Making Windows Boot Faster

There is a great resource on making the ever-slowing Windows XP boot up go faster next time. Noteworthy is the Prefetch option which allows you to control how XP prefetch an application.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]

Under this key you should see a value named: EnablePrefetcher

It has 4 possible values:

0 - Disabled : The prefetch system is turned off.

1 - Application : The prefetch only caches applications.

2 - Boot : The prefetch only caches boot system files.

3 - All : The prefetch caches boot, and application files.


More on:
http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2006/09/why-windows-takes-so-long-to-start-up.html

Desaturation Popup

http://pixelfumes.blogspot.com/2006/09/flash-8-version-of-modal-pop-up.html

This could be repurposed for other popup techniques

Flash Filter Lab

http://www.flashfilterlab.com/

Pretty nice filter effects.