My Computer Won't Shut Down Itself After Installing XP

There are a number of users who have been complaining that their PC will no longer
automatically power down/shut off without pressing the power off button on the
computers unlike in Windows Me/95/2000. There could be a number of reasons for
this - but the main one seems to be that ACPI is not enabled on the computer or in
Windows XP. Here is how to enable it:
1. Click - Start - Control Panel - Performance and Maintenance - Power Options Tab
2. Then click APM - Enable Advanced Power Management Support

Automatically defrag drives with a new context menu item

Create a new Registry import file named context_defrag.inf in Notepad (be sure to
save with it with the Save as type set to All Files and not Text Documents) and place
the following text inside:
; context_defrag.INF
; Adds Defrag to the right click context menu in Windows XP
[version]
signature="$CHICAGO$"
[DefaultInstall]
AddReg=AddMe
[AddMe]
HKCR,"Drive\Shell\Defrag\command",,,"DEFRAG.EXE %1"
Then, right-click and choose Install. This will add a context menu to XP that allows
you to automatically defrag drives, using the command line version of the built-in
defragmentation utility. To use it, navigate to a drive in My Computer, right-click,
and choose Defrag. A command line window will appear, and that drive will be
defragged. When it's complete, the window just disappears.

Missing Administrator account

Once you have created regular user accounts, the default Administrator account
vanishes from the Welcome screen, which you see when the computer starts up.
Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete twice at the Welcome screen to retrieve the standard logon
dialog. You can log on as Administrator from here. To switch among accounts, just
click the Log Off button on the Start menu. You'll then see the Log Off Windows
dialog box. Click the Switch User button, and you'll be taken to the Welcome screen
where you can select and log on to other accounts.

Disable error reporting

 • Open Control Panel
• Click on Performance and Maintenance.
• Click on System.
• Then click on the Advanced tab
• Click on the error-reporting button on the bottom of the windows.
• Select Disable error reporting.
• Click OK
• Click OK

Adjust various visual effects

 1. Open up the control panel
2. Go under system and click on the advanced tab
3. Click settings under Performance options
4. You can now change various graphical effects (mainly animations and
shadows)

Speed up the Start Menu

The default speed of the Start Menu is pretty slow, but you can fix that by editing a
Registry Key. Fire up the Registry Editor and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop\Menu Show Delay
By default, the value is 400. Change this to a smaller value, such as 0, to speed it up.
If this doesn't work for some reason, then you might try the following: Navigate to
Display Properties then Appearance then Advanced and turn off the option titled
Show menu shadow. You will get much better overall performance.

Turn of CD Auto Play

• Open My Computer
• Right click on your CD ROM and choose Properties
• Click on the Auto Play tab
• In the drop down box you can choose the Action for each choice shown in the drop down box
  Or
1. Go to Start->Run->gpedit.msc
2. Computer Config -> Administrative Template -> System
3. Double click Turn off Autoplay
4. Enable it.