Editing the NT Registry

This page discusses the techniques used when editing the Windows NT 4.0 registry and how to make various changes to your NT O/S which may (or may not) be of use. This page comes with a serious Health WARNING. If you are not careful you could change something which might render your O/S unbootable! Of course I take no responsibility for any damage to or loss of data caused by using any of the following techniques. These are just observations I have made and have decided to put online as a reference both for myself and for others who wish to know more about the NT Registry. Please understand that any tinkering you do YOU DO SO TOTALLY AT YOUR OWN RISK.

While a lot of settings can be changed via the Control Panel there are times when you may need to get your hands dirty and go under the bonnet as it were. A lot of things can be done through the Registry which simply cannot be done any other way. That said there are a few steps you can take to save yourself some future anxiety. One recomended cautionary step is to take down KEY values before you change them if you ever need to change them back or better yet make a hard copy by chosing print from REGEDIT before you do anything at all. Alternatively you can export the entire registry to disk for importing another time. You can do this through REGEDIT also. Finally it mightn't be a bad idea to get into the habit of creating a new Emergency Repair Disk by running RDISK.EXE /S before making registry changes. And remember to have your setup disks handy ..... just in case!

There are two Registry editors that come with NT. REGEDIT.EXE is my preference. It is not too disimilar to Windows Explorer in look and is probably best suited to individual users who want to make changes to their own registry settings.
The other editor REGEDT32.EXE is more powerful and as such is ideal for adminstrators. There are probably better third party Registry editors out there that might be worth looking into.

If you have never edited the NT Registry before there are a few things you should know about how it works. Firstly the Registry, which is stored in a tree structure, is split up into 5 predefined subtrees:

Key Name	Description
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT	Information on file type associations and OLE.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE	Information on hardware, startup settings and system configuration for the local machine.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER	Information for the user currently logged on.
HKEY_USERS	Information for all users with accounts on the local machine.
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG	Information on hardware settings.

Throughout this page I might refer to various Registry Data Types that you may have to modify. A short description of what these signify is given below:

Data Type	Description
REG_BINARY	Binary number.
REG_DWORD	Four byte number.
REG_SZ	A text string.

Complete List of Registry Hacks:

Logon Welcome/Legal Notice:

The Registry value entries that control the logon sequence for starting Windows NT are found under the following Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon LegalNoticeCaption. Data type is REG_SZ Default value: (none). Specifies a caption for a message to appear when the user presses CTRL+ALT+DEL during logon. Add this value entry if you want to add a warning to be displayed when a user attempts to log on to a Windows NT system. The user cannot proceed with logging on without acknowledging this message. To specify text for the message, you must also specify a value for LegalNoticeText.
LegalNoticeText. Data type REG_SZ Default value: (none). Specifies the message to appear when the user presses CTRL+ALT+DEL during logon. Add this value entry if you want to add warning to be displayed when a user attempts to log on to a Windows NT system. The user cannot proceed with logging on without acknowledging this message. To include a caption for the logon notice, you must also specify a value forLegalNoticeCaption.
LogonPrompt. Data type REG_SZ Default value : "Enter a user name and password that is valid for this system." The text entered appears in the Logon Information dialog box. This is designed for additional legal warnings to the user before they log on. This value entry does not appear in the Registry unless you add it.
Welcome. Data type REG_SZ. Default value: (Title only; no message) The text entered appears in the caption bar beside the title of the Begin Logon, Logon Information, Workstation Locked, and Unlock Workstation dialog boxes. This value entry does not appear in the Registry unless you add it.

WinNT 4.0 File Name Completion:

This is a personal favorite of mine and I don't know why it isn't turned on by default. This gem lets your NT Console behave (at least partially) like the Bash Shell under UNIX in that you can complete the file name you are typing at a command prompt by pressing the TAB key, edit key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor Double Click on CompletionChar and set it to 9. You will need to reboot.

Activate Screen Saver if no one logs on:

Edit key: HKEY_USERS\DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop Double click ScreenSaveActive and set it to 1. Double click SCRNSAVE.EXE and enter the full path to the screen saver you want to use such as SCRNSAVE.SCR or SSTARS.SCR. Double click ScreenSaveTimeOut and enter the number of seconds of inactivity before activation. You will need to reboot for this to become effective. Never use anything other than the blank screen saver (scrnsave.scr) on a "Server" as it will steal needed cycles!

Displaying Your Company Logo (or other bitmap) during logon:

Another nice trick if you're sick of that boring NT bitmap during logon. Once you've designed a cool bitmap (must be .bmp format), place it in your NT directory as 'YourLogoName.BMP'. Use 8.3 naming convention. Edit key: HKEY_USERS\DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop Double click on Wallpaper and set it to the full path to YourLogoName.BMP. Double click on TileWallpaper. 0 is Don't tile, 1 is tile. Double click on WallpaperStyle. 0 is normal, 2 is stretch to fill the screen (which is mutually exclusive with TileWallpaper = 1). Reboot to view your handywork.

Don't display Last user in logon dialogue:

May be considered for security and/or private reasons. Edit key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon DontDisplayLastUserName. Data type is REG_SZ. Default value is 0 and as such Windows NT displays the name of the last person to log on in the Username space of the Logon Information dialog box. If you set it to 1, the Username space is always blank when the Logon Information dialog box appears.

Automatic Log on:

This customisation allows your NT Workstation to automatically log on when it boots up. Edit key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. Add a key called AutoAdminLogon of data type REG_SZ. Give this key a value of 1. Add another key called DefaultPassword also of data type REG_SZ. The value should be set to the password of the user listed in the DefaultUserName value.

NTFS - Disable 8.3 Name creation:

You can increase NTFS performance if you disable 8.3 name creation. (Some 16bit programs may have trouble finding Long File Names. Don't set this option if you wish to install Norton NT Utilities.) Edit key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Control\FileSystem Value:NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation Data type is REG_DWORD. Default value is 0. Set it to 1 to disable 8.3 name creation. This won't take effect until the next boot.

Reduce Windows NT 4.0 Start Menu navigation delay:

To reduce the time it takes for the Start Menu to display the next tree as the cursor moves over it, edit key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop Double click on MenuShowDelay and set it to 100. You will need to reboot for this to take effect.

Get mouse to behave like X-Mouse:

This will enable your mouse to behave like that in an X-Window environment by giving the focus to a window depending on its position. Edit key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse Double click on ActiveWindowTracking and set its value to 1.

Change Registered Owner Name and Organisation

Many times when you buy a PC with NT preinstalled the registered owner that appears in about boxes is something like "preferred customer". You can change this by doing the following. Edit key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion and change the values for RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganisation to those appropriate for your system.

Powerdown after Shutdown

If you're sick of waiting for Windows to shutdown so that you can turn off your PC, you can use this hack to powerdown your machine automatically. Edit key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and change the key PowerdownAfterShutdown from 0 to 1. Note that some motherboards do not work properly with this facility and only perform a warm boot instead of a complete powerdown.

Automatically kill tasks that do not respond

If you find that while in the process of shutting down your machine, NT will invariably come up with the message "Application not responding" and you'd have to select "End Task" to kill it, then this is for you. Simply edit key: HKEY_USER\DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop and add the key AutoEndTasks of type REG_SZ. Set its value to 1. Now do the same for your Id. This will force any task that does not respond to the shutdown signal to end.