Quality Free Software From The Shed!!

TweakAll 1.0

TweakAll is, and always will be, FREE.

Description

TweakAll is a program to allow you to change ('tweak') many of the hidden options in Windows95/98.

For example, does it annoy you that Windows starts playing an audio CD the moment you put it in your drive?  Just switch that option off!

TweakAll allows you to change:

•	CD Autorun options
•	Windows Boot up options
•	Items on the Add/Remove control panel
•	Overclock your 3dfx Voodoo card
•	And many more!

Operation

Use of the program is quite simple, but we do recommend that you make use of the backup facilities of TweakAll before changing any of the system settings for the first time.  Select the ‘BACKUP/RESTORE’ tab and then press each of the three backup buttons one after the other.  This will create backups of your Windows registry, the MSDOS.SYS file, the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, the CONFIG.SYS and the SYSTEM.INI file.  Once the backups have been created, using the restore buttons located on the ‘BACKUP/RESTORE’ tab can easily restore them.

The program has a series of ‘TABS’ with allow you to change various aspects of your system - these are listed below.

About

This screen simply displays some information about TweakAll, some contact information and credits/thanks.

Boot Options

This screen allows you to change various settings that affect the start-up process of your computer, such as whether to boot directly into Windows or not.

Explorer Options & More Explorer Options

These two screens allow you to alter settings that affect the Windows explorer, which in turn affects the Windows desktop (the desktop IS the explorer!).  Examples of explorer settings include speeding up the display of menus and whether to play audio CD’s automatically.

Cache Settings

This screen allows you to alter the cache settings used by Windows.  Altering these settings can significantly improve Windows performance.  Care must be taken when changing these settings, as incorrectly changing the settings can also decrease your systems performance.

A good rule of thumb is this - If you do not understand what the five sliders are referring to, don’t change them!

Add/Remove

This screen displays allows you to edit the add/remove program entries.  The standard Windows Add/Remove program (in the control panel) only allows you to run the associated uninstall command.  TweakAll allows you to do this as well as add you own entries and edit existing ones.

Send To

This screen allows you to remove and create new Send To context menu entries.  The Send To context menu appears when you right-click a file from the Windows explorer.

Run Programs

This screen allows you to view the list of programs that are run every time Windows starts, many of these programs may be running without your knowledge!  You can remove programs from the list, thereby stopping them from running when Windows starts.  You can also add new programs to the list, so those programs that you commonly use are run automatically when Windows starts.

3dfx Voodoo

From this screen you change useful settings on your 3dfx Voodoo/Voodoo2 based cards, such as disabling the 3dfx spinning logo.  Do not worry if you do not have a 3dfx based card, as changing these settings simply change does not adversely affect your system. 

If you change some of these settings and get an ‘Out of environment space’ message when you re-start your computer, you need to increase the MS-DOS environment size.  Check the ‘allow increase of environment space’ check box on the Voodoo setting screen and press the Apply button to make TweakAll automatically increase the environment size to 1024 (which should be sufficient).  If you still get the error after allowing TweakAll to increase the value, use a text editor (such as notepad) and edit the file ‘CONFIG.SYS’ on the root of your C: drive.  Find the line that starts with ‘SHELL=’, which should look like this:

shell=c:\command.com c:\ /E:1024 /P

Change the value 1024 to something larger.

Backup/Restore

This screen allows you to backup and restore the Windows files that TweakAll changes. 

Contact Information

E-Mail - tweakall@netcomuk.co.uk 
WWW - http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~njones/index.htm 

Planned Future Enhancements (and how to be a Beta Tester!)

Support for other makes of 3d accelerator cards

Most 3d cards on the market (3dfx, nVidia, S3, Matrox etc.) allow for some tweaking of their settings.  If enough people get in touch requesting tweaks for a particular make of accelerator, we’ll look into adding it.  Just e-mail us at the usual address (tweakall@netcomuk.co.uk).

Even More Tweaks!

If you know of any interesting Windows/3dfx etc. tweaks that aren't in this version - give us an e-mail at tweakall@netcomuk.co.uk and we'll add them (and give you full credit on our web site and in this read me file!)

Beta Testing

As we add new features to TweakAll, we will require people to beta test the software (we cannot hope to test it on a large enough range of systems on our own).  This is especially true if we start adding support for a range of 3d accelerator cards (everyone at the Shed owns 3dfx cards!).  If you want to become a beta tester send an e-mail to tweakall@netcomuk.co.uk with the words ‘Beta Tester’ in the subject line (for easy filtering at our end), a run down of you computer in the body of the document (Windows OS version and make/model of Video card will do) and some contact information so we can get in touch.