I changed Ram Idle file cache from 512 to 1024 http://www.fixwindows.com/win95/index.htm: [All] Close Multiple Windows Quickly: If you've opened several windows from the same tool (e.g. My Computer), quickly close them all at once by holding the SHIFT key while clicking the close window button (small x in upper right corner of window). [All] Remove the "Shortcut To": By default, when you create a shortcut to a file or program, Windows sticks a "Shortcut To" in front of the file or program name. You can, however, avoid this behavior and have Windows just use the file or program name as the name for the shortcut. The easiest way to accomplish this (without editing the Registry) is to right-click the My Computer icon located on the Desktop then select Create Shortcut. Right-click the newly-created shortcut's icon and select the Rename option. Rename the shortcut to "My Computer." Repeat these steps six times. On the sixth try, you'll see that Windows drops the "Shortcut To" bit. Note: You don't have to use the My Computer icon. You can use any file or program located on your computer. (Abridged: Right-click My Computer->Create Shortcut. Right-click new shortcut->Rename->Rename to My Computer) [v4,v5] Reset the Content Advisor Password: If you've ever setup Internet Explorer's Content Advisor to block sites from members of your family, you'll know that you have to set a password for administrative access. And if you happen to forget this password, you are usually stuck with a list of blocked sites that you can no longer access. There is a workaround to this problem, however. To reset the password, you'll have to edit the Registry. Click Start and choose the Run option. Type: REGEDIT and click the OK button. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/ WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/POLICIES/RATINGS. Click the KEY entry within the right pane and press the DELETE key. Once you have confirmed that you want to delete this entry, close REGEDIT and restart your PC. Once Windows has restarted, right-click the Internet Explorer icon and choose Properties. Click the Content tab. Within the Content sheet, click the Disable Ratings option. When prompted for a password, leave the password field empty and click the OK button. The password has now been removed. (Abridged: Right-click Internet Explorer->Properties->Content->Click Disable Ratings) [v5] Speed Up the AutoComplete Feature: When using Internet Explorer's AutoComplete feature, retrieving web sites can slow down over time. To speed things back up, you simply need to erase the history. Within IE, select the Tools menu and choose Internet Options. Within the General sheet, click the Clear History button. You can also set the number of days to retain a history of sites. The lower the number, the less data stored, the faster the feature will work. [All] Keep System Time Accurate: Let's face it; the typical PC does a horrible job of keeping accurate time. To battle this, you may want to install a free application, called NISTIME, available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The application is a no-frills-256K-not a lot of documentation-but very free utility that you can download by clicking here. Copy the utility to your system, run it, select a time server, and query the time. If your computer's clock is off, NISTIME will prompt you to update it. It's that easy. Note: One possible item that is not so easy. If your computer sits behind a firewall that blocks outgoing traffic on TCP port 13, you may not be able to use this utility. NISTIME can switch over to UDP port 123 as an alternative, but will need one of these two ports available to function correctly. [95/98] Help Avoid System Crashes: To help avoid crashes, make sure that you have twice as much hard drive space available as you have RAM. For example, a system with 16MB of RAM should have 32MB of hard drive space available for your swap file. In addition, your computer is constantly creating new temporary files (.TMP) to help with productivity. To help avoid crashes, regularly delete all the .TMP files that are not currently being used. Using your Find feature (Start -> Find -> Files or Folders), search for *.TMP files, sort the files by date, and delete all the .TMP files without today's date. [95] Fix a Broken Start Menu: This tip applies to the situation where the Start Menu shows up blank, and cannot be modified. This occurs when modifications to the Start Menu are made from the command line. To repair the Start Menu, perform the following steps: 1. If there are still subfolders and links in C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu that you can access from the Explorer, copy these to another folder as backup. 2. Restart the computer, and when you see the Starting Windows 95... message, press F8 to access the boot menu. Choose the Command Prompt Only option. 3. At the C:\ prompt, type CD \WINDOWS then press ENTER. Type DELTREE startm~1 and press ENTER. Reboot the computer. 4. When Windows 95 reloads, it will find that rather than being invalid, the Start Menu simply isn't there. It will then create a valid Start Menu. 5. At this point you can go to Start -> Settings -> Taskbar&Start Menu Within the Start Menu Programs sheet, click the Advanced button and start copying back in the shortcuts you backed up in step one, or you can run GRPCONV.EXE to get your basic icons back, and reinstall or create the other links by hand to get your icons back. [All] Minimize All Windows Quickly: If you have a large number of windows open simultaneously, it can be difficult to get to icons or shortcuts located on your Desktop. However, starting with the Internet Explorer 4 Desktop Update for 95/NT4, you can use the Show Desktop button to minimize all windows quickly and efficiently. Just click the Show Desktop button located on the Quick Launch toolbar (located on the Taskbar). [All] Minimize Some Windows Quickly: You can use the Show Desktop button to minimize all open windows. What if, however, you only want to minimize a couple of Windows. To do so, hold the CTRL key and click the programs' icons located on the Taskbar. Once you have selected all of the programs that you'd like to affect, right-click on one of the selected icons. From the context menu, choose Minimize. You'll also see that the context menu allows you to restore, maximize, tile, or cascade the selected programs. [95/98/ME] Reload the Desktop: If you ever need to reload the Desktop, the Taskbar or other Desktop elements, (for example, to reload a Desktop element after changing a Registry setting), press CTRL+ALT+DEL. Select the Explorer item then click End Task button. The Desktop will blank out then restart. [All] Tweak the Windows Interface: Since the release of Windows 95, Microsoft has offered an unsupported tool that allowed users to tweak certain aspects of the Windows interface (including Internet Explorer). For example, the aptly-named Tweak UI tool allows you to modify mouse movement properties, remove Desktop icons, clear the Run history and a number of other neat tricks. Version 1.33 is available here and will work for 95, 98, ME, NT4 and 2000. Warning: Tweak UI offers many customization options that are not normally available; however, the tool doesn't have good documentation and is unsupported by Microsoft. Use it at your own risk. [95/98/NT4] Change File Associations Quickly: To change the default application of a file type, simply select the file, hold down the SHIFT key, and click the right mouse button. Select the Open With option, and choose the program you want to use for this file type. Place a check in the Always Use This Program to Open This Type of File box. [95/98/NT4] Restart Windows quickly: When you click Start -> Shut Down -> Restart Windows, hold down the Shift key when clicking the OK button. Windows will reload without going through the POST and real-mode load sequences.