WINDOWS XP TRICKS (Learn Part 7)

WINDOWS XP TRICKS

26. Enable automatic path MTU size detection and improve Internet
throughput.

As stated on previous tip (Tip 52), MTP size plays an important role in deciding Internet speed. But its not so easy to determine the right value of MTU. For those of us who fall in this category and would prefer computer to find that for us, follow trick may work.

I can not say with confidence whether this would work across all network but it should and there is no harm in trying it out. Now before I do that let me tell you what this action will do. Applying this trick, you would ask computer to automatically find out the maximum MTU size possible in the connection path to a host.

This value could be different for different sites. I think this trick should pick the lowest common denominator across a
particular path. Typically If MTU size is not optimized, this job has to be done by a router which would mean a significant waste of time (small chunks adds to a considerable loss if you imagine that there are billions of packets involved across the whole Internet) resulting in poor throughout and congestion on cyber lanes.

All right this key is called EnablePMTUDiscovery.

Again this is a registry.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigateto

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services
\\Tcpip\\Parameters\\Interfaces\\ ID for Adapter.

For this right click on right pane and add a key by thename EnablePMTUDiscovery. For this key you can add a DWORD boolean value of 0 or 1 with 1 being TRUE (value that enables auto detection).

Since we are trying this tweak, set to 1 and enable the TCP to attempt to discover the MTU size over the specific path to host. Microsoft has an interesting article on many similar tips However, there are situations where you might want to disable this feature.

For example, a laptop user that has a network adapter installed but is not connected to
their local LAN.

If you don't want this feature, you can disable it by:

1. Starting Regedit

2. Go to Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \\ System \\ CurrentControlSet \\ Services \\ VxD \\ DHCP

3. Add a DWORD entry with the name IPAutoconfigurationEnabled

4. Give it a value of 0x0

5. Restart the computer

This will disable Automatic Private IP Addressing but not DHCP

27. Adding Shortcuts to the Desktop

An easy way to add a shortcut of a program to the desktop is to:

1. Right click on the icon

2. Select Send To / Desktop as Shortcut

28. Adding Shortcuts to Menus

If you drag a shortcut to the Start Menu and drop it, you will get a shortcut on your Start Menu.
To add it to a Program group below the Start Menu, hover it there for a second or two and the group will expand.

You can then insert the shortcut into that Program Group.

A divider line will be displayed to let you know where you will be placing the shortcut.
To move a shortcut, left-click on it and move it to the new location

29. Gradient Fill Title Bars

If you have Win98 and are using at least 16 bit color, you can have a gradient fill for your title bars.

The effect is that your title bar gradually changes color from left to right.
To enable this:

1. Right click on an open area of the Desktop

2. Right-Click

3. Select Properties

4. Click on the Appearance tab

5. Pull down the Item list

6. Select Active or Inactive Title Bar

7. You can select Color and Color2 (only if you have 16 bit or higher color saturation)

Now your title bars will have a gradient fill

30. Installing the OEM Version Over Win95

Normally you can't install the OEM Version of Windows98 if you have an existing Win95 on your
system.

To get around this problem:

Boot the PC with the Windows 95 Emergency Startup Disk to the MS-DOS prompt but make sure your CD ROM drivers are loaded on the disk and have access to the CD_ROM drive.

Run the MS-DOS editor EDIT and create a dummy file NTLDR (no extension) in the root dir C:\\ In the Windows95 directory (usually C:\\WINDOWS), rename the file WIN.COM.
Start the Windows 98 Setup with: SETUP.EXE /NTLDR

You will be prompted for the directory to load Windows98 into, by default if you already have
Windows95 loaded and are upgrading, it will have c:\\windows.000 make sure you change it to
c:\\windows or it will load Win98 in another directory.

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