Techbulb

Beep on printer errors

Use this setting to enable the machine to beep every few seconds when a print error occurs. For local printers, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print and create or modify the DWORD entry called ‘BeepEnabled’. A value of ‘1′ enables beeps and ‘0′ disables them.For network printers, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Print\Providers\LanManPrintSer-vices\Servers and create or modify the DWORD entry called ‘BeepEnabled’. A value of ‘1′ enables beeps and ‘0′ disables them.

Include Copy to and Move to in the context menu

When you right-click a file, you get a menu called context menu. This tweak shows you how you can add two useful entries to it, namely, ‘Copy To’ and ‘Move To’. Therefore, copying and moving files can be ……… Continue Reading…

Menu display delay

When a menu is opened, Windows opens the menu after a small delay. For example, after clicking on Start, the Programs menu takes ages to expand. This is because the ‘Menushowdelay’ entry has been given a large value. Open the key HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Control Panel\Desktop and modify or create a string value named ‘MenuShow Delay’. In this entry, give the required delay in milliseconds; the accepted limit is 0 to 999.

Disable low disk space warning

Windows XP will show a warning message whenever the drive is low on * disk space. For some I reason, whether we have an 8 GB …… Continue Reading…

Disable Windows XP support for Zip files

Windows XP comes with in-built support for Zip files, but this can be a curse in disguise. While searching for files, XP automatically searches through Zip files, resulting in a slow search. To disable support for Zip files, go to Start > Run, type ‘regsvr32/u%windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll’ and click OK. If you want to enable it later, go to Start > Run and type ‘regsvr32 %windir%\ system32\zipfldr.dll’. Disabling support for Zip files in XP does not in any way affect the functionality of third-party tools such as WinZip, WinRAR, etc.

Speed up access to folders with AVI files

Windows XP sometimes takes a really long time to open folders with AVI files. This is because XP tries to get information about the files. To disable this feature, open the registry and go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ CLSID\{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}. Append a [-] (a minus sign) in front of the ‘{87D…’ key, so that it becomes something like ‘-{87D…’.

Prevent OS being paged to disk

At times, when there’s a dearth of RAM, the system will move some portion of the main memory to the hard disk. Obviously, this slows down the system, but there’s nothing much that can be …… Continue Reading…

Minimise Outlook to the system tray

Outlook 2003 can be minimised to the system tray, but it’s possible with earlier versions of Outlook as well. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\ Outlook\Preferences and create a DWORD entry named ‘MinToTray’. Give it a value of ‘1’. Restart Outlook for the change to take effect.

Give four digits for year in Excel

Whenever a date is entered in an Excel cell, the year field is automatically truncated to two digits. For example, when the user enters the date 9-11-2000 in a cell, it is automatically replaced with 9/11/00. This is bad when spanning across a century, such as records from 1999 to 2003. This tweak makes Excel display dates with four digits for the year field. Locate HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Office\ [Version]\Excel\Options, where [Version] indicates your Office version (Office XP is‘10.0’, 2000 is ‘9.0’, etc.). Create or modify the DWORD entry ‘EnableFour-DigitYearDisplay’ and enter a value of ‘1’.

Change the number of undo levels in Excel

By default, Excel can perform 16 undo operations. You can customise the number of undo levels, but remember that increasing the number of levels results in more RAM being allocated to Excel. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Software\Microsoft\Office \[Version]\Excel\Options. Under this key, create a DWORD value with the name ‘UndoHistory’. You can turn off the undo feature by giving a value of ‘0’, use the maximum allowed ……. Continue Reading…