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Steps 6-8

Step 6: Tweak your way to speed and safety. Microsoft's Tweak UI is so useful that it's one of the first tools I install on a new PC, and one of the first shortcuts I put on my desktop. Few Windows tools are more helpful for making the operating system look and work just the way you want it to.

To reduce the delay before a submenu appears when you hover over it, double-click Mouse in the left pane, click Hover, and change the time, in milliseconds, in the 'Hover time' box. And if you would like My Computer to appear as the first icon on screen when you clean up your desktop, double-click Desktop, choose First Icon, and click My Computer.

AutoPlay is the Windows feature that let Sony install its rootkit-like digital rights management software on so many PCs without detection. If you don't mind having to start your CDs manually by double-clicking their icon on the drive's menu or folder under My Computer, you can improve security by turning off AutoPlay for CDs and removable drives: Double-click My Computer, double-click AutoPlay, choose Types, and uncheck both items.

If you want to disable AutoPlay on all of your drives, choose Drives in the left pane, uncheck all 26 drive letters, and finish by clicking OK (see Figure 2).

Step 7: Disable unneeded System Tray apps. Most system-tray applets squander RAM and CPU cycles to little or no purpose. Check out Scott Spanbauer's "15 Icons You Can Dump" from his October 2004 feature, "Keep It Simple." That article is A terrific primer for reducing application and system clutter.

Step 8: Lose the XP-style Start Menu. To me, XP's Start Menu feels like a step backward. To revert to the older version, right-click the Start button, choose Properties, and click Classic Start menu. Next, click the Customize button; and check three options in the 'Advanced Start menu options' box: Display Administrative Tools, Expand Control Panel (which lets you get to the applet that you need without having to open the whole Control Panel window), and Show small icons in Start menu (which keeps everything tidy). Most important, scroll to the bottom of that list of options and uncheck Use personalized menus, which gets rid of the annoying feature that makes the OS pause before showing you all of your options (in the Start menu, at least); see Figure 3.