Tips for making WinXP look and feel just like Win2K

[FlyingPenguin]

Someone asked about this in another post, I thought I'd put it in a new post so everyone could see it.

If you're a long time power user like me, you'll find XP slows you down - the newbie wizards and helpful menus involve extra clicks and take up more screen real estate.

As an example, if you're like me you know that hitting CTRL+F in any explorer window brings up the file search and if you're used to Win2K you would normally just start typing your search criteria at that point BUT YOU CAN'T DO THAT IN XP because that stupid newbie "let me help you" wizard crap comes up.

The nice thing is you can restore just about every Win2K feature you're used to - making XP look and feel EXACTLY like Win2K. It's all in there, it's just not well documented.

Well here you go. I got most of these from TweakXP.com BTW:


<h3>CLASSIC WINDOWS START MENU:</h3>
Right-click Taskbar->Properties->Start Menu tab->Classic Start menu



<h3>CLASSIC WINDOWS DESKTOP:</h3>
Control Panel->Display Properties->Appearance tab->Change "Windows and Buttons" to "Windows Classic style"



<h3>HOW TO FORCE WINXP TO REMEMBER EXPLORER WINDOWS SIZES:</h3>
This won't matter to you if you have Windows setup to use the same Explorer window for new explorer views, but freaks like me like to open a new window each time we open a folder. XP has a VERY annoying habit of not remembering the sizes of Explorer windows even if you have it configured to do so (which it's supposed to be by default in Folder Options, View, and then checking "Remember each folder's view settings".

This may not annoy you if you use the icon view in explorer but I use detailed view and I resize each explorer window a certain size to suit me.

This will fix it:

Go to My Computer, bring down the Tools menu, click Folder Options then View.

Check "Launch folder windows in a seperate process". Reboot is required to make it take effect.



<h3>DISABLE TASKBAR GROUPING:</h3>
This is that lovely XP feature that groups running tasks together on the taskbar under one button (like all open folders will be one button) to save space. Bugs the heck out of me.

To go back to the Win2K taskbar right-click taskbar, select properties, uncheck "Group similar taskbar buttons"



<h3>CLASSIC WIN2K-STYLE FILE SEARCH:</h3>
Run Regedit. Go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CabinetState
and add a new string (REG_SZ) called "Use Search Asst" - set the value to "no" and you will have the classic win2000 search and none of that XP categorized nonsense, you dont even have to reboot!



<h3>CLASSIC WIN2K LOGIN PROMPT (INSTEAD OF THE WELCOME SCREEN):</h3>
Go to control panel -> user accounts -> "Change the way users log on or off" -> uncheck the first box "Use the Welcome Screen". This gives you a regular Win2k/NT logon screen.



<h3>RESTORE THE CLASSIC WIN98/2K DETAILS VIEW IN MY COMPUTER:</h3>
I don't like the way that XP groups items together in My Computer. I'm used to and prefer to see them listed alphabetically by drive letter.

Open My Computer -> View -> Arrange Icons By -> uncheck "Show in groups"

This also works in the Network Connections BTW.



<h3>GET THE CLASSIC MEDIA PLAYER BACK:</h3>
I DETEST Windows Media Player 7. Laggy code-bloated POS that it is. I much prefer Media Player 6.4 that came with Windows 2K. Windows XP still has Media Player 6.4 installed:

1. Click on the Start button and select Run.
2. Type "mplayer2" and click OK. Now you have the original Media Player loaded.

To make this the default media player follow the directions below:

1. When the classic Windows Media Player is running, click on the view menubar and select options.
2. Then click on the format tab and choose which formats you would like it to open by checking the box.
3. Click OK, now all of the formats you selected will open with the classic Windows Media Player.

If you need to make a shortcut for it do a file search for MPLAYER2.EXE and create a shortcut.



<h3>WIN2K-STYLE SECURITY PERMISSIONS FOR SHARED RESOURCES (disabling "Simple Networking"):</h3>
(Note: Unless you're an IT geek or have a need to assign different permissions to different users on a network, you're better off using the default "Simple Networking")

Fire up Windows Explorer.
Go to Tools>Folder Options.
Hit the View tab. Scroll to the bottom.
Un-check "Use Simple File Sharing (Reccomended)"


Hope you find this useful...

[BlueWeasel]

Thanks FP...I guess I can replace my W2K installation with XP now....wait a second, I already went back to W2K from XP....nevermind...

[Absolut Talent]

thats prolly one of the main reasons keeping me from XP and sticking with win2k, all the fruity looking eye candy and the wizards

[fearfox]

you can kill some of the eye candy too on Xp by going to right click on my computer select properties, select advance tab, then select performance button and then check and uncheck options. My Win Xp has become more stable by setting options to better performance than apperance.

[smb]

To me, the best way to get XP to look like Win2k, is to not install XP, and install Win2K instead.

Actually it's not all that bad. It's good for laptops.

[CaterpillarAssassin]

Yeah my lappy came with XP home. I decided to go back to it after seeing this but the "Disable Simple Networking" thing isnt there. Is there a reg key I can add or change?

[smb]

You can also go to

]TWeakXP.com

to really tweak XP if you neeed to.

[FlyingPenguin]

CATERPILLAR: You running XP Pro or Home? I keep hearing conflicting reports that Home only supports simple networking but I haven't confirmed it.

[smb]

Maybe people are confusing it with Simple File Sharing.

[CaterpillarAssassin]

XP home, FP. Yeah I even tried getting into it from TweakXP and it came up with an error that said "blah blah u cant get into this with this version of windows" Any reg key I can hack? Or do I have to pirate a copy of pro?

[TruckStuff]

Tip for Win2k style searches:

Found this after I couldn't get the RegKey to work that FP posted.

1) Open the search window
2) Click "Change Preferences"
3) Click "Change Files or Folders Search Behavior"
4) Click "Advanced"
5) Click "OK"

Much easier than hacking the registry in my mind.

[FlyingPenguin]

That reg hack does work, and best of all it brings back the EXACT same file search window from Win2K.

The way it prints on this forum the registry entry is shown on two lines, but you should be able to figure that out. Here's the link to TweakXP entry that I got it from:

http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakxp/display.asp?id=1105

I also made a registry patch to do it so you don't have to edit the registry. Download it here, unzip it and just doubleclick on it:
http://soldcentralfl.com/bob/xp_search_fix.zip

[CaterpillarAssassin]

is there any way i can disable simple networking w/ the home version?

[FlyingPenguin]

Well actually it called Simple File Sharing - I keep saying sinple networking too.

Well from what I've been reading it's possible. There's this reference here for instance: http://www.winbookcorp.com/_technote/WBTA20000876.htm

Then again this article says it only works in Pro:
http://www.petri.co.il/simple_file_sharing.htm and http://www.udel.edu/timmins/FileSharingXP/

I found this link here that says it can be done:
http://tweakxp.com/tweakxp/display.asp?id=911

I've seen some mention that it can be made to work in Home only if the drive is formatted as NTFS as mentioned here:
http://tweakxp.com/tweakxp/display.asp?id=510


I can't verify any of this because I don't have a copy of XP Home to experiment with (beginning to sound like I need one).

[CaterpillarAssassin]

What I'm looking for is the ability to set users as "Admins", "Power Users", "Users", etc. Instead of Limited and administrator. Any way to do that?