Removing pop-up Help for users of both the Start panel and MenuEver notice that when you hover your mouse over a program listing in the Start Menu, a little yellow Help box will pop up? This Help feature is called balloon help. If a user does not know what a program does, she can hold the mouse over the program for a second or so and a little message will fade in telling her what it is, if the programmer has set up this feature of the user’s program. For other programs that do not have this feature set up in their shortcut, it will just tell the user where the program is located on her computer.
This feature can be very useful for a beginning computer user. Sometimes the pop-up Help can become an annoyance and just blocks your screen. If you do not need this feature, why not disable it? Follow these steps to get rid of this feature:
1. Click the Start Menu and select Run and then type regedit in the box and click OK.
2. Once the Registry Editor is loaded, navigate though HKEY_CURRENT_USER,
Software, Microsoft,Windows, CurrentVersion, Explorer, and Advanced.
3. Right-click the entry called ShowInfoTip and select Modify.
4. Set the value equal to 0 to disable this feature, and click OK.
5. Close the Registry Editor and log off and back so the feature can be removed.
You are now finished with the last section on customizing the Start Menu and program listing. Now on to customizing the taskbar.
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Customizing the Start Menu/Panel Program ListingsNow that you have selected what you want your Start Menu to display as well as customized it to suit your needs, you are ready to move on to customizing the way the programs are listed. There are a variety of features that will impact the way the programs are listed on the screen.
These next few sections will help you get rid of some of the new annoying features, such as the personalized menus and the scrolling program listings.
There are basically two slightly different program listing methods.When you are using the new Start panel, the programs listing is slightly different in the way it looks and acts when compared to the classic Start Menu listing. Follow the corresponding sections below for the menu option that you are running.
Changing program listing display options for users of the Start panel
As I mentioned earlier, the Start panel All Programs listing works a little differently than its classic counterpart. The new program listing has some features that the classic version does not and that is why it is necessary to have two different sections. In the following sections, you will find two very common topics that users are interested in changing.
Disabling new program highlights
One of the features I thought was a great idea when I first started to use Windows XP was the program highlight feature. This feature will automatically highlight any new programs that you install so that you can easily find them on the Start Menu the first few times that you want to run the application. After I started to use XP for a few months, I noticed that this feature did not always work correctly. Some programs that I install never get highlighted, although others seem to be highlighted for weeks after I have installed them.
After a while, I decided that I had enough of this highlighting, so I decided to turn the feature off. Thankfully, Microsoft has made turning off this feature fairly simple. Just follow these steps to get rid of those annoying highlights:
1. Right-click the Start button and select Properties.
2. Click the top Customize button for the Start panel.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. Uncheck Highlight Newly Installed Programs.
5. Click OK to save your changes.
6. Click OK once more to close the Properties window.
Now you will not have to worry about the programs that sometimes seem to be highlighted randomly.
Fun with the Scroll Programs feature
Some people love the program scroll feature, and others hate it. Personally, I don’t like this feature that much. I like to see all of my programs installed on my screen at once instead of having to move the mouse to the bottom of the list and clicking the down arrow or waiting for the list to move up automatically when the feature is enabled.
If you do not like having your menus take up a lot of space on your screen, enabling the scroll programs feature will cut your programs list down in size dramatically if you have a lot of programs installed. Some computer manufacturers ship their machines with this feature automatically enabled; other don’t have it enabled. So if this feature sounds interesting to you, feel free to try it out by following these steps. If you hate this feature, then follow these steps to remove it:
1. Right-click the Start button and select Properties.
2. Click the top Customize button for the Start panel settings.
3. Next, click the Advanced tab.
4. Locate the Start Menu items scroll box in the middle of the window and scroll down all the way to the bottom until you locate the Scroll Programs entry.
5. Check the box to enable; uncheck to disable.
6. Click OK to save your changes.
7. Click OK once more to exit the Start Menu settings.
Now you will have full control over your scrolling program list.
Changing program listing display options for users of the classic Start MenuThe classic Start Menu has some of the features that were in older versions of the Windows operating system, such as the personalized menus feature. This feature can be more of an annoyance than a convenience, so I have dedicated a whole section to it. Also, you will learn how to manage the scroll programs feature for the classic menu users because it is slightly different than for users of the Start panel. Before you get started, make sure that you have the classic Start Menu enabled in order to use the following hacks.
Disabling personalized menus
Personalized menus is a feature in Windows that has been around for a little while. It uses your program run history to hide all of the other programs in your Start Menu program listing that you don’t use or don’t use often. After a user has used his computer for a short while,Windows will hide all of the programs that the user does not run so that he can find his most frequently run programs more easily.
Personalized menus sound like a great feature, but really think about it.Why would you have programs in your Start Menu that you don’t use? If there is a program that is installed and never used on my computer, I uninstall it. You don’t need to be wasting your storage space with useless programs.
Additionally, I have had experience with some beginning computer users complaining that Windows deleted all of their programs because they are no longer showing up in the Start Menu programs listing.Well as you probably know, they are still listed; the user just didn’t realize that if they click the down arrow, it will expand the Start Menu back to its original size so they can view all the programs.
When considering all of these issues with personalized menus, I can’t see why you would want to have this feature enabled. Follow these steps to take back your computer:
1. Right-click the Start Menu and select Properties.
2. Click the bottom Customize button to bring up the Customize Classic Start Menu
window.
3. Locate the Advanced Start Menu options box, and scroll down all the way to the
bottom.
4. You should now be able to see the Use Personalized Menus setting. Just uncheck the box to disable the feature.
5. Click OK to save your changes.
6. Click OK once more to close the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window.
Now you will no longer have to deal with your programs disappearing. I highly recommend
that you disable this feature on any beginner computer user’s computer as well, to save yourself a headache explaining to them that Windows didn’t really delete everything.
Working with the scroll programs feature
The scroll feature works the exact same as when it is enabled for users of the new Start panel. Instead of showing all the programs on your list on-screen at once, it will show only one column of programs that you will be able to scroll through.
Some computer manufacturers ship their systems with this feature enabled, although some have it disabled. Follow these steps to modify this feature for your computer:
1. Right-click the Start button and select Properties.
2. Click the Customize button at the bottom.
3. Then locate the Advanced Start Menu Options box and scroll all the way to the bottom again.
4. Locate the Scroll Programs feature and check it to enable; uncheck it to disable.
5. Click OK to save your changes.
6. And click OK once more to close the Properties window.
Now your program scrolling is under your control.
