Posts Tagged ‘disable’
Disable AVG Advisor memory usage pop-up
Users of AVG 2012 antivirus software will already have noticed the AVG Advisor pop-ups informing you about high memory usage of browsers (I usually get them from 300 MB RAM upwards) which come up relatively often and are quite annoying since your browser uses more memory the more tabs you open.
But as in most cases you can simply disable this feature along with the memory monitoring. To do this, open the AVG control panel from the tray icon. On the top bar, click on Tools and select Advanced settings…. In there, select Appearance from the left panel. Under System tray notifications, uncheck the Display AVG Advisor notification to turn those off and click Apply. You will now no longer be warned about your browser’s memory usage.
Disable Plugin-Container in Firefox
Plugin-container is a Firefox process designed to ‘out-source’ the plugins used by the browser. Firefox’ model is based on the use of plugins to add functionality, however this goes along with a chance of instability due to a malfunctioning plugin – this would cause the whole browser to collapse since the plugins were all included in one central Firefox process. With the implementation of the plugin-container, the plugins are seperated from the browser process, making it more stable. Now if a plugin crashes, Firefox remains unharmed.
It is known however that this feature causes serious performance issues with many users, that’s why it might be a good idea to test what happens if you deactivate plugin-container (the plugins are not disabled that way, they are just stitched to the main process again).
To do so, open Firefox and direct the URL line to about:config. This is the internal configuration of Firefox, be sure to take the warning that will be shown seriously.
In the search bar on top, enter dom.ipc. A few boolean entries will be shown whose name begins with dom.ipc.plugins (on Firefox 9 there are two, while there are five on some older versions).
Set all of them to false to disable plugin-container:
If this results in performance improvement for you, leave the settings as they are, if there is none however, it is recommendable to switch them back to improve Firefox’ stability.
Disable Autoreboot after Updates on Windows 7
After critical Updates, Windows often needs to restart the computer to apply all changes, which however might not be in the interest of the user. To prevent Windows from auto-restarting (may it be to reduce annoyance or to prevent Windows from stopping unattended running applications), you can use a simple but effective registry entry. To apply it, open the Windows registry by entering regedit into a Run… prompt. On the left column navigate to the Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU key (you might have to create some of the keys if they have not been automatically created yet (right-click the key-tree for that)).
On the right panel, right-click to create a new DWORD-Value (32-bit) and call it NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers. Assign it the value 1 (which is the same in decimal and hexadecimal). key (you might have to create some of the keys if they have not been automatically created yet (right-click the key-tree for that)).
To reverse the effect, browse the same value again and change it to 0
Access Denied on Windows 7 – AccessGain Tool
On Windows 7 it may happen that you are denied access to files that you regularly own and have permission to write to, even if you are logged in as administrator, perform the action as administrator or from an elevated command prompt or try to access it in safe mode.
If this happens to you and you have already tried all usual means, as changing ownership or use Unlocker on it, there is a fix for you that circumvents NTFS security to access the files called AccessGain Tool.
Download it from here: http://www.hobeanu.com/blog/accessgain-tool/
Before you follow the installation guide in the readme-file, reboot your computer and choose the advanced boot options on F8. Select Disable Driver Signature Enforcement there to be able to use the tool properly.
Be careful: This tool grants you access to any files stored on your file system – do not delete any files that you do not know the purpose of!
Disabling Aero on Windows 7
The Windows 7 Aero desktop theme can cost you quite a lot of performance, which is why you might consider disabling it. To do so, open the Control Panel and select Appearance and Personalization:
Next go to Change the theme and scroll down to Windows Classic:
Skip the Web Search Prompt for Unknown File Extensions (Windows)
If you open a file with an extension that is unknown to Windows, it will react with the following prompt:
I cannot remember to have used the web search a single time, that is why I disabled it long ago. One can accomplish that with a simple registry entry. Open your Windows Registry by entering regedit into a Run… prompt and browse the following key in the left frame:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Now you will have to create a value if it is not already present for some reason. Go to the right frame, right-click it and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name it NoInternetOpenWith and set its value to 1.
Close the registry. Now, upon opening a file with an unknown extension, Windows will skip the web search prompt and head straightforward to the list of software available.
Disable Automatic Window Arrangement (Aero Snap, Windows 7)
The window arrangement feature in Windows 7 (the one that maximises windows to full- or half-screen when you drag them to the screen’s border) might appeal to many users, I however find it rather annoying than helpful.
Therefore I will show an option here that enables you to turn window arrangement off. Open the Windows Registry by entering regedit into a Run… prompt. On the left frame, browse the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop key and left-click it once. On the right frame, look for the WindowArrangementActive value – double-click it and change it from 1 to 0.
You may have to reboot your system, but afterwards window arrangement should be disabled.
Disable Windows Explorer Search Query Saving (Windows 7)
This is usually useful if you are not the only one using the computer you are working on and want to hide the keywords you searched for on the Windows Explorer. The way to do it is to open the Local Group Policy Editor by entering gpedit.msc into a Run… prompt, browse this key on the left frame: User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Explorer and left-click it once to see its values on the right frame. Look for Turn off display of recent search entries in the Windows Explorer search box.
Double-click and enable it. The recent search queries will now no longer be displayed in your search bars.
Disable Visual Effects While Playing on Windows 7
The visual effects Windows 7 uses may be very pleasing to the eye, however they use up a lot of resources. If you like to play a lot on your computer this is an obstacle you do not need to face since you can disable compositions and visual themes upon starting a program. To do so, right-click the program’s icon and select Properties. Browse the Compatibility tab and have a look at the options it provides:
The most functional options here are Disable visual themes and Disable desktop compositions. If you check their boxes, these two options will be triggered upon starting the program and deactivated again when the program is closed. This way you save a lot of resources which your games or other applications can grab.
Disable “Send to” Option on Windows
When you right-click any object on a Windows system, there is the option Send to which is able to literally send objects to other computers by automatically opening a new mail and attaching the chosen file as attachment, process them with other programs selectable from a list, or just moving the file to a different location (hold the Shift key when right-clicking to enable more options to Send to). The common user however does not use this function really often, in fact, he may also find it annoying since it might cause short freezes on slower computers if one accidently hovers the mouse over it and thus makes it load a list of applications. But as for every other problem on your computer there is also a solution for this one, disabling the Send to command with the registry.
To do that, open your registry by entering regedit in to a Run… prompt and direct it to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Send To key.
Now the default value that is found in that key is
{7BA4C740-9E81-11CF-99D3-00AA004AE837}
If you ever want to revert your setting the easiest way is to just save this value somewhere safe, since the thing you need to do to disable the Send to command is to double-click the value and remove the string so that it is empty. Leave the registry afterwards and the command should no longer appear on right-clicking.