Personalize your windows installation
Click on Start, type cmd and press Enter. Copy the first of the following lines and then right click in the small window and choose Paste. Press Enter. You should receive a message that “the operation completed successfully”. Proceed with the following lines, one after the other
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device boot
bcdedit /set {default} device boot
bcdedit /set {default} osdevice boot
bcdedit /set {memdiag} device boot
bcdedit /set {current} nx AlwaysOff
bcdedit /set PAE ForceEnable
Windows 7 comes with some very attractive new wallpapers, and it's not always easy to decide which one you like the best. So why not choose a few, and let Windows display them all in a desktop slideshow?
Right-click an empty part of the desktop, select Personalise > Desktop Background, then hold down Ctrl as you click on the images you like. Choose how often you'd like the images to be changed (anything from daily to once every 10 seconds), select Shuffle if you'd like the backgrounds to appear in a random order, then click Save Changes and enjoy the show.
Microsoft has also provided more regional wallpapers for you to try. Click Desktop Background > Browse, navigate to \Windows\Globalization\MCT, choose a region you like - MCT-AU\Australia, say - and click OK to see the new images.
If you don't see the MCT folder click on Start, type Folder and choose “folder options”. In the small window click on the View tab and put a check mark by “show hidden files, folders and drives” and uncheck “hide protected operating system files”, Click OK on the warning message, then click Apply and OK. On the desktop you might now see one or two Desktop.ini icons. You can delete those. Ignore any warning messages.
Copy any images you like in a new folder somewhere (your backup /software partition is a good place if they are on an internal drive). Go through the rest of the countries and choose the images you like.
There are countless backgrounds and images available on the web as well, either as Theme Packs or as individual images.
Back in the Personalization window at the bottom of the page click on Desktop Background. Click on the Browse button to browse to the folder where you have saved the images. Click on Select all and then choose the slideshow options (time and shuffle or not..........)
Back in the Personalization window, at the bottom of the window now click on Window Color. Change the color if you want to, but also click on Advanced appearance settings. Click on the arrow by Desktop and choose Border padding. In the Size box highlight 4 and type 0 (zero) instead. Click Apply and OK. Now click “Save changes” in the Color and appearance window.
Choose a screen saver if you want to use one.
When you are done and back in the Personalization window, right click on the Unsaved Theme and choose “save Theme”, give it a name and click Save. Close the personalization Window
Explorer tweaks and Folder settings
The menu bar (the one with File/Edit/View/Tools/Help) is no longer visible by default in Explorer. Thos options can be accessed by different methods, but if you want it back click on Start, type Folder and choose “folder options”. In the small window click on the View tab and put a check mark by Always show menus, click Apply and OK.
If you have left any partitions empty or have memory cards and other storage devices attached that are empty, these are no longer displayed by default in Explorer. To get them back either click on Tools in Explorer and choose Folder options or access the Folder options as described above and in the View tab uncheck “hide empty drives in the computer folder”
It’s generally a good idea to set up Explorer to display file extensions. In the Folder options window, in the View tab uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types". Click Apply and OK.
If you don’t want Explore to remember what you have previously searched for: click on Start, type regedit and press Enter.
In the left pane navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows. Right click on Windows and choose New Key. Name the new key Explorer.
Highlight the Explore key and in the right pane right click and choose new DWORD (32-bit) Value. Please note this is regardless if your system is 32 or 64 bit!). Name it DisableSearchBoxSuggestions
Right click the new vaule, choose Modify and in the box type 1 and press OK. Close the registry editor
Add Take ownership, disable 8.3 names and last access, move apps into foreground immediately, put windows kernel in memory. All of these require registry changes so instead of doing them one by one, copy the following lines in notepad:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
;Explorer
; Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right-Click Menu
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\runas]
@="Take Ownership"
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\runas\command]
@="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F"
"IsolatedCommand"="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas]
@="Take Ownership"
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas\command]
@="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" /r /d y && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F /t"
"IsolatedCommand"="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" /r /d y && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F /t"
; NTFS, Disable 8.3 names and Last Access (speeds up disk access)
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dword:00000001
"NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001
; Specifies the time, following user input, during which the system keeps apps from moving into the foreground.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"ForegroundLockTimeout"=dword:00000000
;put the Windows Kernel in memory
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001
Click on File and Save as. At the bottom of the new window click on the arrow to the right of Save as type and choose All files. In the File name box type explorer.reg and save the file somewhere (your backup/software partition is good place). Close Notepad when you are done.
Open Explorer and navigate to the saved file and double click it. Answer Yes to any warning. Back in explorer right click on any folder and you will notice a new option “take ownership”.
Internet Explorer
Even if you choose another browser, you will probably have to use IE at least occasionally so take a few moments to set it up. Launch IE from the taskbar and click on Ask me later. Close all other dialogues that may open by default.
In IE click on Tools and choose Internet Options
1. The general tab
- Choose your home page by typing the address in the Home Page box. You can have multiple home pages, just type each address on a new line
- Choose if you want to keep the browsing history and for how long. Also click on Settings and put a checkmark by “never” to never check for new versions of stored pages and a 8 for the size to be used for stored pages. You can also move the Temp folder out of the system partition: click on Move folder and place it where you want it.
- In the Search section click on Settings. At the bottom of the new window click on Find more search providers. Choose your favourite one. You can search for the name in the Search box, for example type Google and choose Google Search suggestion for the “international” version of Google. You will have to close the add-on window and click again on the Settings tab to see your new provider in the list. Set it as default and then you can remove Bing.
- In the Tabs section click on Settings. If you have multiple home pages, choose if you want all of them or only the first one to open when you launch IE. If you want to use IE in “single window mode” also put a check mark by “always open pop-ups in a new tab”. Click OK when done.
- There are options to customize Colors, Languages, Fonts and Accessibility just below the Tabs section.
3. The privacy tab:
- Most sites will want to set a cookie on your computer. Most of them are innocent but some can be used to “spy” on you. Then again some sites will have to have a cookie installed to work properly, some banking sites for example, some sites use that to remember your credentials (user name and password). You can add sites that you want to be allowed to set cookies by clicking on the Sites button. Type the address of the site and press on Allow, then press OK.
-Pop-up blocker: it is a good idea to leave this one on
-InPrivate: Put a check mark by “do not collect data for use by InPrivate Filtering”.
4. The Content tab: See if you need any of those features. I leave the autocomplete feature off for security reasons.
5. The Connections tab: only useful if you need to manually add a VPN connection, otherwise better left alone
6. The Programs tab:
-if you don’t plan to use IE as your default browser uncheck “tell me if Internet Explorer is not the default web browser”
-Add-ons: there are lots of those and some are quite useful. Above we have already changed the default search provider, some other I use are in the Accelerators category: Blogger for my blog, Google Translate, a currency converter, google maps, google preview, bugmenot, send with gmail
7. The Advanced tab: in the Security section but a check mark by all SSL and TLS options
To remove the search box in IE, copy and paste the following text in Notepad. Create an ietweaks.reg file as you did above for the explorer.reg file, then double click to add the change to the registry.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
; IE7 Remove Search Box
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\InfoDelivery\Restrictions]
"NoSearchBox"=dword:00000001
Firefox
If you plan to use another browser than IE, this is the time to install and configure it. I use Firefox for several reasons and this is how I install and configure it
1. Download the latest package and install it. Run firefox once to create a profile.
2. You can import settings from IE, but I have used FF before and have a backup so I am going to use that to configure the browser. The backup is done with a firefox extension called FEBE so the next step is to install FEBE.
3. Set up options for FEBE: what to backup, where and how often. Click on options, clik on Additional items and choose cookies, bookmarks, preferences, form fill history and permissions. In the directory tab choose where to place the backup. The Software partition is a good place, create a folder Firefox and you can place there all the extensions and the backups. Put a checkmark by Use timestamped directories and choose how many you want to keep. On the Schedule tab choose how often you want the backup to run. I set mine to once a week. That means that I set the backup reminder to 8 so if a backup is missed I will get notified the next day. Restart Firefox and go to Tools > FEBE > restore and choose what to restore.
4. Extensions: Change for currency conversions, Converter to convert measure units, Downthemall for downloads, Dragdropupload for easy upload of files and text, IEview to open pages in IE in case they don’t work well with FF, IMtranslator to translate text, Informenter for all that info that I enter everyday in various webforms, noscript for addes security, tabmixplus to control tab behaviour, respoof to spoof urls when needed. Google toolbar is no longer an extension; you can install it as a tool bar.
Windows Media Player
If you can still find it somewhere, download and install WMP9 Winter Fun Pack. This will install a plug in allowing you to export information about your songs/videos to an excel spreadsheet.
If you want to store your music outside the OS partition open Explorer , double click Computer, double click the C: partition, double click Users, double click your user name, right click on Music and choose Properties. Click on the Location tab and click on Move. Navigate to where you want the Music folder and when done click Apply and OK.
Open media player and right click on the arrow to the right of Library in the menu bar. Either put a check mark by Show Menu Bar and then on the Menu Bar click on Tools and choose options, or choose Tools from the right click menu and then choose Options.
1. Player tab: set updates to monthly2. Rip music tab: choose where you want your music to be saved and choose how you want the file name. I set mine to Song_Album_Artist. The order is changed using the Move up and Move down buttons and I choose and underscore as separator to avoid problems with file naming conventions. Click Ok when done. Set rip settings to MP3 for compatibility reasons, adjust the quality as desired. Click Apply when done
3. Devices tab: some advanced configuration options are available under the Advanced button
4. Burn tab: Remove the checkmark by “use media information to arrange files in folders on the disk if you want to arrange the files in a certain order and not necessarily by track number/name. Click Apply
5. Performance tab: leave as it is, but if you experience problems with video and audio getting out of sync, this is where you can set the player to drop frames to keep the 2 synchronized.
6. Library tab: I want my files to have a consistent name and to be arranged in folders so I put a check mark by “rename music files using rip music settings” and “rearrange music in rip music folder”. Click Apply
7. Plug-ins tab: there doesn’t seem to be any good free plug-ins available for Windows 7
8. Privacy tab: I uncheck “automatically check if protected files need to be refreshed” and “set clock on devices automatically” and also everything under the History section. Click Apply when done.
9. Security tab: Leave as it is
10. DVD tab: set limit for content rating if you want to restrict what can be played
11. Network tab: Leave as it is
Click on Organize and choose the options you want to see in the left pane of WMP. For example I want to have an option to sort the music library by year so I put a check mark by Year in the Music category. I also want to see all my playlists so I put a check mark by All in the Playlists category. I will not use WMP to view pictures so I remove the checkmarks from the Pictures category
If the player has not done that already in the background, click on Tools and choose “apply media information changes”
TIME FOR BACKUP:Personalized. Clean up, defrag and backup. A Windows based backup will do at this point. If you have a bootable recovery CD from Acronis or Macrium or any other backup software, use that to create a backup.
