Hack Your BIOS for Faster Startups

You can speed up your startup procedures by changing the BIOS with the built-in setup utility. How you run this utility varies from PC to PC, but you typically get to it by pressing the Delete, F1, or F10 keys during startup. You'll come to a menu with a variety of choices. Here are the choices to make for faster system startups: 


Quick Power On Self Test (POST) When you choose this option, your system runs an abbreviated POST rather than the normal, lengthy one.


Boot Up Floppy Seek Disable this option. When it's enabled, your system spends a few extra seconds looking for your floppy drivea relatively pointless procedure, especially considering
how infrequently you use your floppy drive.


Boot Delay Some systems let you delay booting after you turn on your PC so that your hard drive gets a chance to start spinning before bootup. Most likely, you don't need to have this
boot delay, so turn it off. If you run into problems, however, you can turn it back on.

Retitle Internet Explorer

By default, Internet Explorer's title bar shows the name of the Web site you're viewing, followed by "Microsoft Internet Explorer"--or in some cases, your company's name or the name of the ISP that supplied the browser. To change the repeating text in IE's title bar (or to get rid of it altogether), navigate to and select HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main in the Registry Editor, and double-click the Window Title icon in the right pane. (If you don't see this icon, right-click in the pane, choose New, String Value, type Window Title, and press .) Type what you want to see on IE's title bar, or type nothing to show only the site name. Note that the hyphen that normally separates the site name from the page title will remain. When you relaunch Internet Explorer, you will see the change.

Unhide the Administrator

Few people are aware of Windows XP's cloaked administrator account (called, appropriately enough, "Administrator"). This account is invisible unless either your system has no other accounts or you are booting in Safe Mode. To remove Administrator's camouflage and add it to XP's Welcome screen, navigate to & select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winl ogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList 
in the Registry Editor, and double-click the Administrator icon in the right pane. If you don't see this icon, right-click in the pane, choose New, DWORD Value, name it Administrator, and press Enter. Type 1 in the 'Value data' box, and press . From now on, when you open the User
Accounts window via the Control Panel, you'll see the Administrator account. You can easily change its picture or give it a password. In addition, the next time you see the Welcome screen, your Administrator account will be visible, along with the entire computer's other user accounts.

Resize Your Wallpaper

If you just switched to a wide-screen monitor, your desktop wallpaper image may no longer look right, or maybe you just want to make a small adjustment to it. For more-granular control of your wallpaper's placement, highlight the following key:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\desktop

Double-click the WallpaperOriginX icon in the right pane. (If you don't see this icon, right-click in this pane, choose New, String Value, type WallpaperOriginX to name the value, and press .) Type a number (in pixels) for the starting horizontal position of your wallpaper's left edge, and press . Now double-click the WallpaperOriginY icon (create it if necessary as explained above) and enter a number for the starting vertical position of the image's top edge. If your wallpaper image is larger than the screen, type a negative number (for example, -200) to push the picture's top or left edge off the screen.


To test the effect, first minimize the Registry Editor (and any other open window), right-click the desktop, choose Properties, and click OK or Apply to refresh the wallpaper placement. Repeat these steps as needed until the wallpaper is positioned correctly.The settings work whether you've set your wallpaper to be centered, tiled, or stretched.

A Flying Start for the Start Menu

A simple Registry tweak can give speed up your start menu and sub-menus. Open the Registry Editor, and navigate to and select:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop .


Double-click the MenuShowDelay icon on the right, and change 'Value data' from its default of 400 (milliseconds) to something speedier, like 0. When you have finished, press Enter.