Speed Up The COM Port - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

By default, all Windows 95/98/NT4/2000/ME/XP releases allow only up to 9600 bps on all serial ports: COMx = COM1—COM9 [BIOS (hardware) ports: COM1—COM4 ; Virtual (emulated) ports: COM5—COM9]. These settings enable serial (analogue) modem throughput
over 9600 bps, to possibly speed up Internet access.

H L M \ S O F T W A R E \ M i c r o s o f t \ W i n d o w s
NT\CurrentVersion\Ports

Modify the default String Value of the port. For example, COM1 is “9600,n,8,1” by default; you can modify it to “921600,n,8,1,p”.
WARNING: Do this ONLY IF using dial-up (analogue) modems (e.g. 56K, ISDN) connected ONLY to a Serial Port (COMx), NOT IF using xDSL, Cable, Satellite, CNR, USB or Network (digital) modems! If using internal modems located in the Communication Networking Riser (CNR) slot, do NOT use these settings! Such cards are incompatible with these settings. Also, please don’t expect your Internet access speeds to improve—if they do, well and good!

Enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing Support - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

If your ATAPI hard disk is bigger than 137 GB, Windows XP (without any service pack) will be unable to take full advantage of it due to its default 32-bit LBA support. This tweak allows you to use 48- bit LBA.

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

The tweak involves changing the value of the DWORD called EnableBigLba to 1.
WARNING: Your system must meet these requirements:❍ You must have a 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS ❍ Your hard disk must be larger than 137 GB Performing the tweak on systems that do not meet these requirements WILL result in data losss! You have been warned!

Games Hanging On An Athlon Processor? - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

If you have an AMD Athlon, and if Windows often hangs when you run a game, it could be due to the memory allocated by the video adapter driver having become corrupted. Use the following edit to correct this.

Navigate to:
HLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\Memory Management
Create a new DWORD called LargePageMinimum and set it to 0xffffffff in hexadecimal. Restart Windows and hope for the best! The problem described above is known to occur with the NVIDIA GeForce 256 and the Matrox G400 video adapters on AMD Athlon processors.
It might be applicable to other cards as well.

Native Processor Performance Control In XP - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

The following tweak applies to processors with either Intel SpeedStep or AMD PowerNow! processor performance control technologies. Windows includes inbuilt processor performance control to utilise it more efficiently. Some CPUs that support the aforementioned technologies have trouble with random hangs under XP. Even if you’ve installed an updated CPU driver, XP might not have enabled it. This hack is for such cases.

Navigate to:
HLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\P3\Parameters

Here, create a new DWORD value (or modify the existing value) called HackFlags, and edit its value according to the following.
0: Disables native XP support
1: Use settings inherited from Intel software during your XP upgrade
5: Allow XP to support all modes when on battery
You will need to restart for the change to take effect.

Save Processor Power - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Your processor polls your USB ports once every millisecond. It keeps doing this, even if you aren’t going to attach any USB devices. You can increase the polling interval—essentially by enabling “USB idling”—thus allowing some processors to enter power-saving mode.

Navigate to:
HLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{36FC9E60-
C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}\0000

Create a new DWORD value called IdleEnable and set it to 1 to enable USB idling, thus increasing the polling interval. Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

Print Job Pop-Ups - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

You might or might not, by default, be receiving a notification (by way of a pop-up message) when your print job has been completed. If you do and it’s an irritant, or if you don’t and you need it, use this Registry edit.

Navigate to:
HLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Providers

Here, create or modify a (the) DWORD value called NetPopup. Set its value to 1 to enable the pop-up notifications, and to 0 to disable them. Restart the Print Spooler service for the change to take effect. You might need to restart Windows if that doesn’t work.

Spool Elsewhere - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

This hack allows you to change the default Print Spool directory. You could possibly relocate it to a more spacious disk. The default directory is %SystemRoot%\system32\spool\printers. There are two things you can do here—set a new directory for all printers, or only for a specific printer. First, restart your computer, or alternatively, stop and start the Spooler service.

Navigate to:
HLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers

Here, change the value of the String Value DefaultSpoolDirectory to the full path of the newly created directory,for example, “F:\NewSpool” (with the quotes). To change the spool directory only for one printer, under the above key, find the sub-key that corresponds to the printer in question. Here, modify the value of the String Value SpoolDirectory to the full path of the folder you want to use. Remember to create the directory first; if it does not exist when you edit the Registry, Windows will use the default path.

Print Scheduler Priority - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Here’s how to control the priority of the Print Scheduler. Navigate to

HLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print

Create a new DWORD value called SchedulerThreadPriority and set it to one of the following. Note that the value might already exist.
0 is for Normal
1 is for Above Normal
ffffffff (eight “F”s) is for Less Than Normal
Log off and log back in, or restart, for the change to take effect.

Change The Priority Of The Print Spooler - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

The “priority” of a task is the degree of urgency that the task presents to the processor—requests from a task with higher priority are served earlier. Now, the default setting for the Print Spooler is to run at normal priority. Now if you mostly use your computer for printing, use this hack to change the priority class of the Print Spooler.

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

Create a new DWORD value called SpoolerPriority and set it according to what value you want (or if it exists, just set the value):
0xFFFFFFFF for Idle Priority
0 for Normal Priority
1 for High Priority

Take Control Of Your Modem - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

You’ve probably experienced this if you’re on dial-up: if remote connections are enabled, your computer initiates an Internet connection— at startup or when an application demands it—and you find your modem dialling all on its own. Here’s how to disable that behaviour. Navigate to:

HLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole

Create a new String value (or modify the existing value) called EnableRemoteConnect. Set it to N to disable your modem stealing control. Of course, you can always set it to Y if bad things happen after you do this. A restart is required 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.

Juggle The Keys Around - Hardware Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

How often do you use the Windows key that’s found on almost all keyboards today? Probably not too often, except when a program setup takes up the entire screen and you need to access your icons. If you press it accidentally, you need to press [Esc], which is a minor irritant. There’s a registry hack to disable the Windows key should you wish to do so.

Navigate to:
HLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout

Here, create a new Binary value (or modify the existing value) called “Scancode Map” and set it to the following. Don’t bother with what appears in the editing box—just type in the value below exactly as it is (you don’t need to use the spacebar):

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 5B E0
00 00 5C E0 00 00 00 00

Logging out and logging back in should bring the change into effect, but you might need to restart. In fact, you can change any key to any other! Essentially, each key has a code, and you need to specify how many keys you are remapping. Apart from lots of zeroes, you specify the code of the key you’re going to press, and you specify the code of the key you want it to become. For example:

The left [Alt] key is 38 00.
[Backspace] is 0E 00.

So the remapping of left [Alt] to [Backspace] would be 0e 00 38 00. Note the order. Now, there are eight pairs of zeroes at the beginning of the Scancode map, and four ending pairs of zeroes. Since we’re changing only one key, we need to use 02 00 00 00. (Two keys would be
03 00 00 00). After that comes the mapping, then the ending zeroes. So, to remap left [Alt] to [Backspace] would be

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 0E 00 38 00 00 00 00 00

Just visit www.usnetizen.com/fix_capslock.html for a complete list of Scancode maps. Also remember that the value to use to disable
a key is, of course, 00 00. Here are a few useful values.

[Caps Lock]: 3A 00
Left [Ctrl]: 1D 00
[Tab]: 0F 00
[Enter]: 1C E0
Left [Shift]: 2A 00
Right [Shift]: 36 00

Disabling [Caps Lock] would therefore be eight leading pairs of zeroes, followed by 02 00 00 00, followed by 00 00 (for the disabling), followed by 3A 00 (for [Caps Lock]), followed by four pairs of zeroes. Try changing someone’s [Enter] key to [Backspace]!

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.

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.

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!