@EracMan: I don't trust registry cleaners as I believe they clean out more than what they're supposed to, but to each his own :D

I've been using TweakUI for a while. I'll have to see if this is any different. I like the interface on this better just looking at it.

evangelistc01

I have been using their free registry cleaner for years now and have been very pleased with it. [www.tweaknow.com]
I will need to check this one out and see if there is any value to it.

EracMan

user acounts = user accounts right? ;)

This is perfect for our public computer in my work's lunchroom the IT guys get all puckered about.

Dr.Jeckyl

Love tweak tools. @evangelistc01: That's BS. Like everything else, if you know what you're doing, they work great.

jarhead

Finally, easy redirection of "my documents", "my pictures", and "my music". I prefer not to use my OS drive for storing those. Gets real annoying when windows insists on it.

anonymii

I wonder if you could use this to modify a computer where you have limited access (like bat files disabled). I wonder if there is a portable version or something. oh the possibilities.

ender89

I have already used TweakUI to change some things on this computer. If I use a different tweaking program, do they recognize the changes made be each other? I've even done some tweaking by editing registry keys.

pschroeter

Will it let me achieve my holy grail of Windows XP tweaks -- enabling me to keep the "favorites" pane (of windows explorer, not internet explorer) pinned open?

That would enable me to have an easily modifiable, left-hand pane with all my most frequently used items, a la Mac OS X.

I've been pining for this for years.

- AJ

Alaska Jack

@ Alaska Jack

You could use findexer for this trick:

[tomseffect.com]

Does the job

kennylog

@anonymii: this has been possible for ages via Junction from system internals, you can use it to create a symlink pointing anywhere on a local drive.

Ronald van Raaij

Does this offer any advantages over TweakUI?

jmontana

I am either not getting what AJ wants or I'm not fully understanding what Junction does. Doesn't Junction just add a function to Windows which is similar to "alias" in Unix? From reading AJ's post, I was picturing an explorer window pinned to the side of his desktop much like the favorites can be pinned to the side of an Internet Explorer session. What am I missing? How does Junction help those that are pining for pinning?

brian8655

The problem I have with these GUI registry tweakers (TweakUI included) is that they only expose pre-existing registry settings.

But lots of times, the real power tweaks come from registry keys and values that aren't already in the registry -- you have to find out about them, and add them.

It would be real useful if one of these registry tweakers presented those unexposed keys and values (initially grayed out if need be), ripe for the enabling.

cipheroid

@cipheroid: There's no such thing as a definitive list of all keys and values that make a difference. Windows is closed source, there's no way to see what keys the kernel checks.

That said, the vast majority of "undocumented keys" floating round the internet that you're supposed to add to the registry to make a performance difference are complete rubbish. The classic example is someone who noticed an "enablesuperfetch=1" key in the registry in Vista, and went around telling everyone that you could add that key to the registry in XP to get superfetch in XP; which, obviously, is crap.

And the majority of supposed tweaks to already existing registry keys are crap as well. All these sort of programs, including this one, that announce they will Set Your [Swapfile settings | caching settings | etc.] To Their Optimum Values. If everyone got better performance with registry key X set to '1' rather than '0', don't you think Microsoft would have set it like that as the default? After all, they're the ones who put it as a setting there in the first place, so I would have thought they would have a better idea of how it affects performance than most, especially as they will have actually done the benchmarking and testing -- which none of these people have.

The nail in the coffin of this Tweak Now suite, though? The "Ram Idle" component. It 'frees up' memory -- i.e. sets up a temporary dummy process that requests as much memory as possible from Windows, leaving you with lots of free memory. This has always been a spectacularly wrongheaded idea, since it just makes Windows shunt most other running processes into the pagefile. This makes the tweaking program happy since it can report lots of Free Memory -- but, of course, when you start *using* all these other processes (to do, I don't know, some actual work) they obviously have to be loaded back into RAM.

Newsflash: RAM that's 'free' is RAM that's not being used to speed up my system. I don't want all running programs and data pushed over to the pagefile so I can look at a nice bar chart telling me I have 75% Free Memory. If I want 75% of my RAM to remain unused, I'll remove it from my computer altogether and throw it out of the window and achieve the same result as this program!

SEMW

Today, I installed this, played with it and have already uninstalled it.

Most of the tweaks can already be handled in TweakUI. There are some system speed up tweaks, that apparently do nothing (or worse, goof up your system), according to XP Myths website [home.comcast.net] which documents a huge number of XP Myths.

The nicest feature of this program is that it had the ability to totally un-do all the changes it made!

ericsprojects

lol

That_Bastid

@anonymii: I alter computers at work to place their "My Music" folder on the local drive in spite of the "My Documents" folder being placed on the network.

I make the change in the registry at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Explorer \User Shell Folders

It is easy to move "My Documents" completely though. On my XP Pro machine I just Right Click the My Documents icon on the desktop, select Properties, and then under the Target tab I use the Move button.

Bob Brown

I owe you big time for featuring this app!

Last week I installed Comodo Firewall and it messed up my ports and network settings. My Thunderbird, Bittorrent, and also online games' connections got all messed up. Uninstalling Comodo didn't solve a thing. I tried optimizing my settings again by reading tens of articles for each program but to no vail. I seriously thought of formating my PC as a last resort but was, thankfully, lazy to backup my files :P~ !

I read this post yesterday and I gave the app a shot only to try the "Network & Settings" options. After five minutes of use plus one reboot, amazingly all my problems were solved and everything is back to normal.

THANKS ^_^!

mekaeel

I've been an unregistered "LifeHacker" viewer for a long time now but felt I had to register to leave a comment about this app. I'm a server 2003 sysop (so no moron) and am very unimpressed with this program but given that bad apps are a penny a dozen in the Realworld I am even more unimpressed that Lifehacker should be choosing to feature it. This app is not only sad when compared to many other tweak/gpol "user" apps out there but it also installs "InstallShield Updater" even when you ask it not to do so. Bundled rubbishware is not my idea of smart.

thepcguy