Microsoft Windows Codename Longhorn Build 3718 Tweak Guide

Written by Nighthawk

Last updated on Tuesday, July 27, 2004

 

Tweaks

 

Uninstall Un-necessary Windows Components

 

            This will allow you to uninstall all the un-necessary components in Longhorn.

 

1.       Click Start, Run. Type in “notepad %systemroot%\inf\sysoc.inf” and press OK.

2.       Delete all instances of the word HIDE, save the changes and close Notepad.

3.       Click Start, Control Panel.

4.       In the Control Panel window, click “Add/Remove Programs”.

 

When the “Add/Remove Programs” dialog appears, click on the button “Add/Remove Windows Components” located in the left portion of the dialog.

 

Within a few seconds, the “Add/Remove Windows Components” dialog should appear. Once it has appeared, you may uncheck the following items:

 

MyGames

Tablet PC Components

Automatic Updates

WinFS (Windows Future Storage Services)

 

After you have unchecked the items above, click on the Next button located in the dialog. Windows will now begin to uninstall the items you de-selected.

 

Important Note: When uninstalling components, please be aware that the top entry with no name is the item for the core Windows services (NT core components, Avalon, WMI, COM+, etc). Do NOT change the selection for this item.

 

Disable Un-necessary services

 

You should disable some of the services that you don’t need in order for Windows to run a little faster.

 

Click Start, Run.

Type “services.msc” (without the quotes).

 

Set the startup type on these services to DISABLED:

 

            Castle Service

            Automatic Updates

            Error Reporting Service

            Font Cache Service

            Fusion Isolation Service

Help and Support (Your running Longhorn. Why do you need the Help & Support Center?)

IPSec Services (Do not disable if you wish to join a domain)

            Indexing Service

Logon Hours

            Net Logon (Do not disable if you wish to join a domain)

Network DDE

Network DDE DSDM

Performance Logs and Alerts

Remote Registry

            System Restore Service

            Smart Card (unless you need Smart Card functionality)

            SSDP Discovery Service

            Universal Plug and Play Device Host

           

 

System Performance Tweaks

 

Changing these settings will fine tune the performance of Longhorn and make things noticeably faster. Note: If you like eye candy, you might want to leave some of these on (fading effects, etc).

 

Click Start, and then right click on “My Computer”.

Click on the “Advanced” tab and under “Performance” click the “Settings” button.

 

Uncheck all items except the following:

 

            Show shadows under mouse pointer

            Use Drop shadows for icon labels on desktop

            Use visual styles on windows and buttons

 

After you have done the above, proceed to the My Computer window. (Click Start, My Computer).

Go to Tools, Folder Options, and click on the “View” tab.

 

Uncheck the following values:

 

            Automatically search fro network folders and printers

            Choose smart icon size when opening new windows

            Use breadcrumb bar

            Use domain folder sharing wizard

            Use simple file sharing (recommended)

 

 

Enhance the Logon Screen

 

Due to the fact that this build is a bit old, the Welcome screen is still the one that was used in 3683 and even 4008. But we can change it. Longhorn 4015’s Logon UI screen works just fine under 3718.

 

1.       First download this file.  Contained within the RAR archive are the files you need for the new welcome screen.

2.       Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 and rename logonui.exe to logonui.bak

3.       Using WinRAR, extract the files into C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DLLCACHE and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32.

4.       Cancel any Windows File Protection Errors that may appear.

5.       Optional: To make the new login screen look more authentic under build 3718, you need to enable ClearType font smoothing technology on the welcome screen. To do that, download this file to your desktop and double click it. When it asks you to merge the information into the registry, press “yes”. After that, delete the file from your desktop or wherever you saved it if you wish to do so.

6.       Enjoy the 4015 Welcome Screen on 3718!

 

 

 

 

This document is Copyright © 2004, Nighthawk and NextL3vel.net.

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