Okay, I checked my system.dat file and its over 300 kb! How can I shrink the registry to boost speed?

You know that the system registry is stored in 3 files (I think): the system.dat, the system.1st, and the user.dat. The user.dat can be copied and pasted to get past annoying Windows98 Poledit security, but that's another story... The system.1st is the registry settings loaded when your computer begins booting so don't mess around with that file. Now, before we shrink the system.dat file, make sure you make a backup. I always forget to and look how many times I've been bitten in the butt for it! I've got a 4GB Hard Drive and have lost to hard drive meltdowns over 6 GB of data in the last two years alone!... And the sad part is, I only had one game installed... Anyways, go to the windows directory in ms-dos mode and type regedit /e ivanf.reg. This will obviously export all registry data to ivanf.reg. But why? Well, kind sir, you don't want to compress your registry directly because there could be an error so we'll compress ivanf.reg instead. Now type regedit /c ivanf.reg to compress the file, and apparently it automatically overwrites the old registry with this one... oops, I guess ivanf.reg wasn't a fail-safe way of doing this... Well, you've gotta make sure your registry is okay dokay so use a registry checker that will be located on my future tweakfiles page. Until the, go to www.tweakfiles.com and find the registry checker that best fits your personal and blood type.

I hate the Windows GUI and all GUIs. I'm anti-Guiist. How can I use Win9x without a GUI to free RAM?

Pat LaFontaine... don't ask me why I wrote that. It was just the first thing that came to mind... Okay, I actually have 2 Window95s installed on my system; 1 is dirty with Internet Browsers and CD-R programs while the other is completely clean of anything installed. For God's sake, the system directory in my clean Win95 is only 30 MB large while my usual system directory is stuck with 100 MB! Which is not good, not good like the smell of almonds. Anyways, I use in my clean Win95 an easy way of switching between the Windows Explorer GUI and the tiny, RAM conservative Taskman GUI. Edit your system.ini and in your [boot] section, change the shell= to Taskman.exe. This will prevent Windows from loading your Start Menu, Desktop, Icons, etc... and will only run the stuff that you tell it to. Ah, almost reminds me of the glory days of dos... almost...

What's Walign.exe doing on my computer? I heard that its pretty useful and makes Windows98 faster.

To be honest, I don't really know what that little file can do. I remember that Windows98 got rid of that Win95 problem in which the cache remains separate from the usuable RAM. By combining the cache and the RAM, Windows98 theoretically gives the user more RAM to work with. On the other hand, Windows98 sometimes uses up twice the amount of RAM to run than Windows95A but I won't get into that... I really have no bloody idea what Walign is for so I'll have to go to my computer bible for insight: Tweak3d. They claim that it can "improve operating system and application speed by up to 10% by aligning your files for Windows to make them run faster (the computer dynamically aligns all files loaded into memory anyway, so doing it beforehand saves CPU time)". Okay... that was helpful... What the bloody hell is aligning? Never mind. I'm a Windows95 user so I can't do this anyways... But I suppose Walign uses the same philosophy as quick launch from Hurricane98. If you store on the hard drive the most efficient way of doing something, the next time you do it, the process will run at its best. For all I know, this aligning process could be Windows98's complicated and morally sick way of finding out which programs should go at the head of the hard drive during defragmentation. Maybe by aligning files, Windows98 can get familiar with that program and execute more efficiently in RAM... or just load it faster. Beats me. Beats the bloody hell out of me.

Well, Tweak3d has found a really easy way to align your files. You first have to download Windows' Magazine's program (I think) called WMAlign at http://img.cmpnet.com/windows/win98/wmalign.zip. Now if you don't have Office 95, 97 or Office 2000 (stand-alone Word and Excel won't work - darn. That's what I doggone have.), enter the registry patch into your registry, most likely by double-clicking on it (hey, don't look at me as if I'm stupid. I've never done this before!). Now apparently WMAlign came with a .bat (batch) file. Copy the batch file to the directory you want to optimize and type wmalign *.dll *.exe. This will of course align all .dll and .exe files with Windows98 (hey! Why are we shunning out our old VXD pals and ocxs? Are we being discriminatory or what?) Now check the WMalign.txt file if you've got a lot of time and make sure all the .dlls and .exes that you want are in there. Then finish off the process by defragmenting and bloody hell, letting Windows actually optimize your digidestiny... God, I hate that cartoon show... it's even worse than Pokemon... no offense to that half of the world's population that watches it, though...

I wanna free program that frees 'n' cleans system RAM, but I'm too lazy to download a program to do it.

Fret no more, Tweak3d has a tweaking tip that satisfy your saturated cache needs! If you've got Visual Basic, you can get all the benefits of even the best RAM freeing programs with just a simply, one line program. Open up notepad and enter this string: Mystring = Space(80000000) .Tweak3d says the default was 16000000. Now save the file as ivanf.vbs and when you run this program, it'll free wasted RAM back to wasting Windows and get rid of bugs that have been locked into the system.

I know that the default Windows9x cache settings are horrible. What are the most efficient settings?

God, they are worst them horrible. It's like Microsoft is TRYING to make a bad operating system for crying out loud... or maybe they are... Wait a second, 10+ years of personal experience have already proved that thesis... Ok, there's a neat little program out there called Cacheman at http://www.outertech.com/en/soft/cacheman/cacheman.html. What it does is it sets your registry and system.ini file with the optimum cache settings for your computer. It has a whole bunch of optimal settings for a variety of system configurations, and here are a few:

If you've got a CD-Recorder like mine, set your minumum disk cache to 2048kb, your maximal disk cache to 2048kb (the same as minumum so Windows doesn't screw up while trying to resize the cache), the chunk size should be at 256kb (chunks are the size of your system's disk cache memory blocks [like FAT32 is to your Hard Drive]), Name cache should be at 6144 (to properly store all of the Cd's files), and the Directory Cache should be at 128 (this records what were the lsat 128 accessed directories).

If you play games like Quake3, these settings might help: Minimal Disk Cache of 512kb (more RAM for the game is better), maximum disk cache is 2048kb, chunk size is 256kb again, name cache should be at 2048, and the directory cache should be set at 48.

If you've got a supercomputer (to me, that's anything over 300MHz... lucky bastards...), you might try these settings: Miniml Disk Cache 6144kb (what does it matter to you? You've got a Gigabyte module or something...), maximum disk cache is 6144kb, chunk size is at 512kb, name cache is the nearly a perfect pump at 4096, and just set the directory cache at 96.

Now, if you want to edit some of these settings manually, go to your system.ini file and find your [vcache] area. Set the minfilecache=whatever value you want, below that set maxfilecache=whatever you want again,set chunksize=probably 256kb but you get to use your head and find out, and keep allocpagefix=off. I've tried setting this allocate feature on, but Windows just keeps turning it off. Perhaps this thingy actually makes Windows stable... no wonder why Gates won't let it work...

What's that msconfig file doing in Windows98? It wasn't in Win95...

I'm as shocked as you are: Microsoft actually added something worthwhile between Windows95 and Windows98!... well, not really worthwhile but at least its something. If you run the msconfig program, you first get the option to select which files to run when your computer boots. Get rid of taskman, audiohq (if you run the SoundBlaster Live because you only use the card for EAX anyway... do you?), any virus scanners like Dr. Soloman's or Norton's, RealPlayer, Microsoft Office 2000, Findfast, ICQ, any scheduling programs, and so on. If you've got Windows95, you can do the same by going to regedit and the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN, then the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENT VERSION and then the \RUN & \RUNONCE & \RUNONCEEX & \RUNSERVICES & yes, even that \RUNSERVICESONCE subkey thingy. Then you can also check out HKEY_USERS\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN. All 3 of these key places stores the programs that Windows loads when booting. If you see something that you want to delete, go ahead and delete it. Your computer usually starts after... honest! Just look how stable my computer is after I've edited my registry!... Okay, seriously, another way to speed boot-up time is to delete your config.sys and your autoexec.bat. The autoexec contains nothing of value to the autoexec.bat except if you've got a virus scanner running or you want MSCDEX to run your CD-ROM in dos mode. But deleting the autoexec.bat prevents any programs from being loaded into the old conventional & upper memory so if you want to play with smartdrv, fdisk and other fun, joy-joy novelty files (I like to collect them...), do it with a boot disk. As for your config.sys file, the only lines that may help Windows9x are buffer=28 (low 16-bit buffers mean more Win9x 32-bit buffers) and stacks=0,0 to give all available memory to Windows. Other than that, delete the config.sys file to increase booting time. You don't need it... do I?...

Msconfig has a few other neato tricks as well. Make sure you disable that scandisk runnig automatically feature. Isn't that the most annoying thing in the world considering a true gamer's computer freezes every few seconds or so?... Okay dokay, even if your computer doesn't freeze like mine, disable scandisk anyways so Windows won't waste a second to search to see if the scandisk file is there. If you want your computer to shut down quickly in Windows98, keep the Disable Fast Shutdown box unchecked. However, if you've got one of those screwed up computers that never ever shut down, check this box to go back to Windows95's old way of shutting down: nice and slow and it still never works... There's no place like home, there's no place like home... If you've got a pre-Windows98 virus on your computer (I am talking about Windows95 of course), you can get access to some of these settings in the msdos.sys file. In Explorer, take away the hidden and right-protected properties of the msdos.sys file and then open it in Notepad by holding SHIFT, then right-clicking on it, and then use open with to open it with Notepad (or you can just open Notepad or Edit.com, either one works...). My cousin likes to set the BootGUI= setting at zero because he likes the challenge of typing in WIN to get to Windows... go fish, go figure... If you don't have a LAN & you don't use the internet, I strongly recommend to set the Network= setting to 0. This is prevent any NETBEUI or IPX protocols or other crap from getting loaded into RAM. I'm not sure, but maybe this would stop that annoying ifshlp and setver TSRs from getting loaded into the RAM too... God, I hate those things... they're constant reminders that I have a Microsoft product installed... You can then add the DoubleBuffer=1 command to increase Hard Drive buffering for both dos and Windows. I think this improves performance, but if it does, its too small for me to notice. If you've got Windows95, set the BootDelay=0. This gets rid of the 2 second wait for the F4, F5, or F8 buttons to be pressed. And PLEASE set the Logo= setting to ZERO! It gets rid of that stupid Windows9x ad when your computer starts and prevents your computer from wasting time loading your logo.sys and logos.sys files... & finally, I have no clue what the Drvspace=0 command does but I think it disables that useless Drvspace.bin file (which you're supposed to delete anyways if you don't have a drvspace or something compressed Hard Drive).

And finally, we've gotten to the start menu startup folder! In Windiws95, go to Settings in your Start Menu, then Taskbar, then Start Menu Programs, then Advanced. Then go to Programs, then go to your Startup folder and voila, there's those stupid programs that make your computer take eons to start up. Delete Findfast, Office, and any other programs that deserve to die. After that, your computer should load up oh-so-very much faster and Windows will thank you for making it forget that it is actually a bastard child of Microsoft...

Okay, I just upgraded Windows95 to Windows98 & now my programs won't work. What gives?

Apparently, Windows98 is too stupid to install all the necessary vxds. Open up the Win98 cab 47 & 48 (or for Win98 SE, cabs 53 & 54) and extract these files to the system directory and the system\vmm32 directory: vcomm.vxd, vdmad.vxd, configmg.vxd, vdd.vxd, vmouse.vxd, ntkern.vxd, vflatd.vxd. This will fix mouse bugs, some dumb OE exceptions and general protection faults, and prevents some useless error messages that start up with your computer.

Okay, so we got rid of some blue screens of death, but your stupid Netscape Navigator still won't start... That's okay, that's just Microsoft's plan... and its all caused because Windows98 replaces some of your new dlls with old microsoft ones. Go to your start menu accessories\system tools\system information\tools and then Version Conflict Manager and see what files are messed up. Some of the most commonly overwritten files are cabinet.dll, comcat.dll, msconv97.dll, ole32,dll, twain.dll, & the W95inf32.dll. The only way to fix these is to uninstall your program and then reinstall it. And even them Netscape is just a former shadow of itself, lying cold and barren in purgatory's shadow...

Okay, me don't know whys but me Graphics are Running So Pretty Weirdly. What can-can me do-est?

Okay dokay... you can make sure that your DirectX is updated and installed properly. Find dxdiag in your windows\system directory and run it to see how many of your drivers are uncertified. On mine, practically all drivers are uncertified. It's the ones that Microsoft has tested that seem to screw over the Operating system... so that's Microsoft's game plan... If you get a lot of lock ups, go to your display control panel and turn your colour level to 16-bit (65536 colours). Although 32-bit (65 million colour at once or something) does look pretty, it uses far too much video power unless you've got 16MB or more of onboard VideoRAM. Make sure you don't use a background or pattern because although it only uses a few kb of video RAM, it just gets annoying to see all those stupid cats and puppies clawing at your screen... Disable the screen saver to save RAM because beginning in Win95, Microsoft decided to waste extra graphics power by making Windows constantly refresh the screen. This has the side-effect that a picture can never be permanantly burned into the monitor (because the screen never stays the same for more than a second), therefore the screen saver is useless. Of course if you're entertained by those little fishy colours, then by all means keep drooling at that screen saver... Make sure you turn off all schemes because they use bloody RAM and don't let Windows use 'smooth fonts' or 'as many colours as possible' for fonts. The graphics barely look different and it saves a bit of processing power. Make sure your resolution is set at 800 x 600 if you've got an 8MB video card or less or else Windows will seem sluggish to load on screen. In the advanced settings, set a predefined refresh setting to prevent Windows from wasting time on changing it. I usually like 60 hz because the less hz, the less time your computer takes to process those frames of animation, but most people prefer 72 Hz. Don't set it to optimal because it'll just set the bloody graphics adaptor to a high Hz like 100 Hz or more. This is good for GeForce gamers but for us Savage4 owners who get 30fps or less, 60 Hz is plenty of room to spare... And lastly, if your computer consistantly locks up, try setting the graphics hardware acceleration bar to a lower setting. It's better to have slower gaming than no gaming at all... or is it? Us overclockers are just driven by the need to tweak our hardware to hell, and not to actually get it to work...

Doggone it, my fonts take too long to load. Does this have something to do with my joystick?...

Okay, that's one I haven't heard before... Do you actually use a joystick? Not many PC gamers do because it reminds them too much of their old Atari days vs. Intellivision and other ancient cruddy crap... okay, I liked the Atari 7600 but don't tell anyone... If you don't use a joystick, delete it from your game controller control panel. The polling on the active joystick wastes a tidbit of CPU power and sometimes can cause some weird conflicts to arise in Windows... As for the Windows font thing, you should delete every font you don't use from the windows\fonts directory. The less fonts you have, the quicker Windows loads and the quicker word processing programs load. Just make sure you don't delete Georgia... that's the font I love to hate and somehow end up using... don't let it get you too...

Goddammit, John, my computer still takes too long to load! How can I clean out my bastard files?

You mean Windows? Well, I wouldn't recommend to convert to Linux or FU-BS (Free for users Be OS) just yet. I did hear of a way to clean your Windows registry by deleting all your software keys in the registry or something, then reinstall Windows. Yeah, I think that was supposed to make Windows load like it was a clean install yet all of your old hardware drivers would still be sort of there... but if I were me & I am, I wouldn't try that because I'm not sure if its just the software keys that you're supposed to delete... To be honest, I run my games off of a clean Windows95A install; even Star Trek Armada runs flawlessly (no crashes, but still about 2 fps speed...) & that's quite an accomplishment to many owners of that Windows-wannabe game. One tip is to never uninstall and game only to reinstall it later. Uninstalling leaves useless files in your system directory that really slow down loading time from your Windows\System directory. Reinstalling can corrupt these files (or at least they do on mine, but maybe my computer's just screwed up like my hands...), and uninstalling the game again just makes it worse. Even, uh, worser, reinstalling the game puts a lot of useless junk into your registry that is not removed when you uninstall the game. Even a lot of those registry-cleaning programs can't suck every useless reg key out of your, uh, what's the word in English?... Oh, yeah: "registry", so make sure you only install the games that you would want to keep on your hard drive (of course, it's not like I follow my own advice either...).

There are 5 key directories to check when you're cleaning up your hard drive. The first is the c:\ root directory (or whatever little letter you like to use for your booting hard drive... I like the letter Y2kk...). Delete any .log or .bak or .001 or .00x or so on because they're all there as useless backups of ancient files. Make sure you delete all those file00x or whatever files that Scandisk makes; one of my cousins has a few megs of those sitting around, doing nothing, & he won't let me delete them! You can delete any .bin files as long as you're not using hard drive compression like drivespace, & you might as well delete those annoying ffast-something-something files as long as you don't use find fast. Just make sure you have system.1st, suhdlog.dat, io.sys, command.com, & that msdos.sys file still in there. I'm not sure what detlog.t xt does but its a system file so me don't feel like touching it.

The second priority on my list in the Windows\Temp directory. My cousin has about 50 megs or so of useless .tmp files in this directory and guess what: he won't let me bloody delete them! It's driving me crazy like Monster Truck Racing to think how many install files are mounting up in there as we speak! It's genecide I tell you, genecide like AOL!!!... Okay then, make sure you delete those temp files every week or so because the Windows shutdown often misses them. If you want, you can set up a batch file to do it for you, but really, are we that lazy to open up Windows Explorer (with Windows-button & E), highlight all files by holding shift and pressing end, and then press delete? I think not, I think so. Nice way to take-not-take a side, dah-eh?

The third priority on my list is that stupid Windows\Temporary Internet Files directory. Back in grade 9, my school's libary computer wouldn't start up so I investigated why. Soon enough, me and my little buddy found that there were about a gig of Internet cache files sitting in this directory, taking up all the space on the 1.2 gig hard drive and preventing that little 8MB RAM machine from making any swap files. Of course I deleted the files, and guess who took the credit... no, don't point the finger at me. I blame it on Microsoft... don't you love scapegoats? Well, I recommend that you clear this directory often because Internet Explorer often exceeds that 1% of the hard drive space that you've reserved for cache files. Oh, by the way, right click on your recycle bin and in the properties, make sure each hard drive has less than 100MB of space reserved for deleted files. The more hard drive space reserved, the slower your file access is and who knows? If you've got just milk and 4 gigs of total space (well, 2.5 gigs of space thanks to bad clusters now...), then having large recycle bins could screw up a size-variating swap file.

The fourth place to go dancing with wolves is the actual Windows directory. Because I'm already forgetting what the point of this FAQ is, I think I'll keep this one briefer than the underwear I'm wearing. A bunch of those .001 and .tmp files are hidden in the Windows directory too, but I usually clean up the other junk in this directory when I'm bored too. All .bmp (background) files here slow down loading time so I only keep my beloved Tyan board picture in this directory. I make sure I delete all those Filthy McNasty Screen Saver thingies that don't even save your monitor these days anymore (the Windows desktop flashes its ugly rear so much it is itself a crappy screen saver). You can safely get rid of your Win3.1 .GRP files I think (don't sue me after, please. My name is not Napster...) because Windows95 and up gets its start menu not from .GRP files but from the, guess vhat? The Kenneth Start Menu directory (which I would delete too if I didn't slap myself with a vodka bottle every time I tried)! The Windows directory is pretty notorious too for holding a bunch of useless readme txt or doc files so eat them with your bare feet if you can. And if you're pretty nifty with the keyboard (or just too delete-trigger happy like me), go ahead and get rid of the .ini files and .inf files that your computer really doesn't need. Just make sure you leave the essentials there like food, clothing, & Clint Eastwood, dokay? (um, did that come out right? Uh, probably not...)

Okay, so we played patty cake and ate it too. Not what? Well, if you're really, really bored, you can delete everything in your cookies directory because who the hell would want to be watched by companies and all that other crap people stuff? Then again, someone sitting on a toillette on Holland's Big Brother show seemed to get more ratings than those goddam annoying Pikachu dolls... Delete that AMC folder if you have it too because it logs what you do on the internet or something for advertisers. Leave only the cursors you want in the cursors directory, and if you never use DOS (but who would ever want to do that?...), you might as well delete your command directory for the hell ya smell of it. Delete as many things as you can from your desktop folder to Mach3 shave off a millisecond or two from loading time, & delete as much as you can from that stupid Favourites folder because, um, I just hate Internet Explorer... Netscape 3.04, AOL-less forever!... um, right, anyhew, as mentioned above, keep that fonts directory as slim as shady or something and in that Help folder, delete as many .hlp files as you feel Jenny-Craig fit. I'm too lazy to ever read help files, so I deleted everything to make defraging a lot less complex numbery. Oh, unless you know what you're doing (unlike me), leave the .inf files in the, um, INF directory so you don't need to pop in a disk whenever you want to reinstall drivers. But deleting them files would sure speed up loading time... yum, you can almost hear me drooling right now... Uh, vhere vas I? Oh. Keep that ShellNew thingy long and smooth (um... wait, that did come out right...) and clear of Apollo-11 space debris because I for one hate right-clicking on something and making a new file from within - get this - Win9x Explorer! Have ya heard of anything more looney? Ha! Who's with me? Who's with me?!... Um, hello? Allo?... is anyone out there?... Um, okay... moving on... Make sure your printer Spool is clear for every Mondays on the hour on the second hour, and lastly, make sure you keep clearing that Recent folder. I hate that Documents thing on the Windows menu. Me hate it with green onion passion-fruit. I now have a compulsive disorder to press CTRL-ESC (no, I don't have the money to buy a Win9x keyboard...), then goto.com settings/taskbar and just clear that damn folder. Geez, I'm going to have to join Alcoholics Anonymous or something just to get through this...

I sort of have a problem with MsOffice. You see, I hate it, & I want it to stop loading at boot-up.

Yeah, and I have a problem with Windows. You see, I hate it and I want it to stop loading at boot-up as well... I've been asked a few times to join that Penguin books Linux club but I've always been a no-taker. First of all, I don't know how to program in C and therefore I won't be able to make all those cool GUIs that have "Warsaw hates Microsoft" or something written all over it. Second, I never liked Linux because it's like a toy for the elite; who here is not jealous of the elite with those jaguars, ferraris, and roadkill lining their car parks? Well, I don't want to give myself a chance to parade around with a Linux certificate in hand and write off others for not joining the Penguin book club. For all those Linux users out there, I have but two words for ya: I love computers, but I hate being good at them. Okay, I have no idea how they was meant for Linux users. Then again, which Linux users would actually waste their time at the bottom of a pathetic Win9x tweaking guide? Anyhew, the most asked question by people at my school is how can they shorten Windows' loading time. I first give them the obvious tricks: delete your autoexec.bat, format your computer, stuff like that. I then tell them to go to Advanced Start Menu area (go to Settings/Tasbar/Start Menu Programs/Advanced) and delete every -ign -thing you can from the StartUp folder. Or if you have Windows98, you will possess the only new feature that Sebastian actually liked: you can just right-click on stuff in items in your Start-Menu's StartUp thingy and prevent them from seeing the light of day ever again. Right after installing MsWord97, I got rid of the shortcuts to Office97 Startup and Fastfind. I think a lot of RealPlayer crap gets stuck there too, & I just can't stand it when a company vile enough to ally themselves with AOL infests my computer with RAM-starving trojan bugs (RealProducer is great, but RealJukebox is a real pain in the Jack What's in the Box, uh, box). But I also know that ICQ's notorious start-up thing is not in the StartUp folder. Sure you could just tell ICQ in its option list to not boot with the computer, but what fun would that be? You wouldn't get any satisfaction of hunting the stupid AOL program down and wiping it off the face of the bloody monitor. It is indeed a small world afterall... Ok, so I just watched Small Soldiers again. So sue me. Well, I can tell you the other places where ICQ may end up hiding, and they all involve using regedit to modify your Windows' Registry. First, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/RUN . Although it's rare, you may find some programs here that slow the booting time on your computer. Delete them. Delete them all... And if you see AOL Instant Messenger or McAfee virus scan here, don't be alarmed. Just back away slowly from the computer and dial 912 on your phone. Linux freaks at their support stations will be more than happy to torch your computer. I know I would.

The next rest stops for these trojans that we so very enjoy plopping into our computer are HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/RUN, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/RUNONCE, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/RUNONCEEX, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/RUNSERVICES, & HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/RUNSERVICESONCE. Okay, that;s a pretty regoddamdiculously long list but as long as you know what programs are on your computer, you'll be just fine... Yeah, sure you will... You can delete most of the program stuff in any of these registry keys. I deleted all that string stuff from like S3Tweak, CL Auto-detection or something (oops...), and that TweakUI boot thingy from the RUN key, & I think I annihilated North Antivirus somewhere in the RunServices department. Just make sure you leave that Systray (System Tray) string in, because after I deleted it, my computer started to act real funny and format itself for booze and fun (I guess it just didn't feel loved anymore...). Just make sure you know which programs are in your registry because if you delete anything wrong, you computer may not start. Joy, then maybe I can finally say that my computer ain't the worst left in the world... No wait, my registry just crashed again. Oh well, there's always next year...

Some people also have the HKEY_USERS/DEFAULT/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/ CURRENTVERSION/RUN key, some of us don't, some of us I'm meeting for the first time... uh, no-one's gonna get that joke, right?... Right... But if you do have that key, you can check it out for stuff to delete too. Just please don't come back crying to me saying I made your Windows more messed up than people cuffing their hands to their own noses or something at Woodstock or, uh, something.

Um, you're scaring me, IvanF... Why are you acting like this?

... because I was born with a leg...