Changing the Windows registry without knowing what you are doing can end in disaster. This is why there are so many programs that promise to increase your registry efficiency and make your computer run faster. However, you can get some of those same benefits without paying for an expensive program, and without destroying your computer, with some basic knowledge about tweak the registry. Before making any changes to your registry, you should create a registry backup, just in case anything goes wrong.
Change Menu Speed
When you press the Start button and select menu choices from within, you may notice there is a slight delay in opening those folders and program selections. You can decrease this delay, or take it away entirely, by altering one line in your registry. Open the registry editor (press Start, Run, type "regedit") and navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\MenuShowDelay registry key. The value that will appear there is 400 (for 0.4 seconds), but you can change it to whatever you want. Be warned, setting this value to zero may make navigation next to impossible due to the speed at which the menus open, so it is better to try a value like 200 first, and see if you like the boost in speed.
Put the Kernel into RAM
If your computer has more than 256 MB of RAM available, you can try a tweak that will load the core kernel for Windows into your RAM, instead of into the swap file where it traditionally resides. This will speed up the overall performance of your system. To do this tweak, open up the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePaging Executive. Set this value to 1, then reboot your computer.
Change NTFS Settings
For NTFS-formatted hard drives, there is a naming convention dubbed "8.3" which can significantly slow down driver performance for reading and writing operations. You can opt to disable this convention without harm, so long as you aren't using it (you would only be using it in rare cases, such as for running 16-bit programs). To disable the 8.3 naming convention, open registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation and set the DWORD registry key to 1. Close out the registry editor and restart your computer for the changes to take effects.
Tags: your computer, your registry, CurrentControlSet Control, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet