Don’t Show Common Program Groups - Visual Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

If you don’t want to see the “common groups” in the Start Menu, use this hack to disable it from getting displayed.

Navigate to:

HCU\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer

And to:

HLM\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer

The first value above, as you know by now, is user-specific, and the second is the system-wide setting.

Change the DWORD Value of NoCommonGroups to 0 to disable the display, and to 1 to re-enable it.

Start Menu: Scrolling Or Columns? - Visual Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

By default, Start Menu items are cascaded as columns across the screen. This can get annoying and inconvenient when your Start Menu list becomes large. This hack will enable you to switch the default Start Menu display mode to a scrolling menu.

Navigate to:
HCU\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ Advanced

And to:
HLM\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ Advanced

To enable Start Menu scrolling, change the value of StartMenuScrollPrograms to “Yes”. Set the value to “No” for the default multiple-column display. Reboot or log out and back in for the change to take effect.

Make Your NIC Do Some Work - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

This applies only if your network adapter has an onboard processor: you can find out from the spec sheet whether or not it does. If it does, it has been designed to offload network processing computations from the CPU. This hack can reduce system slowdown during high-speed data transfers. Navigate to:

HLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

Create a new DWORD value called DisableTaskOffload and set it to 0 to enable the NIC’s processor. Of course, if the key exists and is set to 1, reset it to 0. A restart is required for the change to take effect.