Win 98/ME/2K users, your process is much, much easier. Right-click an empty place on your desktop, choose "Properties," click on the "Effects" tab, uncheck the box that says, "Animate Windows, menus and lists," or "Use transition effects for menus and tooltips" (Win ME/2K). Win XP users don't break a sweat either; they just right-click the desktop, choose Properties, Appearance, and Effects, and uncheck "Use the following transition effects for menus and tooltips." Click on "Apply," click on "OK."

ISDN users who want to break the speed barrier, go to Microsoft's Web site and download the Microsoft ISDN Accelerator Pack. Vrooom. But, not only ISDN users, but anyone with a dial-up modem, can profit from downloading this little goodie. Go to www.microsoft.com/windows/windows95/info/isdn4w95.htm, find MSISDN11.EXE, download, and install it according to the directions on the Web page. It provides several nice upgrades to your Dial-Up Networking utility, including an enhanced "connected" icon that replaces the little black box with the blinking red and green lights; double-clicking on this icon after connecting to your Internet provider gives you detailed information on your connection. If you're constantly asked by Windows for your username and password every time you log on, and you don't like it, you can install this upgrade and then force Windows to log you on without all the hassle. Go to Start, Programs, Accessories, and open the Dial-Up Networking folder. Choose Connections, Settings. Clear the box marked "Prompt for Information Before Dialing." (Whether this works or not depends on whether or not your Internet connection goes through DUN.) Another little freeware goodie for your DUN connection is FreeDUN, from PCWorld Magazine (www.pcworld.com). This one is particularly useful for users who connect to multiple systems (i.e. you have two different Internet accounts). According to the makers, FreeDun dials into different accounts, launches the programs you want, and shuts down automatically when you exit a specified application.

Make Dial-Up Networking redial after that busy signal denies you access to your ISP: go to My Computer/Dial-Up Networking and select Settings from the Connections menu. Check the Redial box and set how many times you want the computer to try redialing before giving up. Warning: some ISPs such as America Online don't go through DUN.

DUN users, speed up dialing into your ISP by going into Dial-Up Networking, right-click the connectoid for your ISP, and choose Properties. Choose Server Type, then Advanced Options. Uncheck "Log on to network." Under "Allowed Network Protocols," uncheck NetBEUI and IPX/SPX Compatible. (Leave the network protocols as they are for remote-access connections.)

Microsoft decided to abandon its own NetBEUI networking protocol beginning with Windows XP. Scot Finnie has recommended that people switch to IPX/SPX with NetBIOS, a protocol that Microsoft includes in every version of Windows since Windows 95. Finnie prefers NetBEUI, as it does a better job of helping various Windows versions inter-network, especially on simpler peer networks. Now that Microsoft's decided at the last minute to include NetBEUI on the Windows XP CD, you can install it like this (instructions courtesy of Scot Finnie).

• The files necessary for installing the NetBEUI protocol on Windows XP are NETNBF.INF and NBF.SYS. To install them, follow these steps:
• 1. Insert your Windows XP CD into the CD drive and use My Computer to browse the CD to the Valueadd \ MSFT \ Net \ NetBEUI folder. Copy NBF.SYS to your Windows \ System32 \ Drivers folder. Copy NETNBF.INF to your Windows \ Inf folder (which is hidden).
• NOTE: To make a hidden folder viewable, click Start, Run, then type Explorer and press Enter. Then click Tools , Folder Options, View tab. Then under Advanced Settings, click "Show hidden files and folders" under the "Hidden files and folders" folder.
• 2. Click Start, Control Panel, then double-click Network Connections. Right-click the adapter you want to add NetBEUI to and click Properties.
• 3. On the General tab, click Install. Next click Protocol, Add.
• 4. Click to select the NetBEUI Protocol from the list and then click OK.
• 5. Restart your computer if you receive a prompt to complete the installation.
• For more information, see this Microsoft KnowledgeBase Article Q301041: How to Install NetBEUI on Windows XP: support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;301041.

XP/2K users can crank up their search capabilities by indexing their files through Indexing Service. You can then search for text in files, file properties, and other useful goodies. (If you don't search your drive very often, you should disable the Indexing Service, because it sucks up hard drive space you don't need taken by this feature.) Go through Start, Search, select "Change Preferences," and look for the "With Indexing Service" option. (If it's called "With," it's turned off; "Without Indexing Service" indicates it's turned on.) Choose the option you prefer and choose Yes. And it does sound backwards. Whaddya want, it's Microsoft!

A quick way to disable your screen saver (while you're defragging, or downloading, or whatever) is to click on Start and leave the Start menu up. While the menu is up, the screen saver won't launch.

If you have 12mb or more of RAM, you can speed up your CD-ROM drive by telling Windows that it's got more gumption than it really has. Right-click My Computer, select Properties, click the Performance tab, the File System button, and then the CD-ROM tab. Move the Supplemental Cache Size sliding bar all the way to the right (towards Large) and select "Quad-speed or higher" from the "Optimize access pattern for" drop-down menu, regardless of your CD's actual speed. You have increased the size of the cache Windows sets aside for your CD, so it will run faster.

Add a shortcut to Control Panel to your Start Menu by right-clicking the Start button, choosing Explore, right-clicking on an empty area in the right-hand pane and choosing New/Folder, and typing this exactly:

You can also access Control Panel faster by creating a shortcut to it on your Start Menu this way: In My Computer or Windows Explorer, create a new folder in the C:WINDOWS\START MENU directory, and name it "Control Panel Apps." Open Control Panel and drag one of the icons to the new folder. Windows will tell you that you cannot move or copy this item, and ask if you want to create a shortcut instead. Click Yes. Repeat this process for each icon that you want "shortcutted." On your Start menu, Control Panel Apps should appear there, with a submenu of shortcuts to each app that you chose.

Make a shortcut to Device Manager while you're streamlining. In Explorer, select C:/Windows/Start Menu. Select New, Shortcut from the File menu, and in the field labeled Command Line, type the following:

Then click Next, type Device Manager for the name of the shortcut, and press Finish. Your Start Menu will now have a direct shortcut to Device Manager. (For users with keyboards with the Windows key, press that key along with the Pause/Break key to access Device Manager. You lucky folks don't need this shortcut.)

While we're playing with the Start menu, you can change the items you've placed in it by right-clicking on the Start button and choosing Explore from the menu that appears. A double-pane Explorer window appears, letting you surf through the directory tree on the left and open the contents of the folder you choose in the right. To produce the same effect for a folder, you can either right-click on the folder and choose Explore, or hold down Shift and double-click the folder icon.

It is way, way too easy to mistakenly move files around in Explorer. Use the Edit menu's Undo function to remedy a mistaken move.

Speed up your modem's dialing by going into the Modem applet in Control Panel, selecting your modem and clicking on Properties. Open the Connection tab and click on Advanced. Enter S11=50 in the Extra Settings field. The number specifies in milliseconds the time for each tone and the delay between tones. The lower the number, the shorter the tone will last before the next one comes along.

Quickly access your System Properties panel by holding the Alt key and double-clicking My Computer.

A taskbar oddity: You might notice that with more than four or five files open, the little gray buttons get reduced in size to tiny, useless things, with additional buttons scrolling off the screen entirely. And an undocumented glitch in Win 9x sometimes disallows multiple taskbar rows, even though you've configured your display for them. There is a solution. First, increase your screen resolution to the highest that you can work with: a recent PC with a decent 15-inch or larger monitor should be able to handle 1024 x 768 without a problem. 19-inch displays should be able to handle 1152 x 864 or even 1280 x 1024. Go through Control Panel/Display/Settings to reset your display. Next, increase the height of the Taskbar so that it can show more buttons. Do this by edging your mouse arrow to the upper edge of the Taskbar; when you see the two-headed arrow, click-and-drag the Taskbar's border up to add more rows. 1024 x 768 displays should be able to deal nicely with two rows, while higher displays should be able to deal with 3 or even 4 rows. But then there's the glitch...this may not work. Win 98/ME users can configure their Quick Launch bar to get around this, but the poor peons plugging away with Win 95 can't do that.

Use "Send To:" to quickly copy files to floppy disk. Right-click the file, select Send To from the menu, and choose "3-1/2 Floppy (A)." You can add any program, folder, printer, or drive to your Send To menu by adding shortcuts to the C:\WINDOWS\SEND TO folder. Do this by opening Explorer, opening the Windows\Send To folder, selecting File, New, Shortcut, clicking Browse to locate the executable file that runs the program you're adding, typing the name of the new shortcut in the appropriate dialog box, and clicking Finish. Windows will add this entry to the Send To menu. One particularly neat trick is to add your printer to the Send To list; this way you can print documents without going through the sometimes-unnecessary step of opening them. Just open C:\WINDOWS\SENDTO and create a shortcut there for your printer. Next time you access the Send To menu, your printer will be there. (XP users, the whereabouts of the current SendTo folder depends on which user logged in to the machine. To make the SendTo folder visible, double left-click My Computer, and double left-click the hard drive which contains Windows (usually the C drive). A new Explorer Window will open. Click Tools, Folder Options, View. Under the heading "Hidden files and folders," check the "Show hidden files and folders" box. Click OK; this will bring you back to the Windows Explorer view of your C drive. Now, navigate to Documents and Settings, Current User, SendTo. Drag an application shortcut into the Send To folder. Initiate a dialogue menu from the desktop to produce your new Send To shortcut.

You can also add the Desktop to your Send To menu by placing shortcuts to the Windows\Desktop folder inside the Windows\SendTo folder. An easy way to do this is to open the Windows folder, right-click and drag the Desktop folder directly over the SendTo folder, release the mouse button, and select Create Shortcut(s) Here. You may also want to rename the new desktop shortcut now inside the SendTo folder. From now on, moving an item to the desktop can be done by simply right-clicking any file, folder, or shortcut, selecting Send To, and in the resulting list, selecting Desktop.

Copy programs to multiple floppy disks without using a file splitter program: In Windows Explorer, on the left side of the window, select the folder you want to copy. From the Edit menu click Select All. From the same Edit menu click Copy. On the left side of the window, scroll up until you see the A: drive icon. Make sure you have the first floppy disk inserted, then click the A: drive. Now go under Edit and click Paste. The file will begin copying to the floppy, and Windows will prompt you to insert the subsequent disks. You can use the Copy command to copy the file back onto another machine without having to use a file splitter.

As you install and uninstall programs, .DLL files will sprout like kudzu in your hard drive, particularly in your WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder. You can right-click on any .DLL file in Explorer and use QuickView to get the scoop on it, oftentimes enough to determine whether or not you need to keep the file or trash it (check the Import Table category). Also, there are numerous commercial, shareware and freeware programs out there that find unused .DLL files for you. Remember, when in doubt, leave the file where it is. (Win ME users don't have QuickView, nor will the earlier versions work with Millennium. A good alternative is OnTrack's PowerDeskPro, a $20 goodie from www.ontrack.com/.

If you're sure you won't use disk compression, save the hard drive space by deleting DRVSPACE.BIN. If you find DBLSPACE.BIN, delete it, too. If you have compressed files (not zipped files ending in .ZIP), do not delete DriveSpace! These files can be found in your \WINDOWS\COMMAND folder.

If you have 24mb or more of RAM, you can optimize your file system by going through Control Panel/System/Properties, tabbing into File System, and setting Read Ahead to maximum.

Are you sure you're running a purely 32-bit system? Right-click My Computer, select Properties, and click on Performance. You'll see a listing of all the major subsystems of your computer. Ideally, they should all show as 32-bit (or Not Installed). Look for the phrase "Your System Is Configured for Optimal Performance." If you see any 16-bit drivers, or the phrase "Some Drives Are Using MS-DOS Compatibility," it means that Windows doesn't support some hardware or software being used in that subsystem. Hardware can possibly be reconfigured by getting updated 32-bit drivers from the vendors (check their Web site, their BBS, or call them directly). Software problems are often caused by older versions of disk compression products like Stacker or large-disk software like Disk Manager.

Having trouble uninstalling a program? That's all of us at some point or another. Some programs don't uninstall cleanly no matter what you do; they're just badly designed. One of the most frequent, and annoying, uninstall interruptions comes when your machine can't find the "install log." Here's how to get rid of a program that lacks a healthy INSTALL.LOG file. Start by finding the program path and file name. Right-click on the program's shortcut and select Properties. Take note of the Target field, which has the complete path. Now disable the program's ability to load automatically by selecting Start, Run, and typing MSCONFIG in the Run field. Press Enter. (Those of us with Windows 95 or 2000 will need to download Startup Control Panel from www.mlin.com/ to obtain this capability.) Go to the Startup tab and deselect anything having to do with the program and its program path, and click OK. Break the file associations by going into Windows Explorer, selecting View, Folder Options (or Tools, Folder Options if you're in Win98/XP) and select the File Types tab. Look for file types associated with your program. After finding an association, either change its association to another program or delete it. Now, the final, and hardest, step: cleaning the Registry. In Start, Run, type REGEDIT and press Enter. Be very careful from here on out: the Registry is an unforgiving place! On the left side of the editor, look for HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ APPLICATIONS, click the + next to this key, right-click the subkey matching the program's file name, select Delete, then Yes. Now, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ SOFTWARE and look for a subkey matching the vendor name or anything related to your bugger program. Click the + by the vendor name to view the subkeys. (If there are subkeys for other programs you're not deleting, then delete only the subkey for the program itself.) If there are no other programs you're keeping, then delete the vendor key. Repeat these steps for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE key. Select My Computer at the top of Registry Editor's left pane, press Ctrl + F, and enter C:\PROGRAM FILES\ANNOY (or whatever your offending file's path is). Check all the options under Look At, click on Next or Find Next. If there's a match, delete the key, and press F3 to continue searching until you have found all matches. Close Registry Editor, delete the program's folder and shortcuts. You're done!