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What is TweakUI Power tool for Microsoft Windows?

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Question added by Mohammed Yaseen MBA PMP® , Project Controller , Hayat Communication (www.haytacommunications.com)
Date Posted: 2013/09/19
Lubna Al-Sharif
by Lubna Al-Sharif , Medical Laboratory Technician , Nablus Specailized Hospital

Dear All,

 

TweakUI can be simply defined and characterized by:

-              A software utility and a small tool that allows you to customize some settings of your operating system. The user interface is rather simple and easy to use, consisting of a standard window and several commands.

-              This software utility lets Windows9x, Windows NT, and Windows2000 users modify the desktop user interface and other system characteristics to their liking, and it is also available for Microsoft Windows95, Windows98, Windows ME, Windows XP, and Windows2003.

-              The handy TweakUI PowerToy can help you overcome a variety of Windows XP annoyances and limitations and lets you create an environment that suits your working style:

 

1-                 Thus, you can enable or disable beep on errors, combo box animation, cursor shadow, list box animation, menu animation, fading and selection facing, mouse hot tracking effects, window animations, as well as hard disk optimization when the system is idle.

2-                 It enables users with older, slower computers to turn off many of the operating system graphics features such as fading menus, Drop shadows, and cursor shadows.

In addition, you can prevent applications from stealing focus, change the size of the Alt+Tab window, adjust mouse speed and sensitivity (e.g. on double-click and drag, hover sensitivity and time).

n    We really dislike it when we're working on a project and another application decides to come between us and our work by stealing focus for itself. I'd much rather just receive notification that another application wants our attention and be able to address the notification when it's convenient for me.

n    The TweakUI General | Focus option lets you keep your focus where you want it. By default, this option will force Windows to flash the would-be thief's taskbar icon three times to notify you that the app wants something.

n    The Alt + Tab window can sometimes be limiting, since it shows only a few windows before requiring me to scroll. With monitors today larger than ever, there's no reason why the Alt + Tab window can't be expanded to show more rows and columns.

n    On the General | Alt+Tab page, you can choose the number of rows and columns you want to display when you browse through the open applications list.

 

3-                 Furthermore, you can configure Explorer settings (e.g. disable "Help" or "Logoff" on Start menu, smooth scrolling, Windows+X hotkeys), including shortcut overlay, colors, thumbnails (image quality, size) and keyboard navigation keys.

4-                 Besides, you can also disable AutoComplete, balloon tips, desktop icons and warnings when you're low on disk space, hide the Places bar, configure grouping and the frequently used programs displayed in Start menu, and much more.

n    TweakUI can eliminate the interruptions caused by constant barrage of balloon through the use of the tool's Taskbar and Start Menu configuration options. They enable you to disable balloon tips and taskbar notification icons.

=a= Expanding the selection adds more options, including a feature that allows the customized grouping of taskbar application buttons.

=b= The Start Menu item provides options for allowing or disallowing specific applications on the More Frequently Used Programs section of the Start menu.

n    A few default icons can be placed on the desktop: Internet Explorer, My Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, and the Recycle Bin. TweakUI lets you decide which, if any, of these icons should be displayed there. You can also decide which icon -- My Documents or My Computer -- should appear first in order on a particular desktop.

 

5-                 Plus, Tweak UI Can customize the way various base elements of the interface work, such as the taskbar and the desktop; by allowing you to change "My Computer" icons, customize AutoPlay settings, hide "Control Panel" extensions, and select how drive letters appear in "My Computer" and which new documents can be created when accessing the right-click menu.

n    The Control Panel Extensions element in TweakUI allows you to selectively enable and disable the display of individual Control Panel applets.

=a= This is useful when you want to allow users to retain relatively significant control over their desktops but want to limit some of the damage they can do on their own.

=b= Disabling Control Panel applets in this way only turns off the display of those applets. They are still available through other means, but not through the Control Panel itself.

n    TweakUI's popular Autologon tool lets you log on to the desktop as any user. This capability is useful for standalone, task-specific workstations, such as e-mail kiosks or computers connected to public information displays, in order to automatically recover after incidents such as power outages or even simple reboots.

n    Depending on the system, Autoplay can sometimes be a problem. Or you may just want to control what happens when, such as when you or one of your users inserts a music CD. With TweakUI, you can, from a central location on each system, decide on which drives Autoplay should be allowed and what actions should be taken for each specific Autoplay handler, such as copying music from a CD or playing a DVD.

 

6-                 By using TweakUI, you can change the menu speed, how windows are animated, and a number of features about Microsoft Internet Explorer. So, it enables users to move the location of their Documents, Music and Pictures folders, as well as other system folders.

n    From specific items on the Start menu to customized icons in our system tray, we like things to be easily accessible... for us. It looks like the creators of TweakUI understood this desire and built some customization features into the tool. These features can also be used by corporate IT to lock down the desktop computing environment.

n    TweakUI offers quite a few options that can be used to simplify and customize various aspects of the desktop. For instance, you can decide exactly what will appear on the Start menu, how thumbnails will appear (with or without a little arrow), and a whole lot more.

n    No matter how good the GUI gets, the command prompt is, and probably always will be, a key component for most Windows administrators. From time to time, even users may need to use the command prompt. TweakUI includes a number of command prompt customization options, such as defining which keys to use for filename and directory completion.

 

7-                 TweakUI allows the user to change settings that are not easy to locate, including some in the system registry. For example, a user can speed up system startup by reducing the frequency with which the ScanDisk utility is run.

8-                 It includes various tools to repair elements of the operating system, such as icons, hot keys, the font folder, and file extension associations

9-                 The program uses a very low amount of system resources and provides descriptions for each category. It is strongly recommended to both novice and expert users, as they can configure Windows to their own preferences.

 

Thanks,

 

Lubna Al-sharif

Jaweed Hatem Nazir
by Jaweed Hatem Nazir , IT Specialist , Waleefah Co.

Amp up Windows XP with a PowerToy that changes the default user interface. For advanced computer users only.

more info click here

download it from microsoft

http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/c/a/fca6767b-9ed9-45a6-b352-839afb2a2679/TweakUiPowertoySetup.exe

Bhavani Singh Choudhary
by Bhavani Singh Choudhary , Design Engineer , Sphinx Worldbiz Ltd (Onsite at Sonalika International Tractors)

 

Tweak UI is a free user interface customization application; it is used to aid end users in customizing the Microsoft Windows operating system. By itself, it does not do anything that would not otherwise be possible by editing the registry. However, it provides a simple graphical user interface for performing tweaks that otherwise would require editing the registry, which is considered by many a daunting and risky task for novice users. Tweak UI is a free download from Microsoft's website, and is one of many non-supported PowerToys released by Microsoft.

Noushad Muhammed
by Noushad Muhammed , Technical Support Engineer (VoIP+Windows) , Hexwhale Technologies

TweakUI is a A downloadable Microsoft Tool available for Microsoft Windows95, Windows98, Windows ME, Windows2000, Windows XP, and Windows2003. Although Microsoft did develop this tool as a method of changing some of the default settings, Microsoft does not support this tool.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has never released a TweakUI for Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows7. For  Windows vista and7 you can use The Windows Club Ultimate Windows Tweaker (UWT). it allows you to tweak over150 different Windows and Internet Explorer settings.

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