10 Awesome Windows 8 Registry Hacks You Might Not Know

October 2nd, 2012 by akishore | File in: Featured Posts, Windows 8

As Windows 8 gets closer to the final release, Ive already started seeing a lot of ways to customize or tweak the registry! There are a lot of visual and under-the-hood changes in Windows 8 and not all of them can be changed via the GUI settings.

In this article, Ill show you 10 cool registry hacks you can use to customize your Windows 8 install. Im sure there will be a lot more customizations in the coming months, so feel free to post a comment and let us know any that you find.

Disable Charms Bar Hint

The Charms bar in Windows 8 pops up the second you move your mouse to the top right or bottom right corner of the screen. I find it annoying because I do this by accident a lot. There is a registry key that lets you disable the hint so that the bar only opens when you move to the top or bottom right and then slide your mouse down or up along the right edge.

Prevent Charms Bar Keeps Opening by Accident in Windows 8

Desktop Icon Spacing

Thanks Microsoft for getting rid of the options to customize our desktop! What used to be so easy is now a registry hack! In order to change the desktop icon spacing (horizontal and vertical), you have to edit two values in the registry. Check out our previous post below.

Change Desktop Icon Spacing in Windows 8

Change Number of Row Tiles

By default, Windows 8 will try to figure out the number of rows it should show on your Start Screen based on the resolution of your monitor. What if you dont want the number of rows it determines? Well, you can change it to a different value if you like. As you can see, I decided on only two rows instead of having 5 rows. You can choose a value from 1 to 5. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\Grid

Create a new DWORD value here and name it Layout_MaximumRowCount. Give it a value between 1 and 5. Enjoy!

Disable User Account Control

User Account Control is a different beast in Windows 8 and you cant even fully disable it via the traditional GUI interface you see above. To actually turn it off, you have to go to the registry. However, there are a few unexpected consequences to disabling UAC in Windows 8, which you can read in full below.

OTT Explains UAC (User Account Control) in Windows 8

Confirm File Delete Dialog

Another missing feature in Windows 8 is the confirm file delete dialog we were all so familiar with. I never noticed it too much, but when I first deleted a file in Windows 8, I was shocked to see that the file just went straight to the recycle bin. Im sure Ill get used to it eventually, but if you really want it back, heres how to get it back. Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\

Go ahead and create a new key under Policies called Explorer. Then create a new DWORD value and give it a name of ConfirmFileDelete. Change the value to 1 if you want the delete file dialog and 0 if you dont want it. Sweet!

Registered Owner

Even though its so old and useless, I still like having the ability to change the registered own in Windows to whatever I like. Dont ask me why, its just some weird geek thing from the early da ys of Windows. Luckily, Microsoft still has the value stored in a registry key which you can change to whatever you like. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

Under CurrentVersion, just find RegisteredOwner and change it. Also, note there is aRegisteredOrganization, you could could actually put two custom lines in the about Windows dialog. How do you even get to that dialog in Windows 8? Go to the Start Screen and start typing winver.

Paint Desktop Version

If youre running several copies of Windows 8 on multiple computers and in virtual machines like I am, its nice to have the Windows version painted onto the desktop automatically. Windows 8 has a registry key that enables you to add this to your desktop automatically. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Find PaintDesktopVersion under the Desktop key and change the value from 0 to 1. Next time you login, youll see the Windows 8 version number and build number.

Border Width

If you dont like the border size around all your windows while on the desktop, then you can change it by going to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

Find the key called BorderWidth and change it to any value between 0 and 50. Its defaulted to -15, which is some odd numbering scheme employed by Microsoft which I dont really get. Luckily, you can just use 0 to 50 for this registry setting instead of the crazy negative numbers.

Prevent Users From Uninstalling Apps

By default, you can uninstall any app that you download from the Windows Store. However, it could be useful to create a user account for guests or your kids and then prevent users from uninstalling the apps. As you can see above, when I right-click on a metro app, the Uninstall options is gone! Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

Youre going to have to create the Explorer key under Windows and under Explorer youre going to need to create a new DWORD value called NoUninstallFromStart. Give that a value of 1 and then sign out and sign back in.

Enable Snap on Low Res Screens

If youre running Windows 8 at a lower resolution, you may not be able to snap metro apps to the right or left side of the screen. However, using a little registry hack, you can get the benefit even on lower resolutions. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\

Under the ImmersiveShell key, create a new key called AppPositioner. Under the new key, go ahead and create a new DWORD value called AlwaysEnableLSSnapping. Go ahead and give this a value of 1.

If youre using Windows 8 and feel comfortable modifying the registry, feel free to play around with the options above and customize Windows 8 to your delight. Enjoy!

Boot Windows 8 into Safe Mode

July 28th, 2012 by akishore | File in: Windows 8

We all have gotten accustomed to pressing either F2 or F8 to get the advanced boot options since Windows 2000, probably even before that. In every version of Windows, you always could count on the slower boot process to actually press the key when the text message appeared.

Well, those days are gone! In Windows 8, the boot time has been dramatically decreased and the screenshot you see above appears for about 200 milliseconds and thats it! So if you want to get into Safe Mode in Windows 8, you have to go a different route. Instead of the Advanced Boot Options of earlier versions of Windows, you now first have to go through the System Recovery Options of Windows 8. Its pretty much the same thing, but just looks a lot nicer and you have to click a few more menu options to get there. Heres how.

Startup Windows 8 in Safe Mode

To get started, you first need to boot Windows 8 into the System Recovery Options. You can read my previous post on how to do that; there are basically three methods. Once you are there, you need to click on the Troubleshoot option.

On the next screen, you need to click on Advanced Options.

Then you need to click on Startup Settings on the last dialog.

Finally, you have to click on the Restart button, which will give you options to start up in low-resolution mode, debugging mode, enable boot logging, and start in safe mode! Kind of a long process, but thats the new way.

Now you will finally get to the Startup Settings screen, where you can press 1 thru 10 or F1 thru F10 to pick your different settings. Press 4 or F4 to enable Safe Mode.

Thats it! Windows 8 will now load in Safe Mode! Youll have to type in your password to log in once it starts back up. I noticed that while in Safe Mode in Windows 8, I could not bring up the Charms bar. Not sure why, but I could not figure out how to restart the system. What I ended up doing was going to the Start Screen, then clicking on my name at the top and there was an option to signed out. Once I signed, there was an option to Shutdown or Restart when I clicked on the Power button at the bottom right. So if youre stuck in Safe Mode and cant get out, thats how do to it.

Also, it should be noted that you can use the MSCONFIG utility to startup in safe mode also. Go to the Start Screen, right-click, then choose All apps and then click on Run.

Next, type in msconfig in the run dialog and then click on the Boot tab:

Check the box that says Safe boot and then choose an option. You can pick from:

Minimal Normal Safe Mode Alternate shell - Safe Mode with command prompt Network Safe Mode with networking
Dont worry about Active Directory repair, thats some IT-related option. You can also check the boxes for No GUI boot, Boot log, Base video and OS boot information. Note that when you boot into safe mode using msconfig, it will continuously boot until you go back into msconfig and uncheck the Safe boot option. Enjoy!

Install Windows 8 in a Virtual Machine

April 18th, 2012 by Nicholas | File in: Computer Tips, Featured Posts

Windows 8, Microsofts upcoming, next generation operating system is as many people would describe, quite a bit different from Windows 7 or any other previous versions of Windows. First impressions of Windows 8 and the new Metro interface, which will be more tablet compatible, may remind some users of Windows Phone UI. In todays post, we will review how you can install Windows 8 on PC the simple way.

Windows 8 is currently available for download as a Consumer Preview Beta. Thus, its very much an unrefined version of Windows that is mainly intended for development and testing. However, much as the name implies, it is also a software release by Microsoft intended for consumers to preview the features and new interface of the upcoming Windows software. It is pretty much a full version of Windows, but it is not one hundred percent bug free.

There are a few tutorials on the net that do a great job at helping people to install Windows 8 on PC. However, most of these tutorials involve having to partition your computers hard drive, resize and allocate disk space, etc

Instead of going through the work of splitting your hard drive and installing Windows 8 on a portion of the actual hard drive, or using a perfectly good USB drive to run Windows 8, you may want to consider a different approach.

Using virtual machines is a simple way to install Windows 8 the easy way because virtual machines are easier to manage, control and setup. They are also less time consuming to create and deploy, and by using a VM, you wont have an unstable Beta operating system taking up a portion of your actual hard drive. Additionally, if you decide that you dont like Windows 8 and dont want it on your machine, you can simply right-click, select delete from the context menu, and Windows 8 is gone.

Virtual Machine Software

To get started, you will first want to download some software:

Oracle VirtualBox Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Upon downloading VirtualBox, proceed to install it onto your computer the same way you would install any other program.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview download is a 3.33GB ISO file,so it may take a few minutes to download.

With VirtualBox downloaded and installed onto your computer and Windows 8 Consumer Preview downloaded, youre ready to start installing Windows 8.

Installing Windows 8 on VirtualBox

Startup VirtualBox by navigating the path Start > All Programs > Oracle VM VirtualBox > Oracle VM VirtualBox.

From the VirtualBox start screen, click the New button to begin creating a new virtual machine.

On the following screen, simply click the Next button to proceed.

The Create New Virtual Machine screen can be used to initially name and setup your new VM. Enter aname for your Windows 8 Consumer Preview virtual machine. Under the OS Type section, selectOperating System: Microsoft Windows and Version: Other Windows. Click the Next button to continue.

On the next screen, you can configure how much of your computers memory you would like to allocate to the VM. I would not recommend allocating over half of the memory to the VM. Click the Next button to continue.

The Virtual Hard Disk screen prompts you to setup a virtual hard drive for your Windows 8 machine. Thus, select the option Create new hard disk and click the Next button.

The next few screens will present you with some simple options for setting up your virtual HD. Set them to your specific preferences, and you should arrive at the following screen:

Set the hard drive size, or amount of GB to be allocated for Windows 8 Consumer Preview use. I would recommend not allocating a ton of space to Windows 8, unless you plan on doing a lot of testing and development or installing a bunch of applications. Of course, click the Next button to continue. Finally done with VM configuration, you should reach the Summary screen. Click the Create button to build your VM.

Now, the new Windows 8 VM should be listed along the left side of the VirtualBox VM machines list. Click the Start button to initiate the virtual machine.

From here, the First Run Wizard will popup, which we can use to set the VM to boot the Windows 8 ISO file that we downloaded earlier. Click the Next button.

The next step is important. Under the Media Source option, click the Folder icon.

This will launch Windows explorer. From here, navigate to the Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO download, click once to select it, and click the Open button.

Click the Next button to proceed and click the Start button to begin installation.

From here, Windows 8 should begin installing!

Windows 8 may take a while to install, as this is pretty much the same thing as completely installing Windows from scratch, but using a VM.

Thats all there is to it. Once Windows 8 finishes installing, you can check out Windows 8, the Metro interface, and some of the new, upcoming features for yourself.