Enable Hidden 5th Security Zone In Ie6 & Other Power Tips For Win Xp

[shanmuga]

ENABLE HIDDEN 5TH SECURITY ZONE IN IE6 & OTHER POWER TIPS FOR WIN XP:cool:

You actually have a 5th, hidden, security zone in your IE6 Internet Options->Security->Zones know as "My Computer". What for I don’t know may be you can protect your system from yourself. Okay here's how

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\InternetSettings\Zones\0
"Flags"=dword: 0X00000021 (33) ---default
Change to
"Flags"=dword: 0X00000001 (1)

Now reboot or logoff and back on. My Computer should now be visible in the IE Security Zones selection.

THE XP PREFETCHER:cool:

With Windows XP comes a service called the Prefetcher. This service monitors which programs initialize when Windows boots, then in future, fetches them quickly. The Prefetcher is enabled by default, but you can improve its performance. Simply navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

In the registry and find the value EnablePrefetcher. Most likely, it will be set to 3. The recommended setting for the prefetcher is 5.

ZIP FOLDERS:cool:

Windows XP has built-in support for .ZIP files, so that you can view them as normal folders. However, the system supposedly uses a sizeable portion of resources doing this, so disabling this feature can increase performance. It's easy to do; you just have to un-register the zipfldr.dll, by going to Start -> Run... and typing

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

Then pressing Enter.

L2 CACHE TWEAK:cool:

The L2, or second-level, cache is an integral part of your CPU. However, XP is very shoddy at detecting it, (value shown in my system is 0 instead of 256) so setting it manually is sometimes necessary. It's easy to do, though; you simply have to navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\

In the registry and find the value SecondLevelDataCache. You must then adjust it to the value (in kilobytes and in decimal mode) of the L2 Cache of your processor.


SHOW 'SUPER' HIDDEN FILES AND FOLDERS:cool:

Windows XP Pro and Home contains icons for folders and files that cannot normally be seen, you can select to view hidden files from the folder options menu, but there are still some that remain hidden. You can set windows to view these files as normal hidden files, so that when you use the view hidden files and folders toggle from the folder options menu that these will be turned on/off along with the normal hidden files.

These files are usually system files and should not be altered/deleted unless you really know what you are doing, so be warned!

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \SOFTWARE \MICROSOFT \WINDOWS \CURRENTVERSION \EXPLORER \ADVANCED

Modify the value to equal 1 to show the super hidden files and 0 to hide them.

SMALLER VOLUME:cool:

Volume control too big? Open the volume control and press Ctrl-S for a smaller one. Then every time that you open volume control, the smaller controls will be open. You can revert to the bigger control by pressing ctrl-s again.

windownxpatoz/twektown

[Abbadon]

seems very nice, but I don't understand what the fist one is for. How exactly will it benefit me?

[pave_spectre]

Where does one find how much L2 cache XP thinks it has. Is it just in that registry entry or can it be found in a slightly more convenient location?

[shanmuga]

@abbadon

Just a guess is that it might help stop the spread of trojans and bad ActiveX controls.

@pave_spectre

Where i am connectivity is pretty expensive.:D I hope ErnieK or other DSL'rs will provide us with some guiding links

[malcore]

XP prefetcher

This "tweak" is dubious. There are only 4 valid options for this registry value:

0 = disable
1 = App Launch Prefetch
2 = Boot Prefetch
3 = Both

5 is not an option and I would assume reverts it all to 0 = disable.

L2 cache tweak

This is only used for pre-Pentium 2 chips with direct-mapped L2 caches. The HAL in XP will correctly identify your L2 cache on any P2 or later processor (AMD included). This registry entry is not utilized for these later chips, so the value set is pointless.

From Microsoft Knowledge Base:

SecondLevelDataCache records the size of the processor cache, also known as the secondary or L2 cache. If the value of this entry is 0, the system attempts to retrieve the L2 cache size from the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for the platform. If it fails, it uses a default L2 cache size of 256 KB. If the value of this entry is not 0, it uses this value as the L2 cache size. This entry is designed as a secondary source of cache size information for computers on which the HAL cannot detect the L2 cache.
This is not related to the hardware; it is only useful for computers with direct-mapped L2 caches. Pentium II and later processors do not have direct- mapped L2 caches.