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Windows Tweaks

This information does not really pertain to Windows security, but it is useful information to people that like to improve the speed or usability of Windows. Mostly advanced users will be interested in this information.

System Properties Information

When you bring up the System Properties dialog in Windows, you may sometimes see a log and support information about your computer. The logo is stored in the Windows system directory (normally c:\windows\system) in a file called Oemlogo.bmp. You can create a different bitmap with a maximum size of 180 by 114 pixels; any color depth (4-bit, 8-bit, even 24-bit) seems to work fine. Save the bitmap to your Windows system directory under the name Oemlogo.bmp. Next, create a file named OEMINFO.INI in the same directory. The format of this file is simple. The first section specifies general information, which is displayed to the right of the logo. For example:

[general]
Manufacturer=Man U. Facturer
Model=My Special Computer
[Support Information]
Line1="--------------------------------"
Line2=" Man U. Facturer"
Line3=
Line4=" For more information use the following e-mail or web site."
Line5=
Line6=" Administrator@myisp.com"
Line7=" http://www.omnisecure.net/"
Line8="--------------------------------"

DLL Icons

To see the first icon of each DLL (dynamically loaded library) in Windows Explorer change the following key with regedit

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\DefaultIcon]
@=hex(2):25,53,79,73,74,65,6d,52,6f,6f,74,25,5c,53,79,73,74,65,6d,33,32,5c,73,\
68,65,6c,6c,33,32,2e,64,6c,6c,2c,2d,31,35,34,00

to this key

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\DefaultIcon]
@="%1"

Speed Up Browsing of Other Computers on the Network

If you are using Windows file sharing, Windows 2000 and XP can be slow while browsing other computers on the network. You can speed it up by deleting all of the CSLIDs (Class Identifiers) of "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace"

Remove Some Internet Explorer Extensions

Some programs are installed as extensions to Internet Explorer. Some of these are listed under the Tools menu in Internet Explorer. You can delete some of these menu items, but deleting the CSLIDs under the folling registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Extensions".

Disable Web-Based Enterprise Management

There isn't a way to disable WBEM, but you can stop it logging. You can add this to your registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WBEM\CIMOM]
"Logging"="0"

You can also remove C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem from your path environment variable.

Remove My Recent Documents From the Start Menu

To stop Windows from displaying the My Recent Documents on the Start Menu, add this to your registry.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoRecentDocsHistory"=hex:01,00,00,00
"NoRecentDocsMenu"=hex:01,00,00,00

Command Prompt Completion

To allow the tab key to complete the rest of the command on the command prompt and cycle through the possible commands or files, add this to your registry.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor]
"CompletionChar"=dword:00000009

Using Notepad or Wordpad By Default

Instead of opening a dialog to associate every file, a lot of people just want to see the text of the file. You can do this by adding this to your registry. You may need to modify the path in this example in order to get Wordpad to work right.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\open]
@="&Notepad"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\open\command]
@="Notepad.exe \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\WordPad]
@="&WordPad"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\WordPad\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Windows NT\\Accessories\\wordpad.exe\" \"%1\""
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