REGISTRY FOR ALL IN ONE.......

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User Interface Tweaks
Filesystem Tweaks
Security Tweaks
Performance Tweaks
Network Tweaks
Printing Tweaks

Add Your Own "Tip of the Day"

Microsoft Word for Windows introduced the "Tip of the Day" feature, which presents an ostensibly helpful tip every time you start a tip-enabled application. This feature made it into Windows 95, Office 95, NT 4.0, and a raft of third-party applications. Apart from disabling the feature altogether (which you can do with the "Don't show tips at startup" checkbox in the Tip of the Day dialog), you can add your own set of tips. This is particularly useful when you make this change as part of a system policy-you can build your own set of tips that are specific to your local environment, then remove the ability for users to turn the tips off. This is an easy, and cheap, way to disseminate information to your users. The list of tips is stored as a set of values under:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Tips.

The tip values are stored as sequentially named REG_SZ values; the first one is named "0", and the names go up from there. You can replace any of the existing tips included with NT by changing that tip's value; alternatively, you can replace all of them by removing all the values under Tips and replacing them with your own.

However, the tip list is only half of the necessary change. There's also a pair of REG_BINARY values that control whether tips are displayed and which tip comes next. These values are stored in HKCU, so they can be different for every individual user. Here's how they work:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Tips\Show

Controls whether tips are shown at startup or not. A value of 00000000 disables the tip display, while 01000000 enables it.

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Tips\Next

Controls which tip appears next. Its value is a sequence number that must match the name of a value in the tips list. A value of 00000000 displays tip 0, 01000000 displays tip 1, 0c000000 displays tip 12, and so on. NT will automatically increment and update this value as each tip is displayed.

Enable Tab for Filename Completion

If you're a Unix administrator or programmer, you'll love this one. Many Unix shells allow you to quickly complete filenames in the shell by using the Tab key. For example, if you type "ls -l aar" and hit the Tab key, the shell will look for files whose names start with "aar." If it finds one, it automatically expands what you typed into the full file or directory name. This is a lifesaver, especially since Unix allows you to have very long file and path names with embedded spaces-just like NT.
If you want to enable this behavior in NT 4.0 command windows, you can do it by adding a REG_DWORD named HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar and setting its value to the hex value of the character you want to use for filename completion. (If you don't already have a Command Processor key you'll need to add it too.) To use the Tab key, set its value to 0x09. While you may use other characters, I'd stick with Tab, since nothing else in the command window uses it.