DO IT FASTER

When you choose a menu item that opens a submenu, Windows NT 4.0 inserts a small delay. This delay prevents a bunch of submenus from opening as you move through a menu. If you prefer to do without the delay (or want it longer), you can use RegEdit to change it. As usual, be very careful when using RegEdit--you can cause some serious system damage if you make an incorrect change. With that in mind, click Start and choose Run. Type regedit and click OK (or press Enter). When RegEdit opens, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop In RegEdit's right pane, locate MenuShowDelay and double-click its icon to open it. When the dialog box opens, type 0 (zero) for no delay or a larger number than the default to get a longer delay. Close RegEdit and restart the computer.

RUNWAY

As TipWorld subscriber C.A. reminds us that you can use the Run dialog box to open folders. This is an especially useful technique when you want to open a network drive quickly. Let's say that you need to access a folder named Remote on a computer named PCWorld. You'd click Start, Run and type in \\PCworld\Remote. When you click OK, the remote folder will open. You can also open a local folder using Run. If you click Start, Run and enter c:\data when you click OK, the Data folder will open.

QUIT IT!

TipWorld subscriber F.C. wants to know how to get rid of those programs that continue to run when you don't want them to run. The most obvious place to look for such files is in the Startup folder (right-click Start and choose Open). But you've probably already looked in the Startup folder, so let's say the program in question is running on instructions from the Registry. As always, editing the Registry can result in disaster--be very careful. Click Start, Run, type regedit and press Enter. When RegEdit opens, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and look at the Run string in the right pane. Make a note of the key and its contents in case you need to replace them later. Now, select the string's icon and then press Delete (make sure you don't change or delete any of the other strings in Run). Close RegEdit (Registry, Exit) and restart the computer. That pesky program should not appear. Note: There may be other locations that could affect the program. This depends on your User setup. You can run RegEdit and do a search for the offending string to see if other identical strings exist. You can then delete each of them. Don't forget to record the location and value for later replacement should that become necessary.

SHORTENING

Subscriber B.B. sends along this list of Windows NT 4.0 Workstation shortcut keys that those of you with a Windows key can use. * Windows-E opens Windows NT Explorer. * Windows-F opens Find Files. * Windows-M minimizes applications. * Windows-R opens the Run Program box.

WHATEVER DRIVE LETTER YOU WANT

In the last tip, we told you how to change the designation of the drive you use to listen to music CDs. But subscriber E.R. wants to know if there's a way to permanently change the drive assignment without making any hardware changes. So, this time, let's look at how you can use Disk Administrator to change the drive designations. Why would you want to change the CD's drive designations? Let's imagine that you just installed a new CD-ROM drive--and you want to use the new one as your primary drive. The only thing is, the Setup program installed it as Drive E rather than D. Now, you decide to add something to one of your programs, and the Setup looks for files on Drive D. So, you may want to make the new drive Drive D. Click Start, Programs, Administrative Tools (Common), Disk Administrator. Choose View, Volumes. Now click Drive D to select it and then choose Tools, Assign Drive Letter. When the Assign Drive Letter dialog box opens, use the spin box to select an unused letter--something like X will do. Click OK and then click Yes in the next dialog box. After this change has taken place, click Drive E to select it and choose Tools, Assign Drive Letter. Assign the letter D to this drive. Click OK and then click Yes again when the warning dialog box opens. Now select your new drive letter (X) and choose Tools, Assign Drive Letter again. This time, assign E to the drive and click OK and Yes. Now you can close Disk Administrator (choose Partition, Exit), and the new drive will be Drive D while the old drive becomes Drive E. E.R. also wants to know if this kind of change will affect Windows 95. The answer is that it won't. Windows 95 will continue to use its own drive assignments, regardless of what you do in Windows NT.

BOOT IN "X" SECONDS

Subscriber T. W. wants to know if there's a way to set the boot time in a dual boot computer without editing Boot.ini. There sure is. Click Start and choose Settings, Control Panel. When Control panel opens, double-click the System icon. When the System dialog box opens, click the Startup/Shutdown tab. Under System Startup, you'll see a spin box labeled Show list for XX seconds. Use the spin box to set the number of seconds you want the system to wait before automatically starting the default operating system. After you set the time, click OK to close the dialog box and save your change. The next time you restart, the new time will take effect.

EXPAND THEM ALL

Let's say you're working in Windows NT Explorer and you'd like to expand all the subfolders. Don't waste time clicking each plus sign; just click a folder to select it and then press the asterisk (*) key on the numerical keypad. This will expand all the folders. Note: The asterisk key over the 8 will not work--you need to use the one in the number pad.

DISSIN' THE HOOD

Windows NT Workstation 4.0 We get a lot of questions about Network Neighborhood. Most of these questions involve how to get the icon off the desktop. If you don't want the Network Neighborhood icon on your desktop, here's a REG file that will make it disappear. As usual, we must warn you that REG files can damage your Registry. We can't guarantee that any REG file will do what you expect on your system. With this disclaimer out of the way, here's the REG file. To create it, run Notepad and type in the following exactly as shown. (Note: The line numbers are there to show you what goes on a single line--do not type them in. In the past we have had some problems with REG files due to the way the e-mail is formatted. To alleviate these problems, we now use line numbers in all REG files. This will help you see how the file should be formatted even if the format is incorrect in your e-mail. Don't enter these numbers--if you enter them, your REG file will not work. Also, whether this appears in your e-mail or not, there should be a blank line between REGEDIT4 and the first line of code.) 1 REGEDIT4 2 3[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] 4"NoNetHood"=dword:1 Choose File, Save As and name the file Net.reg. Save it in the folder of your choice. To merge the file with the Registry, double-click its icon. After the file successfully merges, restart the computer. After you've restarted, the Network Neighborhood icon will no longer appear on your desktop.