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Hack 69 Hacking Away at the Registry
Nine great hacks that use the Registry to do
their magic.
You'll find many dozens of Registry hacks sprinkled
throughout this book, but to give you a sense of the breadth of the
kinds of hacks that you can accomplish using the Registry,
I've put a wide-ranging sample of Registry hacks
here as well.
7.3.1 Automatically Close Programs at Shutdown
When you shut down
Windows, if you have any programs running you'll get
a message box warning you that a program is still running. You then
have to close the program and tell XP again to shut down.
It's a fairly pointless warningbetter yet
would be if XP automatically killed the programs without issuing the
warning. That way, you wouldn't get error messages
and wouldn't have to close each individual
application before shutting down your computer.
To have XP automatically close programs at shutdown, run the Registry
Editor and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control
Panel\Desktop. Edit the
AutoEndTasks key so that is has a value of
1. If the key doesn't exist,
create it as a DWORD value and give it the value
of 1. To disable it, either delete the key, or set
the value to 0.
7.3.2 Disable XP Shutdown
There may be times when you want
to make sure that XP can't be inadvertently shut
down. You can use a Registry hack to disable the normal Shut Down.
Run the Registry Editor and go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ Explorer.
Create a new DWORD value named
NoClose with a data value of 1.
Exit the Registry and reboot in order for the change to take effect.
You won't be able to shut down Windows in the normal
manner from now on; you'll have to run Task Manager
by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete or right-clicking on the Toolbar,
choosing Task Manager, and then using the Task
Manager's Shut Down menu to close Windows. If you
want to reenable normal shutdowns, delete the
NoClose value.
7.3.3 Change the Names of the Registered User and Company
When you
install XP or when it comes factory-fresh on a PC, a username and
company name are entered as the owner
of the system. And that's the way it stays, like it
or not. But a Registry hack will let you change both. Run the
Registry Editor, go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion, and look for the values
RegisteredOwner
and
RegisteredOrganization. Edit their value data to
whatever username and company name you want.
7.3.4 Change the Amount of Time Before Programs Time Out
When an
application hangs and no longer responds, XP displays a dialog box
that prompts you to kill the application or wait a while longer. By
default, the dialog box appears after the application
hasn't responded for five seconds.
This can cause problems. For example, if a program is doing
heavy-duty calculations in the background, it won't
respond until the calculation is done, so the operating system will
report that the application is hung, even though it
isn't. You can use a Registry hack to increase or
decrease the amount of time it takes before XP reports that the
program has hung.
Run the Registry Editor and go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control
Panel\Desktop. Select the
HungAppTimeout entry and edit it to input a new
value, in milliseconds. The default is 5000. Exit
the Registry. You may need to reboot for the new setting to take
effect. Try increasing the number in increments of 1,000 until you
find a number that works.
7.3.5 Disable the Disk Cleanup Warning
If your hard disk has what XP decides is too little space left on it,
the operating system will pop up a warning and recommend that you run
Disk Cleanup. But you may be like me
and not want a virtual nanny nagging you to clean up your mess. You
can turn off the warning with a Registry hack. Run the Registry
Editor and go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ Explorer.
Create a DWORD
value called
NoLowDiskSpaceChecks and give it a value of
1. Exit the Registry and reboot. You can also do
this by using TweakUI [Hack #8].
7.3.6 Change the Default Location for Installing Programs
XP uses the
C:\Program Files directory as the default base
directory into which new programs are installed. However, you can
change the default installation drive and/or directory by using a
Registry hack. Run the Registry Editor and go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion.
Look for the value named
ProgramFilesDir. By default, the
value will be C:\Program Files. Edit the value to
any valid drive or folder; XP will use that new location as the
default installation directory for new programs.
7.3.7 Allow Laptops to Enter Power-Saving State (Increase the USB Polling Interval)
Some laptops' processors
may not be able to enter their power-saving state, even when
they're idle, because
USB polling fools the
processor into thinking that the laptop is active. Your system polls
your USB ports once every millisecond to see whether a device is
present. So, even if a device isn't present, it
continues that polling. The problem is that some laptop processors
won't go into their power-saving state because the
constant polling makes it think that the laptop is active.
With a Registry hack, you can increase the polling interval from the
default of one millisecond, letting the processor enter its
power-saving state. Run the Registry Editor and go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro
l\Class\{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}\0000.
Create the new DWORD value
IdleEnable and set the data value to a number
between 2 and 5. This will set
the polling interval, in milliseconds. If there are additional
subkeys for
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control
\Class\{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}
(such as 0001, 0002, etc.),
repeat the procedure and create the IdleEnable
DWORD in each of them. Exit the Registry. You may
need to reboot for the new setting to go into effect. You also may
need to try several different values until you find one that works.
7.3.8 Change the Size of Your Mouse and Keyboard Buffer
You
sometimes may get an error message telling you that you have an
overflow in your mouse buffer or keyboard buffer. When that happens,
it means the buffer isn't large enough and you need
to increase its size. To increase your mouse buffer, run the Registry
Editor, go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Mouclass\Parameters,
and find the MouseDataQueueSize subkey. The
default setting is 100 (64 hex). Increase the
decimal number to increase the size of the buffer; then exit the
Registry and reboot. You may need to try several different settings
until you find the right one.
To increase the keyboard buffer, look for the
KeyboardDataQueueSize subkey in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Kbdclass\Parameters.
The default setting is 100 (64 hex). Increase the
number to increase the size of the buffer; then exit the Registry and
reboot. Again, you may need to try several different settings until
you find the right one.
