How to launch windows explorer as a seperate process:

As many people know, Explorer is both a Windows shell as well as a file manager. While this is a good design in terms of usability, it's not so good when it comes to memory usage. Under normal usage, Explorer may take as much as 8 MB of vital RAM from your Win2000 system. This is due to a memory allocation problem in which Windows uses twice the total memory for Explorer because it thinks it's using two separate programs. :( To solve this "integration" problem, you need to make Explorer run as two separate proccesses instead of one. To do this follow this guide..Goto Windows Explorer -> Tools -> Folder Options -> View -> Advanced Settings -> check the "Launch folder windows in a separate process" box." and your done.

Speed up your DSL/Cable connections in win2000:

Type "regedit" in your "Run" command line in the start menuand hit enter. Follow down the Values and change to those shown below.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
"SackOpts"=dword:00000001
"TcpWindowSize"=dword:0005ae4c
"Tcp1323Opts"=dword:00000003
"DefaultTTL"=dword:00000040
"EnablePMTUBHDetect"=dword:00000000
"EnablePMTUDiscovery"=dword:00000001
"GlobalMaxTcpWindowSize"=dword:0005ae4c

Avoid Having to Click 'Show Files' in Windows 2000's Explorer:

In Windows 2000 certain directories content is automatically hidden (such as the %systemroot%, system32 etc folder) to avoid the user accidentally corrupting the system. In order to see the files you have to click the 'Show Files' text.

If you know what you are doing this can get annoying quickly and you can disable this as follows:

Start Explorer (Win + E or right click My Computer and select Explore)

From the Tools menu select Folder Options

On the View tab select 'Show hidden files and folders'. Click OK

Move to the %systemroot% directory (e.g. c:\winnt)

Click 'Show Files'

Rename the Desktop.ini file to something else, e.g. Desktopbak.ini

Repeat for any other folders such as %systemroot%\system32 and 'program files'

Stop Windows Explorer From Changing The Case of Filenames:

By default, Explorer changes the case of your filenames so that a file you name c:\iLikeTOTypeTHiS appears as c:\Iliketotypethis. Microsoft calls this PrettyPath, and you can disable it by performing the following steps:

Start regedit.exe.

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.

Double-click DontPrettyPath (or create this key with a type of REG_DWORD if it doesn't exist).

Set the value to 1 to keep the case as you type it or 0 to adjust the case as Explorer requires.

Click OK.

Close regedit.

Restart the machine.

Opening Explorer in a Different Directory:

Tired of Windows Explorer always opening up with My Documents?

Customize it, by changing the properties for the Windows Explorer icon and replace the

Target field with: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n, /e, c:\yourfolder

Check And Remove Dead Shortcuts:

The Windows 2000 resource kit supplies Chklnks.exe which will check all your systems shortcuts and if the target of the

shortcut is not found it will give the option to delete one or all of the dead shortcuts.

To use just start the Chklnks.exe application, click Next and select the dead shortcuts to remove.

The utility also runs on NT 4 boxes with no obvious problems.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/default.asp

To enable DMA, you will need to get access to the Device Manager. Scan down to your IDE controller and select the Primary IDE channel. Go to the advanced settings tab. For each device, set its device type to Auto Detection, and its transfer mode to DMA if available (this works for your CD-ROM as well). Repeat the process for the Secondary IDE channel and then reboot. You should see a very nice performance boost.

Turn Diskperformance Counters Off:

By default, Win2k is set to collect physical drive data. As home users we don't need this. To disable the disk performance counters:

Go to Start Menu> Then Programs> Command Prompt

Type in diskperf –n at command prompt

Also use the Microsoft file exctrlst run it and shut down all performance counters....

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/library/resources/reskit/tools/existing/exctrlst-o.asp

If you ever want to return to default:

diskperf -yd

Then after you turn that off use the file exctrlst.exe Unzip the file and place it in your WinNT directory, use the run command to activate it and then uncheck all the performance counters so that they do not run. Just reboot and that’s it...