Tweak UI

Tweak UI is a Microsoft program that allows you to change many settings that are otherwise unavailible to you in Windows (without regestry hacks or 3rd party software). This simple program is direct from Microsoft's website and takes only a couple of minutes to install and use.

To download Tweak UI from microsoft click HERE. There are many more settings in Tweak UI than I am going to cover, so poke around. The following are my suggested settings for making windows faster and less annoying.

About>Tips

• Read these, you'll be surprised what you can learn.

General

• Turn off "Beep on errors"
• Turn off "Enable combo box animation"
• Turn off "Enable cursor shadow"
• Turn off "Enable list box animation"
• Turn off "Enable menu animation"
• Turn off "Enable menu fading"
• Turn off "Enable menu selection fading"
• Turn on "Mouse hot tracking effects"
• Turn off "Enable tooltip animation"
• Turn off "Enable tooltip fade"
• Turn off "Enable window animation"
• Turn on "Optimize hard disk when idle"

Mouse

• Spend 1 minute fine tunning these settings and your mouse will work better for you.

Explorer

• Most of these are just your prefernce. I do recomment turning off "Enable smooth scrolling"

Explorer>Thumbnails

• I do a lot of work with images so I set my thumbnail size rather high to allow me to see them better. Play with this setting and find what works best for you.

Common Dialogs>Places Bar

• Do you always save certain files in the same location and get tired of navigating to it over and over. Modify your places bar (the bar to the left on the "Save as..." dialouge). It's a huge time saver.

Taskbar and Start menu

• Turn off "Enable balloon tips" - I despise balloon tips

Desktop

• This is the only way to get rid of EVERYTHING on your desktop. I keep mine 100% clear and only use it for very temporary storage.

My Computer>AutoPlay>Types

• Turn off autoplay on your disk drives if you want.

Internet Explorer

• Don't touch these settings... Why would you? Get Firefox!

Logon

• Small warning. Don't disable all of the "Show on Welcome screen" options. You will lock yourself out of your computer. (In this case boot to safe mode and log in as Administrator).

Logon>Autologon

• Not recomended due to security issues. But it's up to you.

Logon>Screen Saver

• Play with the grace period - mine is set to 10 seconds.