General Windows 95 Tips

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How to make Windows stop asking for the Windows 95 CD-ROM.
 

This warning is from article Q136393 in the Microsoft Knowledge base, titled "How to Modify the Windows Registry"  http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q136/3/93.ASP

WARNING: Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall Windows 98. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
 

How to make Windows stop asking for the Windows 95 CD-ROM.

1.  Click the Start button and select Run
2.  Type Regedit and press Enter or Click Ok
3.  Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Setup
4.  In the right-hand pane find the SourcePath key
5.  Double-click this key and change the location for your Win95 files

If you have enough disk space, you can copy the win95 directory from the Windows 95 CD-ROM to a folder on your hard drive and point the registry key to this location.

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Viewing Available IRQ's
 

1. Right Click on My Computer
2. Select Properties
3. Select the Device Manager tab
4. Select Computer and click Properties

This will show which IRQ's are currently in use.

Note: You can also see the I/O, DMA and Memory usage by your hardware.

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To change the size of the Icons on the Desktop:
 

1. Right-click on the Desktop
2. Choose Properties from the context menu. On the Appearance tab look in the Item list box. Once you find Icon you can choose the size from the Size box
3. To pre-view, hit the Apply button, once you are satisfied hit OK

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1. Right-click on the Desktop
2. Choose Properties from the drop down menu. On the Appearance tab look in the Item list box. Once you find Icon Spacing (Horizontal) and Icon Spacing (Vertical) you can choose different values
3. Once you are satisfied hit OK
4. Press F5 to Refresh the Desktop

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If you want to open a file in Notepad, but you do not want to browse through the "Open With" (use Shift + Right-click) options and you do not want to try to find the file from the Open menu in Notepad, or you do not want to take a chance on making Notepad the default application for all files with the same extension, you can create a shortcut to notepad.exe in the \Windows\SendTo Folder (if you have Profiles enabled, the SendTo folder may be under \Windows\Profiles\[user name]\SendTo):
 

1. Click Start, Select Programs and start Windows Explorer
2. Select the \Windows\SendTo Folder or if you have a \Windows\profiles folder, see if there is a SendTo folder under your user ID. If you are unsure of your user ID, Click the Start button and choose Shut Down, then select "Close all programs and log on as a different user" your User-ID will be listed in the logon box
3. Right-click an empty space in the folder, and from the context menu choose New > Shortcut
4. In the Create Shortcut window, enter C:\Windows\Notepad.exe in the Command line box
  Note: If you installed windows in another directory, or on another drive, you'll have to replace the C:\Windows\ with the correct path
 
5. Press Next
6. I suggest removing the .exe from Notepad.exe in the Select a name for the shortcut box
7. Press Finish

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1. From Explorer's menu select View > Folder Options, select the File Types tab
2. Find the file type you want to work with and double click it
3. In the Edit File Type dialog that opens you will see a box marked Actions. This is where Windows 95 stores the actions to be taken when you double click on a file, drag it to a printer, and so on. You can have more than one Open, so long as each action is a unique character string. For example, you could edit the BMP file type registration so that you have one entry named Open (MS Paint) and another named Open (Paint Shop Pro). For each entry edit the actions needed to open the file with the appropriate application
4. To add an entry, simply press New and in the new Action dialog box, type the name of the action in the Action box
5. You can use the Browse button to find the Application used to perform action
6. Highlight one of the entries and click the Set Default button. That will be the application used when you double click on a file of that type. If, however, you right click the file, all of the entries you placed into the Actions box will appear on the context menu making it easy to open the file with the application of your choice

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1. Open Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel), and double click System Properties
2. Select the Device Manager tab
3. Double-click the CD-ROM icon, and right-click your CD-ROM drive
4. Select Properties, and click the Settings tab
5. Uncheck the Auto insert notification check box
6. Click OK, and then Close. You'll have to restart Windows for this change to take effect

You can also use TweakUI, one of Microsoft's PowerToys, to disable the autorun feature by turning off the Play audio CDs automatically and Play data CDs automatically options in the Paranoia tab.

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1. Right-click the Recycle Bin
2. Select Properties from the context menu, and select the Global tab
3. Make sure that the check box for Display delete confirmation dialog box is unchecked

You can also create a shortcut to the Recycle Bin in your Send To folder. To delete files, right-click, and choose Recycle Bin (Recycled) from the Send To menu.

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When you install a new application or program, it will often change your file associations, so that files with the associated extensions will be opened by the new program. This occur often with image files (image files have extensions like jpeg, jpg, gif, art, ....) Since image files can be opened by web browsers, image editors, graphics programs, image viewers, and may other programs, this may cause your preferred application to stop being the default program for the files in question. If you had another program which was previously associated with that file type, double-clicking will no longer start this program, but the new one instead. Some programs offer you the choice of associating certain file types with them when you run the Installation program, but to help you setting the file associations yourself, here are two tips:

1. A shortcut for choosing a new program to be used with a certain file type is to hold the Shift key while right-clicking on a file, and choose Open With... from the context menu. After choosing the program, place a check-mark in the Always use this program to open this type of file
2. You can also use multiple file registrations, for more info, see Multiple File Registrations

1. In the program that creates the file type you wish to add, create a blank document with any preferences you wish to use. Save it immediately
2. Copy this file to \windows\ShellNew, which is a hidden folder. (see Click here to find out how to show hidden files (such as MSDOS.SYS or io.sys)? to see how to show hidden files/folders in explorer)
3. Start the Registry Editor
4. Open HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and find the extension for that file type. Add a new key called ShellNew
5. Under the new key, add a string value called FileName
6. Double-click on the string, and modify it to be the filename of the blank template file you created, including the extension
7. Exit the Registration Editor and restart Windows 95

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If every time you add a new folder, or you delete something from a window, and you have to hit F5 (Refresh) to see the results, here is how to make Windows refresh automatically:

1. Start the Registry Editor
2. Double-click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
3. Go to System > CurrentControlSet > Control > Update folder
4. Go to the right pane and right-click on UpdateMode and select Modify. Change the value from 01 to 00
5. Click on OK and exit the Registry Editor

Restart Windows 95 for the changes to take place.
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