Create a new DWORD value called EnableUDMA66 (or EnableUDMA100, as the case may be). Set its value to 1 to enable the ultra DMA mode, or to 0 to disable it.

Reclaim Your Optical Drive - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

This hack might help if your optical drive isn’t being detected. This hack is applicable if your drives disappear after you uninstall Adaptec Easy CD Creator versions 5.01 and earlier, or DirectCD version 3.01 or 3.01c. It should also work if your drives have disappeared for no apparent reason, or after various program installations and/or upgrades. In any case, it doesn’t hurt to try it. You’ll need to restart to see our drive again—if the hack works, that is. Navigate to:

HLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-
E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Delete the values inside the keys UpperFilters and LowerFilters. If that doesn’t seem to work, go ahead and delete the keys themselves. You’ll need to reboot to see if you’ve had any luck after that.

Get Rid Of The Hand - Visual Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

When you share a local resource on the network, a “hand” icon is placed under the item to show that it’s shared. You can remove the icon if you want to.

Navigate to:

HCR\Network\SharingHandler

Find the SharingHandler key. To remove the “hand,” clear the current data from the “(Default)” value, which is a String Value. To restore the icon to the default, enter “ntshrui.dll” there. Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

No More DVDs! - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

You can make your computer pretend not to have a DVD drive. The following tweak is useful if, say, you have kids at home and you don’t want them to play DVDs on the computer. Or, you have a large CD/DVD collection, you’re away from home, and you don’t want your friends messing with your collection. Navigate to:

HCU\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Player\Settings

The value name of interest here is EnableDVDUI. It should be a String Value (REG_SZ). Create it if it’s not there, or modify it according to what you want. “No” will disable the drive, and “Yes” will enable it. A reboot is required for the changes to take effect. This hack has been found not to work on some systems, so you’ll just have to take pot luck. If it doesn’t work, just delete the value (EnableDVDUI) you created!