TechTip - Ditch Office Utilities for Speed
Difficulty - Moderate
This Performance TechTip pertains to Windows 95/98 and Microsoft Office.
DISCLAIMER:
As with ANY Tuning Tip, if you are not comfortable editing your System
Registry, Config.sys, Autoexec.bat, or any other startup files, then hold off
trying this tip!
Microsoft "Office Startup" and "Find Fast" boost
performance for various Office tasks, but they tend to drag down Windows
performance. To remove them, delete both icons from your StartUp folder. In
addition, because Find Fast is a Control Panel applet, your best bet for fully
removing it is to insert your Office CD and use Add/Remove Programs to open the
Office Setup tool. Find Fast is listed in Office 97 under Office Tools in the
Setup program. Uncheck the box beside it, click OK and Continue--Office Setup
will take over from there. You might also have to remove the FINDFAST.CPL file
from your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory to permanently delete the tool after
rebooting your system.
TechTip - A Scroll-Killer for the Programs Menu
In Windows 95, a lengthy Programs menu would
be displayed in multiple columns if it were too long for a single
column. For better or worse (and
many say worse), Windows 98 displays
the entire list as a single scrolling column. Since
you upgraded to Windows 98, have you ever wished you could get the
multiple-column Programs menu back? The below TechTip will help you
do just that!
REMEMBER! --
If you are NOT comfortable editing the System Registry, DO NOT
make the following Registry change! If you elect to try this, or any
other future TechTip, you do so at your own risk.
Open the Registry Editor by clicking on
Start/Run... Then type "regedit" in the Open box and click on
"OK". Drill down to the following Registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
explorer\Advanced
and
create the new String Value shown below:
