Here are three typical regedit tweaks, spelled out for you step by step.
As you know from Protect Your Home Wireless Network, one of the perks of using Windows 8 is that you can encrypt files and folders, protecting them from people who try to open them from across the network or using a different account.
If you use this feature quite a bit, however, you’ll quickly grow tired of opening the Properties box every time you want to encrypt something. Wouldn’t it be much more convenient if the Encrypt and Decrypt commands were right there in the shortcut menu that appears when you right-click an icon?
Of course it would. To make it so, do this:
Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER→Software→Microsoft→Windows→CurrentVersion→Explorer→Advanced.
Now, for this trick, you’re going to need a key that doesn’t actually exist yet. Fortunately, it’s easy to create a new key. In this case, just right-click the Advanced “folder,” and then, from the shortcut menu, choose New→“DWORD (32-bit) Value.” You see “New Value #1” appear in the right side of the window, ready to be renamed; type EncryptionContextMenu, and then press Enter.
Double-click this value on the right side: EncryptionContextMenu.
Make this change: In the “Value data” box, type 1.
Wrap up: Click OK and quit regedit. When you right-click any file or folder icon, you’ll see the new Encrypt command in the shortcut menu. (Or, if it’s already encrypted, you’ll see a Decrypt command.)
Windows XP used to nag you every now and then to get unused icons off your desktop. But why stop there? If you’ve got the world’s most beautiful desktop wallpaper set up, you might not want any icons marring its majesty.
If you think about it, you can get by just fine without a single icon on the desktop. You can open anything from within an Explorer window or the Start screen. You can put things into the Recycle Bin without dragging them to its icon. (Just highlight icons and then press the Delete key, for instance.)
The following regedit hack doesn’t actually remove anything from your desktop. It just hides them. You can still work with the icons on your desktop by using Windows Explorer to view the contents of your Desktop folder, for example.
Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER→Software→Microsoft→Windows→CurrentVersion→Policies.
Right-click the Policies folder: From the shortcut menu, choose New→Key, and rename it to Explorer.
Right-click the Explorer folder: Choose New→Binary Value, and name the new value NoDesktop. Double-click this value.
Make this change: In the “Value data” box, type 01 00 00 00. (Regedit puts the spaces in automatically.) Click OK.
Wrap up: Click OK, quit regedit, and then log out and log in. (To reverse the procedure, just delete the NoDesktop value you created, and then log out and log in.)
Windows’ window animations and other eye candy are very cool. But they happen fast; Microsoft didn’t want them to get in your way. That’s a shame if you want to study the visual-FX majesty of these animations in more detail.
If you make this regedit tweak, you can make the window animation slow down on command—specifically, whenever you’re pressing the Shift key.
Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER→Software→Microsoft→Windows→DWM.
Right-click the DWM folder. From the shortcut menu, choose New→“DWORD (32-bit) Value.” Name the new value AnimationsShiftKey.
Double-click this value on the right side: In the “Value data” box for the AnimationsShiftKey entry you just made, type 1. Click OK.
Wrap up: Quit regedit and then log out and log in. (To reverse the procedure, just delete the AnimationsShiftKey value you created, and then log out and log in.)
To see effects in slow motion, press the Shift key just before they start to occur. For example, Shift-click a window’s Close box—and watch in amazement as it slowwwwly fades into total transparency, like a ghost returning to the world beyond.