Customizing your Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0

Many people often find that Windows 95 or NT 4.0 is missing this and missing that. But, luckily a lot of them can be change or customize using shareware or editing the registry. Here is some:

Customizing Program:

TweakUI from Microsoft is the program you must have when you want to "tweak" the win95/NT's user interface. Click here to download if you don't have one. You can download the whole set of power toy as well. But, the most useful thing is TweakUI 1.1.
The program enable you to customize many thing in windows.
Here are some:

Editing Registry:

Make Explorer Refreshing itself faster

  1. Involve regedit. Find the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Update".
  2. Change the value "UpdateMode" value to 0x00000000.
  3. Close regedit and restart windows.Or, it will effect when you turn on or reset you computer later.

Viewing unknown file type using a program of your choice

  1. Find the key, "HKEY_CLASS_ROOT\Unknown\Shell
  2. Add subkey \Notepad", and then add subkey \command under \Notepad (you just created).
  3. Set the "default" value to C:\Windows\Notepad.exe or other program of your choice.
  4. Close regedit.

Some program start automatically when you start windows. But, it's no shortcut in the Startup folder. Here how to stop them.

  1. Find the key, "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run"
  2. Delete the entry which you don't want it to start automatically.
    Note.Copy down the entry if you want to restore it later
  3. Close regedit.

Other:

Involving Control Panel item directly from Start Menu.
Right-click the Start button, and choose Open.
Create a new folder and rename it
    "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"

You can also add the other special folders using similar method.

There are some more examples: