TURN ON WINDOWS VISTA’S HIDDEN BOOT SCREEN

If you don’t want to go to the trouble of building your own boot screen, butaren’t happy with the default one for Windows Vista, there’s another solution: turn on Windows Vista’s hidden boot screen. It’s called Aurora, because it looks like Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. To turn it on, run the MSCONFIG utility, and on the Boot tab, select “No GUI boot” and click OK. From now on, you’ll use the hidden Windows Vista boot screen (if you’ve previously replaced the winload.exe.mui file with your own boot screen, you’ll need to restore the original to see the Aurora screen).

Disable/Enable Recent Documents History

The bad thing about Recent Documents History is that Windows XP has to calculate what should be put there each time you boot Windows, which can slow things down

• Open the Registry Editor (select Start/Run, type regedit, and click OK).
  
• Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mcft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
  
• Create a NoRecentDocsHistory D_WORD key. Double-click the value to open it once it is created.
  
• Set the Data Value to 1 to enable the restriction. 0 to disable
  
• Click OK and close the Registry Editor. You’ll need to restart the computer for the change to take effect
  

Disable Right Click on The Desktop

Follow the given steps to disable the right click functionality on desktop :

• To use this feature, you will need to be logged into your computer with administrative rights.
  
• Open registry editor, Click Start and type regedit in Run option then press Enter
  
• Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
  
• In right side panel, right click to create a new DWORD value with the name NoViewContextMenu (it is case sensitive) then assign number 1 in value data box.
  
• Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

Next time, if you want to enable right click functionality on desktop then simply change the value of data box or delete the NoViewContextMenu DWORD item.

Disable Universal Plug and Play Services in the Windows XP

Windows XP includes support for Universal Plug and Play (UnPnP) which allows UnPnP devices to be connected over a network. There are currently limited UnPnP devices available and due to a recent security flaw it may be advisable to disable these services.

-Disable Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Open your registry editor
Navigate to : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\upnphost.
Set the value of “Start” to “4″ to disable the service, or “3″ to enable it.

-Disable UnPnP Discovery Service
Open your registry editor
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SSDPSRV.
Set the value of “Start” to “4″ to disable the service, or “3″ to enable it.

Disable Registry Editing Tools for Windows XP / Vista

Warning : Be careful with this setting because once you enter this key into the registry you will not be able to use Regedit to undo the change. Consider wisely before using this modification so that you do not lock yourself out of the registry.

Here this step to disable registry editor :

• Open your registry editor Klick start-run then type regedit
  
• Navigate into HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
  
• Create a new DWORD value named ‘DisableRegistryTools’ and set the value to ‘1′ to disable registry editing functions.
  
• Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

Note : This setting will disable all standard Microsoft registry editing tools, but not WinGuides Tweak Manager.