10/07/2014
7 Windows 7 Registry Hacks
In the 2 years since Windows 7 made its appearance,
it’s already helped bury some of the bad will
generated by its immediate and underloved
predecessor, Windows Vista. We were a little bit
skeptical at first about whether it was worth buying,
but we’ve really come to appreciate its features, from
increased speed to DirectX 11 support, as well as its
overall attractiveness and ease of use.
Of course that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved a bit
more in certain areas. Sure, keyboard and mouse
shortcuts are nice, but you can only get more
thorough personalization—like changing the look of
the logon screen, the Taskbar, or even Internet
Explorer 8′s title bar—by digging deeper—into the
Registry.
We did some investigating and dug up these seven
tweaks that you can make to drastically change the
way Windows 7 looks and behaves, most of which
require spending only a few minutes in Regedit. (One
requires spending a few seconds in Windows Explorer,
too.) Insert the standard disclaimer here: Playing
around in the Registry can be potentially dangerous
to your computer, so don’t dive in unless you feel
confident about looking for, and changing, things in
the Registry.
The easiest way to start Regedit is to hit the Window
key on your keyboard, type regedit, and then hit Enter.
(You can also do this by clicking on the Start button
as well.) Before you make any changes it’s probably
smart to back up the key or subkey you’re planning
on tinkering with. Once you’ve navigated to the key
you’re planning to change, right-click on it and select
“Export” from the pop-up menu. Pick a location to
save the resulting REG file, and you’re protected.
In this story, Registry entries are frequently
represented with quotation marks around them for
clarity; you shouldn’t type those in when you’re
making your changes. And once you’ve changed a
key, it won’t take effect right away—you’ll need to exit
Windows (or reboot) and restart first.
Have a favorite Registry tweak or hack of your own?
Let us know in the comments.
1. Change Your Logon Screen Background
Changing the wallpaper on your desktop is one of the
easiest things to do in Windows. But if you can have
that display any image you want, why not do the
same with your logon screen?
1. Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindows
CurrentVersionAuthenticationLogonUIBackground.
2. Find the “OEMBackground” key; or right-click in the
right pane and select “New,” then “DWORD (32-bit)
Value” to create it (and then give it that name).
3. Double-click on “OEMBackground” to open it.
4. Change the value in the “Value data” field to 1.
5. Click OK.
6. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to your Windows
directory, then System32oobe. If there’s a folder in
here called “info,” go into it; if there’s a folder inside
of that one called “backgrounds,” go into that. If
neither exists, you’ll need to create them both first.
7. Copy the image (it must be a JPEG, and smaller
than 256KB in size) you want to use as your logon
screen background into the infobackgrounds folder.
8. Rename the image backgroundDefault.jpg. (Note: If
you choose an image that’s sized differently than
your desktop and you change your resolution, it will
be adjusted to fit—with a possible loss in quality. The
infobackground folder also supports 12 other files of
specific resolutions. The files should be named
background###XX.jpg, where the ###XX is one of
the following: 900×1440, 960×1280, 1024×1280,
1280×1024, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1600×1200,
1440×900, 1920×1200, 1280×768, or 1360×768. For
example, background1920x1200.jpg will be used at
1,920-by-1,200 resolution, and so on.)
The next time you restart your computer, or log out,
you’ll see this image as the new logon screen. If you
chose an image that prevents the buttons and text
from looking their best on the logon screen, you can
adjust their appearance as well.
1. Navigate back to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindows
CurrentVersionAuthenticationLogonUI (you’re not
going into Background this time).
2. Add a DWORD value called “ButtonSet.”
3. Change its value to either 1 (darker text shadows
and lighter buttons, intended for lighter backgrounds)
or 2 (no text shadows and opaque buttons, for darker
backgrounds); 0 is the Windows default.
2. Personalize the IE8 Title Bar
If you use Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7, you’re
probably familiar with the browser’s title bar, which
appends “Windows Internet Explorer” to the end of
every page name. Why not change it to something a
little more… you?
1. Navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet
ExplorerMain.
2. Right-click in the right panel, click “New,” and then
select “String Value.”
3. Name the string value you just created “Window
Title” (space included).
4. Double-click on Window Title.
5. Type your personalized title in the “Value data”
field.
6. Click OK.
3. Turn Off Aero Snap
Implemented as an easier way to arrange windows on
your desktop, Aero Snap will automatically maximize
a window if you drag it to the top of the screen, or
resize a window to use exactly half your display’s
width if you drag it all the way to the left or the right.
If you don’t find this feature convenient, you can
disable it.
1. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl
PanelDesktop.
2. Scroll down to “WindowArrangementActive” in the
right-hand pane, and double-click it to open it.
3. Change the number in the “Value data” field from
1 (Aero Snap is enabled) to 0.
4. Click OK.
4. Change Taskbar Button Stacked Window Behavior
By default, the Taskbar groups together multiple
windows of a single app, then displays all of them as
thumbnails when you click on the program’s Taskbar
icon. If you think it would be more handy to have
Windows automatically open the last window when
you click the icon, you can make that happen.
1. Navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows
CurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced.
2. Right-click in the right pane, and select “New” then
“DWORD (32-bit) Value.”
3. Rename the new DWORD value “LastActiveClick.”
4. Double-click on LastActiveClick to open it.
5. Change the value in the “Value data” field to 1.
6. Click OK.
5. Change the Width of Taskbar Buttons
Windows 7 is set up to always combine Taskbar
buttons from the same program and never display
their labels. If, however, you’ve changed the setting to
either not combine the windows at all or to only
combine them when the Taskbar is full, you can
change the icons’ width to hide the labels there, too.
Here’s how.
1. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl
PanelDesktopWindowMetrics
2. Scroll to find the “MinWidth” entry. If it’s not there,
you’ll have to create it yourself. Right-click in the
right pane, select New, then Select “String Value,” and
name the object MinWidth.
3. Double-click MinWidth to open it.
4. Change the number in the “Value Data” field the
width you want to allot to the icons. With the default
small buttons, 38 is sufficient; with the larger icons,
you’ll want about 52.
5. Click OK.
6. Change the Delay Time of Taskbar Previews
Among the cooler features in Windows 7 are Taskbar
previews, which appear when you hover the mouse
cursor over the Taskbar icon of a currently running
program. But when you do this, the preview doesn’t
appear immediately. Luckily, it’s easy to speed it up (r,
for whatever reason, slow it down.
1. Navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows
CurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced
2. Right-click in the right pane, click “New,” and click
“DWORD Value” or “DWORD (32-bit) Value.”
3. Name the new DWORD “ExtendedUIHoverTime.”
4. Double click on ExtendedUIHoverTime to open it.
5. Click the “Decimal” radio button in the “Base”
section. In the “Value data” field, enter the delay time
(in milliseconds) for the preview to appear. (The
Windows standard is 400ms.)
6. Click “OK” to commit the change.
When you hover the mouse cursor over one of the
previews, all your other windows will disappear and
show just that window. There’s a delay associated
with this, too. To change this, add a new DWORD in
the same location called
“ThumbnailLivePreviewHoverTime,” and edit it the
same way as above, setting its value to whatever you
want (in ms).
7. Change the Delay Time of Aero Peek
Aero Peek is Windows 7′s sleeker replacement for the
old Show Desktop button. Just move your mouse
cursor over the icon at the right end of the Taskbar to
turn all your Windows invisible. But this, too, has a
delay time associated with it, so if you find yourself
accidentally activating it too often, you may want to
increase the delay time. Here’s how.
1. Navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindows
CurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced
2. Right-click in the right pane, click “New,” and click
“DWORD Value” or “DWORD (32-bit) Value.”
3. Name the new DWORD
“DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime.”
4. Double click on DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime to
open it.
5. Click the “Decimal” radio button in the “Base”
section. In the “Value data” field, enter the delay time
(in milliseconds) for the preview to appear. (The
Windows standard is 1,000ms.)
6. Click “OK” to commit the change.
:))
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