For some reason, Windows doesn't take full advantage of your CD drives on first install. Most CD-ROM, CD-RW, and DVD-RW drives these days support two things: DMA and Sync Data Transfer, which are by default disabled.

Enabling these is quite easy. First, get to the System Properties dialog. There are three ways to do this. Method 1: Go to My Computer>Control Panel>System; method 2: right-click My Computer, and click Properties; method 3: type the hotkey-combo "WIN+BREAK". One you're there, click the Device Manager tab, and then click the plus sign next to Computer>CDROM to collapse the menu. Click one of the CD drives listed, and click Properties. When the new dialog appears, click the Settings tab, and then check both the Options>Sync Data Transfer and Options>DMA checkboxes. Repeat this process for any other CD drive(s) you have. You will have to restart for these changes to take effect.

Because not all sound cards are as boom as, say, an SBLive Audigy EX 5.1, Windows sets its sound properties a bit low. Good sound cards have their own properties, but these two things are totally affected by Windows.

First, go to Control Panel>Multimedia. Then, from the Audio tab, under Playback, click the Advanced Properties button. In the new dialog box that comes up, click the Performance tab. Under Audio Playback, there are two sliding meters, named Hardware acceleration and Sample rate conversion quality. The former should be set to None, and the latter should be set to Good. Just go ahead and slide these meters up. Slide Hardware acceleration up 1-3 notches, toward Full, and Sample rate conversion quality 1-2 notches, toward Best. Click OK.

Both of these greatly affect how everything sounds, especially the sample rate conversion quality.

The horizontal bar at the bottom of the desktop, with the Start Menu, your open windows, systray icons, and the clock, is called a taskbar. Other bars on the desktop are called toolbars, but we'll get to that later. On a newly installed Windows, there is a sub-toolbar in the bottom taskbar called "QuickLaunch" with 4 icons in it that load programs. Llamas to Windows don't know this, but you can actually make new sub-toolbars, add/remove text and titles to/from them, move the bottom taskbar around the screen, and even create new main toolbars.

To create a sub-toolbar, first you must have a folder. All files in this folder show up when you create the toolbar. If you need to, create a folder anywhere on your hard drive, and create in it as many files as you want. Files in sub-toolbars are usually shortcuts (-.lnk) or text files (-.txt). Next, right-click the bottom taskbar, and click Toolbars>New Toolbar.... In the dialog box that comes up, browse through your hard drive to find the folder you want. Now, you will have a new sub-toolbar. If you want to add an Address, Links, Desktop (useful if you can't get to your desktop), or QuickLaunch toolbar, just click Toolbars>* (and replace * with the type of sub-toolbar). To make the title (name of the folder) appear to the left of the icons, right-click the sub-toolbar and click Show Title. To make the filenames of each file appear to the right of each icon, right-click the sub-toolbar and click Show Text. To get rid of the sub-toolbar, right-click it and click Close Toolbar. To resize sub-toolbars, click the vertical white bar to the left of one and drag it to the left or right.

To move the entire bottom taskbar, click an empty area on it and drag it to the upper, left or right edges of the screen. Once you get to an edge, it will lock in place.

How to add a main toolbar: simply click and drag My Computer on the desktop to an edge of the screen. A new toolbar will instantly be created, with a sub-toolbar showing the contents of My Computer, and title and text on. If you don't want this toolbar to be used to show My Computer, close that sub-toolbar, and add one of your own.

Tip: if you double-click the vertical white bar on sub-toolbars, it will quickly expand and shrink back. This is useful for conserving space for multiple sub-toolbars.

By default, the taskbar at the bottom of the screen is always there... and it takes up 1/2 of an inch of your vertical desktop space. Another disadvantage of having this on is that people passing through your workspace can see what windows you currently have open (even if they're minimized).

The way to fix this is very simple. You have to get to the "Taskbar Properties" dialog box, and there are two methods to do this. Method 1: right-click anywhere on the toolbar, and click Properties; method 2: click the Start Menu, and then Settings>Taskbar and Start Menu.... Once you're in this dialog, check the checkbox named Auto hide. Click OK. Now, whenever you click away from the toolbar, it goes away; mouseover the bottom of the screen, and it comes back up. The toolbar can come up and go away either all at once, or smoothly... see a tweak later in this section for how to change this.

You can also Auto-Hide upper, left and right toolbars... and it's even easier. Just right-click an empty area and click Auto-Hide. These toolbars will still only come up and go away instantly, though.

Maybe the coders of the Start Menu had vision problems, but for some reason they made it so that the icons to the left of the text for the main entries in the Start Menu (Programs, Favorites, Documents, Settings, Help, Run, etc.) appear large (48x48 pixels).

To make these icons smaller (32x32 pixels), AND get rid of the vertical bar saying "Windows 98" to the left, go to the "Taskbar Properties" dialog box, just as you did in the Auto-Hide tweak above. Once there, check the checkbox named Show small icons in Start Menu. Click OK.

As a safety measure, Windows comes so that certain system files are hidden from you. Most of these files are in the Windows or Windows>System folders, but some are in other folders, based on sensitive file extensions. However, unless you're a llama, you won't hurt these files. So, why not just unhide them? Not only does this let you see and edit system files for further tweaking, but helps if you're trying to count how many files are in a folder or things like that.

All you do is this: open either My Computer or Windows Explorer. Then, click View>Folder Options in the top toolbar. When the Folder Options dialog comes up, click the View tab. Finally, under Files and Folders>Hidden Files, check the Show All Files radio button, and click OK.

Intentionally hidden files made visible appear half-transparent, so that they visually stand out from normal files.

Some files in your computer have programs selected to run them by default, and others don't. When you install a new program, it usually defaults itself to run certain types of files (and you can configure this too by going to the File Types tab of the "Folder Options" dialog). Windows makes it so that files that DO have programs associated with them hide their extensions (file-types) from you when you view them in My Computer or Windows Explorer.

To make these extensions visible (filename.extension), go to the View tab of the "Folder Options" dialog as you did in the entry above, on Showing Hidden Files. Simply uncheck the checkbox Hide file extensions for known file types under Files and Folders.

For your own visual clarity, it's best to leave known extensions hidden, because they create clutter. But if you want to check, or change, an extension (by renaming), showing them can be helpful. You can make them hidden again by simply rechecking that checkbox.

Another use of this is to check downloaded files... sometimes, hackers put false "extensions" on files by adding "-.extension" to the end of the filename itself. If you make extensions visible, and look at the file in question, you might see that, for example, "int.jpg" is really "int.jpg.exe". You should always be wary of downloaded .EXEs from file sharers.

In My Computer or Windows Explorer, you have the ability to change certain visual properties of folders. You can change how files are arranged (by Name, Type, Size, or Date), how files are shown (by Large Icons, Small Icons, List, or Details), and choose if you want the folder to be viewed as a web page or not. However, if you change a folder with these new properties, only that folder will be changed. All other folders look like they did before.

To make all folders look the same, get to the View tab of the "Folder Options" dialog just as you did in the tweak above to show hidden files. Once there, simply click the Like Current Folder button under Folder Views and click OK.

When you browse your computer in My Computer or Windows Explorer, in View>as Web Page mode, you may notice a few warning messages in certain folders, displayed on the left. These folders are Program Files, Windows, and Windows\System.

The message for Program Files is non-intrusive (it doesn't require you to do anything manually to get past it). However, the message for the other two folders does require you to. It reads:

Modifying the contents of this folder may cause your programs to stop working correctly. To view the contents of this folder, click Show Files.

To get rid of the message for the two latter folders mentioned above, first go to Windows\Web. Copy the file named "folder.htt". Next, go to Windows and Windows\System, and paste "folder.htt" into them. When the box asking you if you want to overwrite the existing files, click Yes. Now, whenever you go to these folders, you can just delve right in.

When you drag windows, by clicking and dragging the title bar, around the screen, you may see that, until you release the mouse button, the only thing that actually drags with you is a dotted outline of the window. When you release, everything inside appears. This is probably a safety measure Windows has to not overwork your video card. You can make it so that everything inside the window drags with you, though, which is very useful so you can always have your eyes on what you're doing. Another thing this change does is makes your toolbar (if you're using Auto-Hide, as mentioned above) come up and go away gradually.

Before you decide to change this, think about if your video card and CPU can handle this. Only video cards circa 1998, and CPUs 333MHz, or better, can manage this feature without slowing the system down too much. As for the toolbar going away gradually, if your card can't handle it, you will most likely see a gray horizontal streak left on the screen for a split second as it goes away.

First, get to the "Display Properties" dialog box. To do this, either go to My Computer>Control Panel>Display, or just right-click anywhere on your desktop and click Properties. From this dialog, click the Effects tab. Finally, under Visual effects, check the Show window contents while dragging checkbox. Click OK.

Ever seen those useless icons in My Computer and thought "I wish I could remove that useless crap!"? Of course you have. Web Folders and Scheduled Tasks...I've never used them a second of my life, so why should they be there? They shouldn't, so killing them is only a simple matter of removing some things from the registry. Browse through the keys until you find [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ explorer\ MyComputer\ NameSpace] (see the second screenshot at left). You should see three or more keys that have all hexadecimal names. When you click one of those keys, the default value is displayed as to the corresponding icon (and subsequent function) that is displayed in My Computer. Simply delete the key that has the default value as something you don't want there, and guess what? It won't be there; the change is instant.

Adding other icons to My Computer is a bit harder. You have to find the hexadecimal key name that corresponds to the icon and function that you want. As you can see in the screenshots, I added Recycle Bin to My Computer, and the original hex key name is found in [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ CLSID\ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}]. Obviously, I have merely created a link to the original key in [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ CLSID] from [MyComputer\ NameSpace]. I tried a lot of keys in [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ CLSID], but this is the only one I found useful. There may be more, though...so experiment. BTW, it also works the same for [Desktop\ NameSpace].

If you go to Start Menu>Find, you probably see 4 entries: "Files or folders", "Computer", "On the Internet", and "People". Unless you're running a network, in which case you might find the "Computer" entry handy, the only entry you really need is "Files or folders".

To remove the others, go to the Registry Editor, as explained above. Once there, go to this key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ explorer\ Find Extensions\ Static]. Finally, simply right-click and Delete all 3 of the keys in [Static] (e.g.: [InetFind] key for "On the Internet").

There's an entry in the Start menu named "Log Off User (where User is the name of the logged-in user)". It's only necessary if more than one person uses your computer, or there are multiple levels of Windows log-in access (e.g.: "Admin" and "Student" in a school computer lab).

If it's just you, you might want to remove this entry. From the Registry Editor, go to the key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer]. Next, create a new Binary value into this key by right-clicking anywhere on the right and clicking New>Binary Value. Then, right-click the new Binary value and click Rename. Rename it to NoLogOff. Now, right-click the value again, and click Modify. In the dialog box that comes up, look in the "value data" field. Type "01 00 00 00" in this field. Click OK. This requires a restart of Windows to take effect.

In Windows95, when you go to Start Menu>Programs, and there are more entries than your screen height allows to visibly fit, a second column is created. However, Windows98 makes it so that the entries are left as one column, with a black arrow pointing down at the bottom that you can mouseover to scroll down the list.

You can make multiple columns show up, though. From the Registry Editor, go to the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ explorer\ Advanced]. Then, create a new String value and name it StartMenuScrollPrograms. Modify it, and type "FALSE". Click OK.

When you create a shortcut to a file, you probably see a small white arrow in the lower-right corner of the shortcut's icon. This can be quite annoying... you should know if something's a shortcut or not (-.lnk), especially if you check with the Show Known Files' Extensions tweak above.

Removing this arrow is actually pretty easy, registryly-speaking. Once you open the Registry Editor, go to the [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ lnkfile ] key. Then, delete the IsShortcut value on the right. Finally, go to the [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ piffile ] key and delete the IsShortcut value. This requires a restart of Windows to take effect (or, possibly, Rebuilding Icons with TweakUI would suffice).

MSN Messenger doesn't come with Windows 98, but it's practically force-fed to you if you start using Hotmail and other possessions of theirs. When you open a new Instant Message window with someone, there is a warning message at the top of the text area, taking up 2-3 lines of chattable space. It reads: "Never give out your credit card number in an instant message window". Ok... you got that? Don't be a llama and give away private info... so, now that you've got that straight, you can remove the warning.

From the Registry Editor, go to this key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Microsoft\ MessengerService\ Policies]. Then, create a new String value, and rename it to IMWarning. Next, make the value data " " (simply make a space). Click OK. This requires a restart of only MSN Messenger to take effect.

You know how when you lock, your computer restarts, and then this annoying thing called "Scandisk" comes up before Windows loads? Well, it's almost never necessary, because you know what happened to your files: if you had anything opened and unsaved, it didn't save. Aside from that, no big damage was done.

To disable this, you need to open the System Configuration Utility dialog. Just go to Start Menu>Run..., and then type "msconfig" in the box that comes up. Once the new dialog comes up, click the Advanced button in the lower-right area of the window. In the next and final window that comes up, check the Disable Scandisk after bad shutdown checkbox under Settings.

Note: Be sure to run the Scandisk program in Windows (Start Menu>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>ScanDisk) every month or so, though, to keep your hard drive in order.

When Windows installs, the only two things in the Systray are the Volume Properties and a program called "Scheduled Tasks". This is a useless utility that MS included to synchronize "tasks": loading Internet pages and things like that. It's annoying, and it wastes almost 500KB of RAM.

You may think that right-clicking the Systray icon for it and clicking "Pause Task Scheduler" might kill it, but it doesn't... it comes right back on your next restart of Windows. To disable this, go to the System Configuration Utility just as you did to disable ScanDisk (above). However, don't click the Advanced button this time. Instead, click the Startup tab, and then scroll-down through the list of programs until you find a checkbox named SchedulingAgent. Just uncheck this, and click OK.

Also, look above in the Registry section for the tweak to remove the Scheduled Tasks icon from My Computer.

When you open MS-DOS prompts from Windows, you can do a few operations (your range of possible uses is limited since Windows doesn't allow itself to be altered while open), such as pinging and trace-routing IP addresses, opening programs, making batch files, and viewing and editing system files. You can paste text from other programs into prompts as entries, and, using the Mark button, cut/copy/paste text within a prompt.

However, DOS leaves one limitation. If you've ever played Half-Life in developer mode, and used the console, you know that the up and down arrows on your keyboard cycle through commands. You can bring up, edit, and reexecute commands without having to type anything over again. Well, DOS can do this too... and it can be very useful, e.g. for repeating long game stats parse commands.

First, open a shortcut to an MS-DOS prompt (the application's filename is command.com). There is defaultly a shortcut in Start Menu>Programs. Once you have the prompt open, just type "doskey" in the command line, from C:\Windows. Now, after you type and enter multiple commands, and use the up and down arrows, you can cycle through them.

This only works for one MS-DOS session, though. If you want DOSKey to load every time you open a prompt, go to Start Menu>Programs, right-click "MS-DOS Prompt", and click Properties. From here, click the Program tab, and under Batch file, type "doskey". Click OK. Now, DOSKey will install itself every time you open command.com from this shortcut.

Restarting your entire computer, which includes the Power-On Self-Test (POST) and Windows, takes a while... about 45 seconds, if you have a decent computer. However, restarting just the OS takes about 2/3 as long.

If you go to Start Menu>Shut Down..., a dialog box comes up giving you 4 choices: Stand by, Shut down, Restart, and Restart in MS-DOS mode. Or... so it seems. There's actually a hidden trick here.

Choosing the Restart option restarts your entire computer... but if you select the Restart radio button, hold either Shift key (left or right), click OK, and release the Shift key, only Windows restarts.

Note: Only "Shift-Restart" if you want a Windows- or program-specific change to take effect. IF you have changed the status of any hardware (usually via the "System Properties" dialog), you should fully Restart.

There are number of very useful hotkeys (quick keystrokes that do tasks) in Windows that help speed up the tweaking process. Here they are: