Tweaking Windows 98

Windows 98's underlying functionality remains almost identical to Windows 95, which means that many of the methods that can be used to tweak Windows 95 can be employed on Windows 98. This is not wholly the case, because some of the extra functionality of the Windows 95 Plus! Pack (Desktop Themes and new Effects tab on the Display Properties) and some of the Windows 95 PowerToys (CABViewer and QuickRes) have been included as part of Windows 98. Windows 98 also includes its own automatic "tweaking" to make sure your machine gives the best performance it can, in the form of the Maintenance Wizard and ScanDisk enhancements. Extra functionality will also be added by forthcoming releases like Internet Explorer 5, DirectX 6 and the Windows 98 Plus! pack.

Windows 95 PowerToys

The standard set of Windows 95 PowerToys can be used to enhance the way the operating system functions. Many of them add in functions that really should have been incorporated into the main system, but they are all here on the SuperCD.

The most important PowerToy, TweakUI, has recently been updated. The new version is designed for use with Windows 98 and offers new features for controlling the changes that have been made to the Windows GUI.

Internet Explorer 4 PowerToys

Because Windows 98 comes with Internet Explorer 4 integrated, you can also install the IE4 PowerToys that were released for IE4 for Windows 95. These are utilities that plug into the browser, adding new features. They were developed by the IE4 team, but are not a part of the official package and include Open Frame in New Window context menu item, Quick Search (new button in links that details the text shortcuts you can use in the Address bar to perform Internet searches via search engines - this is different from the standard Search Toolbar in IE4/Win98), Text Highlighter (which allows you to highlight text for note taking from HTML pages) and the other advances detailed below.

If you are viewing large pictures, but don’t have the real estate on your desktop, then this right mouse button menu will allow you to zoom in on the section of the image that you are interested in. It also allows you to increase the size of a picture on the screen so can act as an addition to the Accessibility features. It certainly makes images on the WWW more worthwhile if you are looking to see what new product interfaces look like or what a diagram is trying to show you.

Hypertext provides links to different pages so that you can easily browse from one area of interest to another. However, many pages are starting to include numerous links - a prime example being this Companion CD. With the IE4 PowerToys installed, you can right-click on any page and select the Links List option which opens a scrollable window with just the links in it. Click on the link and the page will be opened in the defined target frame. It’s a quick way to browse through pages to the ones that you need.

Internet Explorer 4.0 made searching the WWW easier than before, but this extra brings you another weapon in your arsenal of information-seeking missiles. Simply click in the word or phrase that you need to find, then right-click and select the Web Search menu item. A new window will open, sending the text to an auto-search facility on the default search engine, so that the results are immediately sent back to you. It means that finding a phrase no longer requires cutting, going to search, pasting in your text and then sending the request, because it is all done automatically for you.

Registry Changes

Windows 98 uses the registry to store settings in the same way that Windows 95 does, so some of the tweaks you can perform under Windows 95 can be used under the new OS. You should only start editing the registry if you are an expert user and if you have a backup of your registry.

When you use the Start menu under Windows 98, you'll notice that there is a slight delay when you hover over a menu folder before it is opened. You can either elimate this altogether or reduce the time. By default (i.e. without a key) it is set to 400 milliseconds. Start Regedit and then go to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\desktop\ folder and create a key by right clicking and choosing New\StringValue. Change the name of the string to MenuShowDelay and double click on the key to enter a number. 0 means no delay at all. Changing this also reduces the time that Windows 98 waits before opening sub-menus on right click context menus.

Because Windows 98 relies heavily on keeping your drive optimised, so that files are not broken up across non sequential clusters on your drive, you can reduce the amount of fragmentation that occurs by increasing the size of free space that Windows 98 searches for before using that space to store files. This should reduce the amount of time that the Maintenance Wizard and the Scheduled Tasks have to take when tuning up your machine. The default size searched for is 512Kb, but if you have a modern machine with plenty of space, you can increase this by changing a key in the Registry. In Regedit go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\File System section right click and enter a new DWORD value. Change the name to ConfigFileAllocSize, then enter a value of, say, 1024 for 1Mb. This will mean that a lot of space is ignored on your drive until it is de-fragmented, which Windows 98 will have been set up to do automatically in the Maintenance Wizard, but that large files are not split.