Customise Folders

To add a folder to your taskbar simply right click on it, select "Toolbar" and then "New toolbar" and select the folder you wish to shortcut too.

Once picked click "Select folder" to complete

 

Customise Menus

This will add a print directory option when you right click on a folder, it can be done manually or you can click on the link below (this will do the registry changes automatically and is provided by Microsoft):

Add the Print Directory feature

Hardware

Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then Disk Cleanup

(If more than one drive) Select drive to clean

Now Windows will check system, this may take a while so be patient.

From the next screen select what you wish to delete, from our example you will notice its quite a lot of  stuff. In "More Options" along the top you can also cleanup system restore files and remove software. This can free quite allot of space up also. Select what you want to delete and press "OK".

Once done you can check the amount of space the computer now has in "MY Computer"

Startup

Click start/all programs accessories then run and type: CMD

When the command windows opens type: ipconfig /all

The following settings will appear (these settings you will require later):

Now click start/control panel/Network and Internet/Network and Sharing Center/ and then change adapter settings

Now you will see your network connections, right click on the one that is connected and select properties. (Wireless connection in example below)

Now you will see from the ipconfig menu you will see "IPv4 address" or "IPv6 address". select the appropriate setting from the properties menu (either Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv6) or Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6))

Now fill in the settings:

Select "Use the following IP address":

IP address is same as IPv4 or IPv6 address in IPConfig.

Subnet mask the same as subnet mask address in IPConfig

Default gateway is the same as default gateway address in IPConfig

Select "Use the following DNS server addresses":

Preferred DNS should be 8.8.8.8

Alternative 8.8.4.8

Finally click on "Validate settings upon exit".

Click OK then OK again to save and exit. Network will the be set.

If network doesn't work run network troubleshooter, or reverse the above steps to get back to square one.

Windows 8, 7 & Vista: Click start/all programs accessories then run and type: MSCONFIG

Now click on boot and adjust the "Timeout" value to a lower figure, 0 means computer will not pause at all on the menu. I recommend 5 seconds just incase you need to make adjustments or prevent a startup repair.

Shutdown

To shutdown Windows XP instantly click "start", "Run" and type:

%SystemRoot%\System32\shutdown.exe /s

and click OK.

To hibernate Windows XP instantly click "start", "Run" and type:

%SystemRoot%\System32\shutdown.exe /h

and click OK.

To log off Windows XP instantly click "start", "Run" and type:

%SystemRoot%\System32\shutdown.exe /l

and click OK

To restart Windows XP instantly click "start", "Run" and type:

%SystemRoot%\System32\shutdown.exe /r

and click OK

To create a permanent shortcut for any of the above:

Right click on a blank area of desktop

Select "create new shortcut", copy and paste the commands above in the box, click next.

Finally name shortcut and change the icon if you wish by right clicking on it, going to properties and clicking change icon.

Windows Services

Windows search indexing is constantly reviewing files on your system to make their contents available for quick searching. This can severely impact system performance.

To disable indexing:

Click Start then Computer or open Windows explorer

Right Click on the C: Drive and select "Properties"

Disabling delete confirmation is quite easy, just find recycle bin and right click on it, select properties

Now deselect "Display delete confirmation dialog" box.

If you have more than one drive/partition then you'll have to do it for each drive.

This is probably not recommended as you will never know if you accidently delete something, but its useful if your doing a system cleanup.

Do the opposite to reverse.