The best of all Windows customizing utilities is free – and it comes from Microsoft. Tweak UI lets you adjust dozens of tiny settings without having to mess around with the registry. Microsoft has released several versions of Tweak UI through the years. The most recent one is version 2.10, which requires Windows XP Service Pack 1 or later or Windows 2003. Download it from the PowerToys for Windows XP page. After installing this utility, you’ll find its icon in the Powertoys for Windows XP group on the All Programs menu.
Using Tweak UI, you can make all sorts of customizations to the Windows interface. In virtually every case, the effect is to add or toggle a registry setting. You could accomplish the same thing by editing the registry manually, but Tweak UI is quicker and eliminates the risk that you’ll inadvertently muck up your registry by mistyping something.
The screen shown here is one of my favorite tweaks. Click the Focus option under the General heading and select the Prevent applications from stealing focus checkbox. This eliminates a common annoyance that occurs when a program running in the background pops up a dialog box unexpectedly. If you’re typing away at full speed, you might accidentally dismiss the dialog box (or worse, select one of its options). This setting prevents these dialog boxes from appearing and flashes the taskbar button instead.
You won’t find any documentation for Tweak UI online, nor is it officially supported by Microsoft. Carl Siechert, Craig Stinson, and I cover many Tweak UI settings in Windows XP Inside Out Second Edition (and the larger Deluxe Edition), including the automatic logon option (which changes the Winlogon key in the registry), the ability to create custom search shortcuts for use in Internet Explorer, and tweaks to change the five icons that appear in the Places bar at the left of common dialog boxes.
There’s lots of other good stuff in Tweak UI, too, like the ability to hide logon names from the Start menu, customize the list of drive icons in My Computer and the list of options in Control Panel, reassign navigation keys on your keyboard, and toggle AutoPlay settings for CDs and other removable drives.
Note: If you use any older version of Windows, including Windows 2000, get Tweak UI 1.33 from Microsoft’s Web site. (Do not use this version of Tweak UI with Windows XP or Windows 2003!) After unzipping the compressed file, you’ll end up with four files. To install Tweak UI, right-click the Tweakui.inf file and choose Install from the shortcut menu. This version of Tweak UI adds an icon to Control Panel and not to the Start menu.
Ed Bott 