Windows

Navigate to
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\volumecaches

- delete the compress old files key (export the key first if you would like to restore this function afterwards)

This registry tweak speeds up the time it takes for Disk Cleanup to work. I have personally experienced that disk cleanup can take a very long time to scan the harddrive, removing the above compress old files key will stop windows from calculating the amount of space it would save if you compressed old files which speeds up the disk cleanup alot! I got this from another TR member in a another discussion - it's awesome!!!

A simple Registry tweak can speed up your Start menu and its submenus:

Navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop (the last word may appear as 'desktop').

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

Alternatively, you can slow the menu down to 4000 milliseconds (4 seconds) if the menu appears too quickly to suit you.

- I got this tweak from PC World magazine

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,

navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\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 <Enter>.) Type a number (in pixels) for the starting horizontal position of your wallpaper's left edge, and press <Enter>. 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.

- I got this tweak from PC World magazine

When you search for a file in Windows (choose Start, Search, For Files or Folders, or press <F3> in any Explorer or folder window to open the search pane), Windows searches only for file types it recognizes. Files that aren't listed in the 'Registered file types' list are ignored (to view this list, open Explorer, choose Tools, Folder Options, and click the File Types tab). So while 'Read_Me.xyz' may be a perfectly good file name to you, Windows pays it no mind because of the unrecognized '.xyz' file extension.

To fix this, navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex

Double-click the FilterFilesWithUnknownExtensions icon in the right pane, change the 0 in the 'Value data' box to 1, and press <Enter>.

- I got this tweak from PC World magazine...

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 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

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 <Enter>.) 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

- I got this tweak from PC World magazine