Ever wonder how to improve Windows XP… there are lots of ways to improve productivity, performance and other hidden things. Here are some useful tips that will help you work a tad faster.

Enabling NumLock on by Default

This hack will let you enable NumLocks by default for each user:

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators
3. Change the value from 0 to 2
4. Turn Numlock on manually
5. Log off and back on again.
6. For all users, make the same change to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators

Changing the Internet Explorer Title

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Window Title
3. Enter what you want appear in the title bar

Increasing System Performance

If you have system RAM of more then 512MB, you can improve your system performance forcing XP to keep the core system files in the system memory.

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive
3. Set the value to be 1
4. Reboot the computer

To turn off the annoying balloon tips which pops up time and again:

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Advanced\
3. Create a DWORD value of EnableBalloonTips
4. Give it a value of 0
5. Disable the Remote Desktop Sharing (RDS) icon’s menu
6. Disable the Remote Desktop Sharing (RDS) icon’s menu

Disable Shared Documents

To disable the Shared Documents folder that shows up on the network

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer \
3. Create a new DWORD Value
4. Give it the name NoSharedDocuments
5. Give it a value of 1
6. Log off or reboot

Renaming the Start Button

To rename the start button, you will need a hex editor.
My preference is UltraEdit

1. Copy the \windows\explore.exe file to a new name (e.g. explorer_1.exe)
2. With the hex editor, open that file and go to offset 412b6
3. You will see the word start with blanks between each letter
4. Edit it be any 5 characters or less
5. Save the file
6. Boot to DOS
7. Copy the existing c:\windows\explorer.exe to explorer.org
8. Copy explorer_1.exe to explorer.exe
9. You will also need to replace the explorer.exe in the c:\windows\system32\dllcache file as well with the new one.
10. Note: If the partition is NTFS and you can’t access the files from DOS:

Start Regedit

1. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon.
2. Change the value of Shell from Explorer.exe to explorer_1.exe

Enable / Disable the Task Manager

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\System
3. Create the Dword value DisableTaskMgr
4. Give it a value of 0 to enable it
5. Give it a value of 1 to disable it

Hope this cool tips increases your workflow and system performance.