How to Keep Shortcuts to Shares from being added to My
Network Places
XP has a feature that causes a shortcut to be placed in My
Network Places for each share on a remote
computer that you access. If you don't want these shortcuts
to be added, using XP Pro, you can edit
your Local Security Policy to prevent this. The following
instructions assume that the computer is
not a member of a domain:
Click Start | Run and type mmc.exe. Click OK.
This opens an empty management console. Highlight the
Console menu and click File-Add/Remove
Snap-in.
Click Add.
Click Group Policy.
Click Add.
The default is Local Computer. Click Finish.
Click Close and OK to close the dialog box.
In the left pane under Local Computer Policy, click User
Configuration to expand it.
Click to expand Administrative Templates.
Click to expand Desktop.
In the right pane, right click Do not add shares of recently
opened documents to My Network Places.
Click Properties.
Click Enable.
Click OK
No more shortcuts will be automatically added.
Turn off Microsoft's phone home error reporting "feature".
Right click My Computer, select Properties, select Advanced,
select Error Reporting and check the
Disable error reporting box.
Correct slow browsing of files on your network, running a
home LAN using XP machines.
(This worked
very well on our computer network)
Open Network Connections.
Select at the top of window, Advanced - Advanced Settings.
Select the Provider Order tab.
Change the Provider Order to:
1- Microsoft Windows Network (this was #2)
2- Web Client Network (this was #3)
3- Microsoft Terminal Services (this was #1)
ALSO - XP and Win2K enable "LMHosts lookup" on your TCP/IP
connections.
If there's no LAN Manager Host on your network (and there
won't be on most small networks), XP and
Win2K may slow to a crawl each time you launch an app as
they look in vain for the Host that isn't
there. Simply disabling the LMHosts Lookup solves the
problem completely and allows apps to open at
normal speed. (The Default is checked "Enable LMHosts
lookup")
Here's how to disable LMHosts Lookup:
Open Network Connections.
Right-click the network connection you want to configure,
and then click Properties.
On the General tab (for a local area connection) or the
Networking tab (all other connections),
click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and then click Properties.
Click Advanced, click the WINS tab.
Once there, UNcheck the "Enable LMHosts lookup."
Disable the Desktop Cleanup Wizard.
Windows XP includes a Desktop Cleanup Wizard. It's designed
to remove unused items from your
desktop. By default, it tries to do its cleanup job every 60
days. But what if you like your
cluttered desktop and don't want it cleaned up every two
months. Right click an empty area of the
desktop, select Properties, select the Desktop tab, and
click Customize Desktop. On the General tab,
uncheck the box that says Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every
60 days.
Decline in Performance Occurs When You Right-Click a File or
Folder in Windows Explorer
(This is an XP BUG)
Any file-copy operation that is occurring at that time may
appear to stop responding. Network connection speed may significantly decrease.
All streaming input/output operations are degraded. For
example, streaming audio over Windows Media Player becomes distorted.
CAUSE
When you right-click a file or folder in Windows Explorer,
the CPU usage goes to 100 percent while the shortcut menu is displayed. CPU usage returns to the
correct level when the shortcut menu is
closed.
FIX
Turn off the transition effects for menus and ToolTips. To
do this, follow these steps:
Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
In Control Panel, double-click Display, and then click the
Appearance tab.
On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
In the Effects dialog box, click to clear the Use the
following transition effect for menus and
tooltips check box, and then click OK two times.
XP - Check Computer devices for errors.
Right click on "My Computer," select Properties, then
Hardware, then Device Manager. (Or: click to
Start/My Computer/View system information/Hardware/Device
Manager.) You should see no items flagged with the yellow exclamation marks or red Xs that indicate
trouble.
Still inside Device Manager, click on View/Show hidden
devices. A red X in a hidden device may or
may not indicate a problem (some hidden devices may be
disabled deliberately, because they aren't
needed). If a problem is found you may want to right click
the item and select uninstall. Reboot and
it should install itself or you may need to update the
driver.
Disable the Messenger service. Its easy to reverse at a
later time if you wish to do so.
Windows XP Home
Click Start->Settings ->Control Panel
Click Performance and Maintenance
Click Administrative Tools
Double click Services Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK
Windows XP Professional
Click Start->Settings ->Control Panel
Click Administrative Tools
Click Services
Double click Services Scroll
down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK
Adjust XP's virtual memory settings, your "swapfile" or
"paging file"
XP places your "swapfile" or "paging file" (a portion of
your hard drive that's used as a kind of
pseudo-RAM) on your C: drive, and sets it up so it can grow
and shrink as needed. However, you may
be able to do better. For example, if you have more than one
physical disk in your system, you may
get better performance by either placing the swapfile on the
lesser-used disk (assuming it's as fast
as or faster
than the primary disk). You also may see modest improvements in responsiveness if you set the
swapfile to a fixed size, so Windows won't
waste time growing and shrinking the file on demand.
i.e. 512MB ram, set the swap
file to a fixed size of 700MB or
2GB ram we use a fixed size of
3070MB.
Tune XP's Visual Performance
Depending on how you set it up, XP may have reserved a
substantial amount of your CPU horsepower for
things like animating various desktop elements, placing
shadows under menus and cursors, and rounding the upper corners of open windows.
These visual effects can slow down screen drawing operations
significantly. Also, XP may have
selected a "color depth" for your video system in excess of what you really need; this, too, can
slow down screen operations.
To adjust the color depth, right click anywhere on an empty
portion of your desktop and select
Properties/Settings. For most normal business users, the
Color Quality setting should be set to
Medium (16 bit). Higher settings do matter in photo/video
editing and similar applications, but for
things like Web browsing, E mail, and word
processing, the Medium setting is fully adequate, and it's faster.
To adjust XP's desktop animations and visual effects, right
click on My Computer and select
Properties/Advanced/Performance Settings. You can choose to
activate/deactivate individual items or
use the general "best performance/best appearance" buttons.
When you've made a change, click Apply,
and you'll see
the effects almost immediately.Experiment until you've found the mix of speed and visual effects that works best for you.
Customize the Taskbar
Right click on an empty spot in the Task Bar (the bar next
to the Start button). Uncheck Lock the
Taskbar. This lets you resize various portions of the
taskbar the way you want them. Now, explore
the other
Taskbar settings to see if any will work for you.
Recycle Bin size
By default, both the Recycle Bin and Internet Explorer's
Cache want to consume ridiculous amounts of
your hard drive space. Right click on the Recycle Bin,
select Properties, and on the Global tab,
decide how much space you want the Recycle Bin to consume,
either for all drives in your system, or
on a per drive basis. (It's a percentage of the total space.
I adjust the slider way to the left, so
I'm using "only" a few hundred megs of space for trash.)
Similarly, open Internet Explorer, and select Tools/Internet
Options. Under Temporary Internet Files, click the Settings button and select a reasonable
size for this cache area. Generally speaking, if you have a fast connection, 5 Mbytes to 10
Mbytes is adequate; 25 Mbytes or so is
usually enough with a slower dial up connection.
Rein In System Restore
System Restore is an
incredible space hog. It might be worth it, if
System Restore were a truly complete and foolproof form of
backup, but it's not. At best, System
Restore can and will get the core operating system running
again after a bad crash, but it doesn't
return all files to the pre trouble state, and it can't
remove all traces of a program that went
bad. As a result, System Restores usefulness is limited,
and so should be its appetite for disk
space.
Right click on My Computer, select Properties, and select
the System Restore tab. Select your main
drive (usually C:), click Settings, and move the slider to
reserve a reasonable amount of disk space. With a good regimen of daily backups, you can even
move the slider all the way to the left.
If you have more than one drive, you may wish to turn off
System Restore entirely for non system
drives. There's
little, if any, benefit to be gained by having them
monitored.
Take The Brakes Off Your Network Settings
XP's default network settings for Maximum Transmission Unit,
Receive Window, and such, may or may
not be ideal for your circumstances. The only way to know is
to take a close look: For example, DSL
Reports and SpeedGuide have excellent free information,
online tests, and even one click tweaks that
can automatically optimize all or some of XP's internal
plumbing for high speed connectivity. DSL Reports also offers a free, simple network tweaking tool
called DrTCP that lets you instantly and easily adjust a variety of parameters; this tool makes
iterative testing a snap, as you experiment to find the best settings for your particular setup.
Lock The Door
XP has a built in desktop firewall, but it's turned off by
default.
We leave it off and use the very good
Free Comodo Firewall.
If you must use XP's firewall, to
turn it on: Right click on My Network Places, Properties, right click on your connection
(e.g. Local Area Connection), select
Properties again, then Advanced, and then click the box for
Protect My Computer. But note that the
built in firewall is very basic, as
any free LeakTest tool will
demonstrate for you.
Unhide all files
To see *all* hidden files, click to "Tools/Folder
Options/View" in Explorer (not Internet Explorer, but the tool you use for navigating your hard drive.) Check
"Show hidden files and folders," and
UNcheck "Hide protected operating system files." (I also
like to UNcheck "Hide extensions for known
file types.") Click the "Apply to all folders" button at the
top of the Window, and then you should
be able to see all hidden and system files and folders,
everywhere on your hard drive.
