Windows-Tweaks

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Windows XP tweaks:

Windows Tweaks

To activate some of these features Windows-XP has to be restarted !

Using this feature of Tweak-XP you can modify the appearance of the Windows XP startmenu and several other parts of the Windows XP user interface. You can hide several entries of your Windows XP startmenu, add new entries, make the desktop icons and the taskbar transparent, control the font smoothing feature of Windows XP and a lot more.

Tweak-XP offers for each option a right-click tool tip which informs you in details on each function. Self-explaing software is the better software - no need to browse through help files and documentation...

The Startmenu tweaks:

Classic Startmenu:
(these settings affect the classic Windows startmenu - NOT the new Windows XP startmenu):

Hide 'Documents' folder: hides the 'Documents' folder of the Windows Startmenu
Hide 'Search' folder: hides the 'Search' folder of the Windows Startmenu
Hide 'favorites' folder: hides the 'favorites' folder of the Windows Startmenu
Hide 'Run' command: hides the 'Run' command of the Windows Startmenu

New Startmenu:
(these settings affect the new Windows XP startmenu - NOT the classic Windows startmenu):

Hide 'My pictures': hides the 'My pictures' folder of the Windows Startmenu.
Hide 'My music': hides the 'My music' folder of the Windows Startmenu.
Hide 'Control panel': hides the 'Control Panel' folder of the Windows Startmenu.
Cascade 'Control Panel': cascades the entries of the 'Control Panel' folder.
Hide 'Help and support': hides the 'Help and Support' folder of the Windows Startmenu.
Hide 'Printer and Fax': hides the 'Printer and Fax' folder of the Windows Startmenu.
Hide 'My Computer': hides the 'My Computer' folder of the Windows Startmenu.
Hide 'My documents': hides the 'My documents' folder of the Windows Startmenu.
Cascade 'My documents': cascades the entries of the 'My documents' folder.
Clear 'My documents' on Exit: you can make Windows clear the Documents Folder on Shutdown - attention: this does also affect the webaddresses of the internet pages visited recently !
Deactivate 'Intelligent menues': this option deactivates the 'intelligent menues' feature of Tweak-XP. Intelligent menues do only display those entries you use most of the time and hide unused sections.
Hide 'favorites': hides the 'favorites' folder of the Windows Startmenu.
Hide Run Command: hides the 'Run' command of the Windows Startmenu.
Hide 'Network neighborhood': hides the 'Network neighborhood' option of the Windows Startmenu.
Hide 'Network connections': hides the 'Network connections' option of the Windows Startmenu.
Notify new applications: forces Windows not to notify new installed applications in the Startmenu.
Display Admin tools: this option displays an admin folder containing powerful administration utilities.
Enable startmenu scrolling: enables the Startmenu scrolling effect.
Re-sort startmenu: resorts all entries of the Startmenu.

The Desktop tweaks:

Make the text of the desktop icons transparent: did you ever want the desktop icon text to be transparent ? Use this option to make the background picture of your dektop shine through the text of your desktop icons. This feature will remain active after a restart of Windows until you uncheck this option. Attention: This feature will only work with Active Desktop disabled.
Deactivate Desktop QuickInfos: deactivates the Quickinfos of the desktop elements.
Deactivate TaskBar Balloon Tool-Tips: this option will disable the balloon tool-tips - such as the one that appears when you go online.
Deactivate desktop Rightclick menu: disables the desktop rightclick menu.
Animate windows: on minimizing / maximizing a window an animation of the window will be displayed. Use this feature to disable the animation.
Move Windows filled: sets whether windows will be moved filled or not.
Changes 3D effects of Windows: changes some of the 3D effects of Windows.
Change vertical icon spacing: this setting specifies the number of pixels that appear vertically between icons.
Desktop-Shortcutarrows: usually shortcuts on the desktop are displayed with an additional arrow symbol. Use this feature of Tweak-XP to remove the arrows.
Font smoothing: the font-smoothing feature of Windows XP smoothes the fonts of the Windows user interface and makes the desktop icon-text transparent. Enable font-smoothing by checking the check-box below and by selecting the type of font-smoothing. If you just want to make the desktop icons transparent, use the 'Transparent desktop icons' feature of Tweak-XP and disable font-smoothing.

More desktop tweaks:

Display 'My Network Places': when checked, the 'My Network Places' icon is displayed on the Windows desktop.
Display 'Internet Explorer': when checked, the 'Internet Explorer' icon is displayed on the Windows desktop.
Display 'My Computer': when checked, the 'My Computer' icon is displayed on the Windows desktop.
Display 'Recycle Bin': when checked, the 'Recycle Bin' icon is displayed on the Windows desktop.
Display 'My Documents': when checked, the 'My Documents' icon is displayed on the Windows desktop.
Hide all desktop icons: this option will make the desktop icons disappear on the next start of Windows.

Miscellaneous tweaks:

Remove "Shortcut to..." on new shortcuts: if you create a shortcut to a file of discdrive, Windows will add 'Shortcut to...' to the new shortcut. Use this option to switch off this behaviour.
Automatic Window refresh: to refresh the view in Explorer, you have to hit the F5 key. Using this feature of Tweak-XP you can make the Explorer refresh automatically.
Show bitmaps as icons in Explorer: activate this option and your bitmap files will be displayed with an icon representing the bitmap itself.
Remove the Shared Documents folders from 'My Computer': by activating this option, your 'Shared Documents' folders will be removed from the 'My computer' view of Explorer.

Shared Documents displayed (left image)
Shared Documents removed (right image)

Automatically close non-responding applications: occasionally when Windows XP shuts down, a task will return as 'Not Responding' and you are given the option to end the task. This tweak automatically closes any non-responding applications.
Run each 16bit application in a separate virtual machine (VDM): when starting a 16bit application you have the option of running each in a separate virtual machine (VDM). Having a separate virtual machine, has the advantage that if the applications crashes only that one application is affected, on the down side it takes more system resources.
Path of Windows XP installation files: here you can change to location of your Windows XP installation files.
Change registered user info: here you can change the information of the registered user of your copy of Windows. Please remember that changes on these information may cause problems to software which checks them !
Cursor blink speed: using this scroll bar you can change the cursor-blink-speed.
Startmenu speed: the opening speed of your startmenu can be set here in milliseconds.
Change Icon Cache: the Icon cache stores your desktop and startmenu icons. For faster access you should increase the size of this cache.

Make taskbar transparent:

This feature of Tweak-XP will make the taskbar transparent / translucent. Just enter the value of transparency and check the 'Make taskbar transparent' checkbox. The tasbar will remain transparent until you disable this feature.
Attention: to make the taskbar transparent on each startup of Windows XP, you must set Tweak-XP to be launched with Windows XP (see the 'Settings' page of Tweak-XP).

To make any window of a Windows application transparent, please check out our utility 'Trans-XP':

Tweak-XP detects an installed version of Trans-XP and integrates a button to start Trans-XP from within Tweak-XP.

Click here to download a free trial version of Trans-XP.

Performance related visual tweaks:

Windows XP comes with several new visual effects, such as the transparent selection rectangle and the shadowed mouse. To speed up your PC you can deactivate some of those CPU intensive features. The more visual effects you deactivate, the less your CPU is occupied by 'nice' but 'useless' stuff.

Right click any option to get some more information on it.