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Thread ID: 43329	2004-03-11 03:32:00	Changing the default location for Installing Programs. & Useful hacks	PoWa (203)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
221666	2004-03-11 03:32:00	OK I've been looking for this solution for a long time and eventually found it! Very useful if you install all your programs to a different partition ie D:\Programs instead of the normal. Hopefully this is pretty useful to someone out there ;) Got it out of an E-book called: O'Reilly, Windows XP hacks. 7.3.6 Change the Default Location for Installing Programs XP uses the C:\Program Files directory as the default base directory into which new programs are installed. However, you can change the default installation drive and/or directory by using a Registry hack. Run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion. Look for the value named ProgramFilesDir. By default, the value will be C:\Program Files. Edit the value to any valid drive or folder; XP will use that new location as the default installation directory for new programs. 7.3.5 Disable the Disk Cleanup Warning If your hard disk has what XP decides is too little space left on it, the operating system will pop up a warning and recommend that you run Disk Cleanup. But you may be like me and not want a virtual nanny nagging you to clean up your mess. You can turn off the warning with a Registry hack. Run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer. Create a DWORD value called NoLowDiskSpaceChecks and give it a value of 1. Exit the Registry and reboot. Now this next one might fix someones problem a while ago where they were playing a racing car game and it would beep constantly as they were pushing too many keys at once. 7.3.8 Change the Size of Your Mouse and Keyboard Buffer You sometimes may get an error message telling you that you have an overflow in your mouse buffer or keyboard buffer. When that happens, it means the buffer isn't large enough and you need to increase its size. To increase your mouse buffer, run the Registry Editor, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Mouclass\Parameters, and find the MouseDataQueueSize subkey. The default setting is 100 (64 hex). Increase the decimal number to increase the size of the buffer; then exit the Registry and reboot. You may need to try several different settings until you find the right one. To increase the keyboard buffer, look for the KeyboardDataQueueSize subkey in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Kbdclass\Parameters. The default setting is 100 (64 hex). Increase the number to increase the size of the buffer; then exit the Registry and reboot. Again, you may need to try several different settings until you find the right one. 7.3.3 Change the Names of the Registered User and Company When you install XP or when it comes factory-fresh on a PC, a username and company name are entered as the owner of the system. And that's the way it stays, like it or not. But a Registry hack will let you change both. Run the Registry Editor, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, and look for the values RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganization. Edit their value data to whatever username and company name you want. 7.3.1 Automatically Close Programs at Shutdown When you shut down Windows, if you have any programs running you'll get a message box warning you that a program is still running. You then have to close the program and tell XP again to shut down. It's a fairly pointless warning—better yet would be if XP automatically killed the programs without issuing the warning. That way, you wouldn't get error messages and wouldn't have to close each individual application before shutting down your computer. To have XP automatically close programs at shutdown, run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Edit the AutoEndTasks key so that is has a value of 1. If the key doesn't exist, create it as a DWORD value and give it the value of 1. To disable it, either delete the key, or set the value to 0. And heres one for laptops: 7.3.7 Allow Laptops to Enter Power-Saving State (Increase the USB Polling Interval) Some laptops' processors may not be able to enter their power-saving state, even when they're idle, because USB polling fools the processor into thinking that the laptop is active. Your system polls your USB ports once every millisecond to see whether a device is present. So, even if a device isn't present, it continues that polling. The problem is that some laptop processors won't go into their power-saving state because the constant polling makes it think that the laptop is active. With a Registry hack, you can increase the polling interval from the default of one millisecond, letting the processor enter its power-saving state. Run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}\0000. Create the new DWORD value IdleEnable and set the data value to a number between 2 and 5. This will set the polling interval, in milliseconds. If there are additional subkeys for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000} (such as 0001, 0002, etc.), repeat the procedure and create the IdleEnable DWORD in each of them. Exit the Registry. You may need to reboot for the new setting to go into effect. You also may need to try several different values until you find one that works. Hope those are of some use to some people.	PoWa (203)
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