Customising Windows 95
This is a list of the things I do immediately after installing Windows 95.
Even before that...
If you've ever added components to windows after the initial installation (for
example the briefcase component, or a printer) you will know that it asks you
to insert the Windows 95 CD so it can copy the necessary files. If you have the
disk space, there's a way to stop this at installation time.
Instead of running Windows setup from the CD, run it from the hard drive.
If I'm creating a new Windows PC, I start by creating a bootable floppy disk
with a few extras on it. From a DOS box in Win95:
- format a: /s
- copy c:\windows\command\format.com a:
- copy c:\windows\command\fdisk.exe a:
- copy c:\sys\cdrom\hit-ide.sys a:
- copy c:\autoexec.bat a:
- copy c:\config.sys a:
(This assumes windows is installed in c:\windows and a DOS CD-ROM driver is c:\sys\cdrom\hit-ide.sys)
Boot from this floppy disk and use fdisk to
i) Delete any unwanted partitions (NT, Linux, small DOS or Win95 partitions)
ii) Create and make active a primary partition for the Win95 installation
Reboot using the floppy disk (with errors from config.sys and autoexec.bat)
and do a format c: /s.
Create on c: the directories \windows\cabs and \sys\cdrom. Copy autoexec.bat,
config.sys and hit-ide.sys back to their original locations.
I edit out any unnecessary lines in autoexec and config,
but this is optional. Now reboot from the hard disk and you should have a Win95
command prompt with CD support.
Insert the Win95 CD and copy d:\win95\cabs\*.* c:\windows\cabs (if your CD
drive is d:).
Type:
c:
cd \windows\cabs
setup
This will start Windows setup and never ask for the CD again.
Images
One of the first things I do after installation is install my favourite image
viewer and associate jpegs and gifs with it. The default viewer for these types
is internet explorer, which in comparison takes an age to load. Also, if you
are surfing with IE and try to view a jpeg or gif, Windows does not open a new
window to display the picture, but decides you must have finished with whichever
page you were looking at and displays the jpeg/gif in that window.
If my image viewer is installed at c:\Program Files\Pals2go\viewer.exe then I
would:
- Double click My Computer
- Click View
- Click Options
- Click File Types
- Find GIF Image in the list of registered file types
- Click Edit
- Click open
- Click Edit
- Click Use DDE (to turn off DDE)
- Enter "C:\Program Files\Pals2go\viewer.exe" into application used to perform action
- Click OK
- Click OK
- Find JPEG Image in the list of registered file types, and repeat
Explorer View
By default, certain files are hidden in explorer. To correct this:
- Double click My Computer
- Click View
- Click Options
- Click View
- Click Show all files
- click Display the full MS-DOS path in the title bar
- click Hide MS-DOS file extensions for file types that are registered
Fast Menus
The start menu normally waits for a second or so before displaying items in a
sub-menu. To get rid of this delay I use regedit, the Windows 95 registry editor.
Whenever this is used it is always advised that you make backups of your system
files. However I've used this plenty of times and I'd be surprised if making
this particular alteration caused any damage to your system:
- Click Start\Run...
- type regedit
- Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\desktop
- Right click in the right-hand pane and select New String Value
- enter MenuShowDelay as the name
- Double-click on MenuShowDelay and enter 0 as the value data
When you reboot, your Start menus will pop-up as soon as the mouse moves over
them.
Michael Hinds, May 2000