Tweak and Customize your Windows Xp

We had shown earlier how to hack, tweak your Windows Xp. Here is another one to customize your windows Xp and its called Group policy Editor, and if you didn't know about this earlier then you would wonder why didn't give this in Control panel !

How to launch it ?
Go to Start Menu > Run > Type gpedit.msc
Or Hit Windows + R and then type gpedit.msc



In this there are various options to customize and tweak not just your Windows but also components such as Task Scheduler Programs such as Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player !

This is perfect way to enable/disable features in Windows and other windows component.

Here are some of the things you can do with Group Policy Editor.

Start Menu and Taskbar options

1. Allows you to remove the Run command from the Start menu, Internet Explorer, and Task Manager.
2. Prevents users from adding the Favorites menu to the Start menu or classic Start menu.
   
3. Prevents users from shutting down or restarting Windows.
4. Removes the Taskbar and Start Menu item from Settings on the Start menu. This setting also prevents the user from opening the Taskbar Properties dialog box.
5. Prevents the operating system from recently opened documents.
6. Prevents the taskbar from grouping items that share the same program name.
7. Hide pop-up text on the Start menu and in the notification area.
8. The "All Programs" item can be removed from the simple Start menu.
9. Prevent the clock in the system notification area from being displayed.

Alt+Ctrl+Del Options

1. Prevents users from starting Task Manager (Taskmgr.exe).
2. Prevents users from locking the system.

Windows Media Player

1. Enable the Windows Media Player to be shown only in skin mode, using a specified skin.
2. Specify the MMS proxy settings for the Windows Media Player.
3. Specify that the selected protocols are used when receiving streaming media from an mms:// URL.

This is how companies and internet cafe modify Internet explorer.

Internet explorer

1. Prevents users from viewing the HTML source of Web pages by clicking the Source command on the View menu.
2. Remove the Security tab, Content tab, Programs tab, Advanced tab from the interface in the Internet Options dialog box.
3. Disable Save as from the Menu and prevents user from saving Web pages from the browser File menu to their hard disk or to a network share.
4. Prevent users from opening a new browser window from the File menu.
5. Prevent users from closing Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer.
6. Prevent users from adding, removing, or editing the list of Favorite links.
7. Prevent users from opening the Internet Options dialog box from the Tools menu in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
8. Prevent the shortcut menu from appearing when users click the right mouse button while using the browser.
9. Prevent users from saving a program or file that Microsoft Internet Explorer has downloaded to the hard disk.
   

We will be discussing many of the above tweaks in details and give a link them to the above list.

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Set Custom Display resolution for user in Winxp

Now this one nagging feature of Win xp that when one user sets the display screen resolution it is set for all users ! For example your father may like higher resolution for reading stuff but your younger bro plays games and wants 800 x 600 , and it becomes irritating for not being able to a custom display.

Here is a simple solution :-

1) First download this - MultiRes

Don't worry its safe (tested on my crash test laptop)




This is quick resolution changer, that can change the resolution setting in one click. For most of us this should do !

But we are taking this a step further to automate the changing process as soon as the user logs in by batch files (yeah it is safe too !)
2) Download This - Changeres batch files

In this zip file you get 3 resolution settings at color depth 32 (you can edit them in notepad for the setting you want eg refresh rate / color depth etc)


Here comes the auto settings part !

3) Copy/extract the settings file wanted to the startup folder of the user

Go to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Replace the username with the windows user name you want and paste the correct settings file.

4) Done ! Next time you login to that username the batch file will be lauched and will change the setting automatically.

To remove this just delete the file from the above mentioned folder !

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