Windows 2000 Tweaks

< Windows 2000 Tips & Tweaking Guide created by Michael and reprinted with permission >
______________________________

Make Explorer always open directories the same way

Bring Up Command Window From Current Location

Explorer Restore Previous Windows…or Not

Explorer AutoRestartShell

Split Win2k explorer

Opening Explorer in a Different Directory

Command Prompt In any Directory

Show more details in My Documents and Windows Explorer

Hiding Explorer's Context Menus

Undo your last action

How to Show All Files Automatically in System Folders

Enhance Explorer System Tray Icons to 256 Colors

Stop Windows Explorer From Changing The Case of Filenames

Avoid Having to Click 'Show Files' in Windows 2000's Explorer

Add Copy to Folder Option to The Context Menu

Add Move to Folder Option to The Context Menu

Remove an Item From the New Context Menu

Make Explorer always open directories the same way
Want to make explorer always open your directories the same way? Here’s how.

I prefer to have my directories always listed in detail view. Open explorer and go to a directory set the view for the way that you always want it to be then use the following sequence to set explorer to always open your directories that way:

Explorer menu sequence:

Tools | Folder Options | View | Like Current Folder

Bring Up Command Window From Current Location
To easily bring up a command window from the current Windows Explorer location, you can add

a Command Prompt Here entry to your context menu. First, open your Registry editor and go to

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell. Select Edit, New, Key, and enter CmdPrompt in the dialog

box. Double-click (Default), and enter the name you want to display when you right-click the

directory (e.g., Command Prompt Here). Then, select Edit, New, Key and enter a key under

CmdPrompt named command (in lowercase). Double-click (Default), and enter the path to your

cmd.exe program, followed by "%I" (e.g., C:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe /k cd "%I").

Explorer Restore Previous Windows…or Not
You can control whether Explorer will restore windows which were open when NT was shutdown.

This automatic restoring of windows drives me nuts. It was a problem in OS/2, Windows NT,

and now Windows 2000. You don't like it, fix it with the following Windows NT / Windows 2000

registry hack :

Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Name: NoSaveSettings

Type: REG_BINARY

Value: 1

This entry will prevent you from permanently repositioning desktop shortcuts and from

adjusting the size and/or position of the Taskbar.

Explorer AutoRestartShell
AutoRestartShell controls whether the user shell, usually NT Explorer, will be restarted if

it crashes. I have seen quite a few occasions where the shell crashes and this Windows NT /

Windows 2000 registry hack allows you to just keep on trucking. When the shell crashes, the

taskbar and desktop icons disappear. If you don't have AutoRestartShell set, you have to use

keyboard shortcuts to logoff/logon if you know them, or simply power to PC off/on. Not

necessary. Avoids losing work.

Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Name: AutoRestartShell

Type: REG_DWORD

Value: 0 user must log on/off to regenerate crashed user shell

Value: 1 user shell to automatically restart.

Split Win2k explorer
This tip explains how to run Windows Explorer as a separate process in Windows 2000.

As many people know, Explorer is both a Windows shell as well as a file manager. While this

is a good design in terms of usability, its not so good when it comes to memory usage.

Under normal usage, Explorer may take as much as 8 MB of vital RAM from your Win2000 system.

This is due to a memory allocation problem in which Windows uses twice the total memory for

Explorer because it thinks it's using two separate programs. :( To solve this "integration"

problem, you need to make Explorer run as two separate processes instead of one. To do

this, run Regedit and go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Look for the "SeparateProcess" DWORD [REG_DWORD] Value. Change its value from 0 to 1. After

rebooting, Explorer will now run the shell and its file manager as two separate processes

and will not try to allocate more memory than necessary." Courtesy of Andrew Bourdon

Each new instance of Windows NT Explorer.exe will get its own thread.

Windows 2000's Explorer is particularly optimized for separate thread operation.

Opening Explorer in a Different Directory
Tired of Windows Explorer always opening up with My Documents?

Customize it, by changing the properties for the Windows Explorer icon and replace the

Target field with: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n, /e, c:\yourfolder

Command Prompt In any Directory
Enter the following lines into notepad and save as a text file with a .reg extension

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Command]

@="Command &Prompt"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Command\command]

@="cmd.exe \\\"%1\\\""

Now when you are running explorer highlight a directory and right click; you will see an

entry near the top that says Command Prompt, if you click it you will be at a command prompt

in the directory that is highlighted. - Courtesy Adrian Rojacks Pot and Larry Yuan

Show more details in My Documents and Windows Explorer
View Mode

When scanning your folder contents in Windows Explorer, if you set the view mode to Details,

you can usually view such default details as:

Name

Size

Type

Modified

If you’re interested in seeing additional file information in Windows Explorer when your

files are set to Details mode, right-click on one of the column titles in Windows Explorer

and you can add columns that display such fields as:

Attributes

Comment

Author

If you select the More... option at the bottom, a dialog box displays with additional fields

that you can select.

Comment Column

With Windows Explorer set to Details view, if you open the file properties of certain file

types such as Word documents or Excel spreadsheets, you can add explanatory text or comments

to the Comment column.

To add comments to a file that you can view in Windows Explorer:

Right-click the file name and open the Properties dialog box.

Select the Summary tab. Select the Comments icon and type your comments in the text box.

When finished, click OK. You can also enable a folder to display information in the Comment column by using a

Customize This Folder wizard:

Open Windows Explorer and select a folder for which you want to add comments.

To launch the wizard, from the View menu, select Customize This Folder.

When the Welcome to the Customize This Folder Wizard window displays, click Next.

Select the Add Folder Comment check box. Clear all remaining check boxes, and then click

Next. In the Folder comment: text box, enter your comments. When completed, click Next.

To complete the wizard and have your changes take effect, click Finish. Courtesy -

Microsoft TechNet

Hiding Explorer's Context Menus
To remove the context menus for the tray including the Start button, tab control, and clock,

apply the following Windows NT Registry hack:

Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Name: NoTrayContextMenu

Type: REG_DWORD

Value: 0=Disable

Value: 1=Enable

Post SP2 NT4.0 option.

Undo your last action
Oops, now what? So you renamed a file in Windows Explorer, but you've changed your mind and

now you aren't sure exactly what the old name was?

It's easy to fix this with the little-known key combination Ctrl+Z. This automatically

undoes whatever name change you made and restores the original file name. You can also rightclick

an unoccupied space in Windows Explorer, which shows "Undo" (your last action) as a

choice you can select. This is a multiple-level undo, too, which lets you go back several steps.

It works in a surprising number of situations.

How to Show All Files Automatically in System Folders
SUMMARY

This article describes how to disable the following warning message when you enter system folders on a Windows 2000-based computer:

This folder contains files that keep your system working properly. There is no need to modify its contents. To view this folder, click: Show Files

MORE INFORMATION

WARNING: This article is intended for Power Users and Administrators who need to gain access to the system folders frequently and are aware of the consequences of editing system files. If you edit your system files you can make your computer unstable.

To disable the warning message, follow these steps:

Right-click My Computer, and then click Explore.

On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.

On the View tab, click Show hidden files and folders, and then click OK.

Browse to one of the following folders

\<WINNT>

\<WINNT>\SYSTEM32

\Program Files

where <WINNT> is the name of the folder where Windows is installed, and then click Show Files.

Rename the Desktop.ini file to Desktop.bak. For information about how to rename a file, click Start, click Help, type renaming files, and then click Display.

Repeat steps 4-6 for each folder you want to configure.

Enhance Explorer System Tray Icons to 256 Colors
Here's how to do it.

Open explorer.exe in a hex editor

go to offset 0x1ECC

change 'FF 74 24 18' to '6A 11 90 90'

save the modified file to a temporary directory

Once you have the hacked exe, here's how to use it:

Open the task manager (ctrl-shift-esc)

on the processes tab, end explorer.exe

go to File->New Task(Run...) and type 'cmd'

copy the new explorer.exe to these locations, in order:

\WINNT\ServicePackFiles\i386

\WINNT\system32\dllcache

\WINNT\

type 'exit' to close the command prompt

go to File->New Task(Run...) and type 'explorer'

http://www.chez.com/hoiby/TrayIconIn256Color/

-Courtesy Dr. Hoiby

Stop Windows Explorer From Changing The Case of Filenames
By default, Explorer changes the case of your filenames so that a file you name c:\iLikeTOTypeTHiS appears as c:\Iliketotypethis. Microsoft calls this PrettyPath, and you can disable it by performing the following steps:

Start regedit.exe.

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.

Double-click DontPrettyPath (or create this key with a type of REG_DWORD if it doesn't exist).

Set the value to 1 to keep the case as you type it or 0 to adjust the case as Explorer requires.

Click OK.

Close regedit.

Restart the machine. – Courtesy John Savill

Avoid Having to Click 'Show Files' in Windows 2000's Explorer
In Windows 2000 certain directories content is automatically hidden (such as the %systemroot%, system32 etc folder) to avoid the user accidentally corrupting the system. In order to see the files you have to click the 'Show Files' text.

If you know what you are doing this can get annoying quickly and you can disable this as follows:

Start Explorer (Win + E or right click My Computer and select Explore)

From the Tools menu select Folder Options

On the View tab select 'Show hidden files and folders'. Click OK

Move to the %systemroot% directory (e.g. c:\winnt)

Click 'Show Files'

Rename the Desktop.ini file to something else, e.g. Desktopbak.ini

Repeat for any other folders such as %systemroot%\system32 and 'program files'

- Courtesy John Savill

Add Copy to Folder Option to The Context Menu
Its possible to add a context menu option to copy a file to a folder by adding the following registry key:

Start the registry editor (Regedit.exe)

Move to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

From the Edit menu select New - Key

Enter a name of 'Copy To' (don't type the quotes) and press Enter

Move to the 'Copy To' :-) key and double click on the (Default) value

Set to {C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}. Click OK

Close the registry editor

Restart Explorer for the change to take effect (you don't need to reboot)

If you now right click on a file/folder an option to copy to folder will be listed.

- Courtesy John Savill

Add Move to Folder Option to The Context Menu
Its possible to add a context menu option to move a file to a folder by adding the following registry key:

Start the registry editor (Regedit.exe)

Move to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

From the Edit menu select New - Key

Enter a name of 'Move To' (don't type the quotes) and press Enter

Move to the 'Move To' :-) key and double click on the (Default) value

Set to {C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}. Click OK

Close the registry editor

Restart Explorer for the change to take effect (you don't need to reboot)

If you now right click on a file/folder an option to move to folder will be listed.

- Courtesy John Savill

Remove an Item From the New Context Menu
Many applications such as Office and other document based programs may add options to the New context menu. This can slow down the system since IE 4 as to generate this list it has to fetch the icons for each of the documents.

Its possible to remove items from the new context menu by performing the following:

Identify the file extension for the context menu item, for example obd for Microsoft Office Binder (if you are unsure of the extension just create a document of the type then check the extension)

Start the registry editor (Regedit.exe)

Move to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.<extension>, e.g.HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.obd

Delete or rename the ShellNew key. It may not always be at the root of the key, for example to disable .obd I had to goto HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.obd\Office.Binder.9\ShellNew.

Close the registry editor

The context item should no longer be displayed

This can also be accomplished using the TweakUI utility.

______________________________

> Back to Top