Win2K Registry Tweaks

In the June 2000 Top 10, I shared my favorite Windows NT registry tweaks. In this companion-piece Top 10, I share my favorite Win2K registry tweaks. Although many NT tricks translate to Win2K, some don't or require slightly different procedures.

10. Delete roaming profiles. When a user who has a roaming profile logs off a workstation, a copy of the roaming profile remains, consuming space on the local hard disk. To delete cached profiles at logoff, go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon subkey and set the DeleteRoamingCache value to 1.

9. Add a prelogon dialog box to display a user greeting or an authorized users only warning. To alter the welcome dialog box, go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon subkey and change the LegalNoticeText value to a string such as This is the corporate ACME server. To set the dialog box's title bar, change the LegalNoticeCaption value to a string such as Unauthorized access prohibited.

8. Add a Copy To folder option to Windows Explorer's context menu. Through regedit, go to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTAllFilesystemObjectsshellexContextMenuHandlers subkey. From the Edit menu, select New, Key. Type Copy To, and press Enter. Go to the new Copy To key, double-click the (Default) value, and set the value to {C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}.

7. Disable CD-ROM AutoRun. Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServices Cdrom subkey and set the AutoRun value to 0.

6. Speed up your Start menu and taskbar. You can reduce the time that the Start menu takes to display its submenus. Go to the HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop subkey and set the MenuShowDelay value to 100.

5. Don't display the most recent username. On shared systems, I prefer to turn off the display of the most recent logon name. Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrent-VersionWinlogon subkey and set the DontDisplayLastUserName value to 1.

4. Open a command prompt from the current Windows Explorer location. Use regedit to navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTFoldershell. Select Edit, New, Key, and enter CmdPrompt in the dialog box. Double-click (Default), and enter the name that 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 "%L" (e.g., C:winntsystem32cmd.exe /k cd "%L").

3. Change My Computer to the actual computer name and username. Open regedt32 and go to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} subkey. Copy the contents of the key's LocalizedString subkey (e.g., @C:WINNTsystem32shell32.dll,-9216@1033,My Computer) to Notepad. Delete the LocalizedString subkey, then recreate it using the data type REG_EXPAND_SZ. Copy Notepad's contents into the new subkey, and change My Computer to %username% on %computername%.

2. Prevent users from changing My Computer. After you rename My Computer, use regedt32 to change the access permissions on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesCLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} subkey. Remove Everyone:Full Control, and add Authenticated Users:Read.

1. Remove My Computer from the desktop. Simply delete the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B 30309D} subkey. Be sure to first use regedit's Export Registry File option to save this subkey, in case you ever want to restore My Computer.