Ultimate Windows Tweaker v 2.1 for tweaking and optimizing Windows 7 & Windows Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit has been released. Please visit its new home page at The Windows Club.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker has over 200 tweaks. These have been categorized under seven heads and can be accessed through a common interface, just like your Windows  Control Panel.

1. Personalization,
2. User Accounts & UAC,
3. System & Performance,
4. Security,
5. Internet Explorer (IE7 -IE9)
6. Network Optimization
7. Additional Options

Personalization:

• These tweaks help you personalize your Windows Vista, just the way you want it to appear. Tweaks for basic customization for Windows Explorer, Start Menu and Taskbar, along with some performance tweaks are included here.

Windows Explorer

• Disable full row select in Vista Explorer
• Change window border padding size
• Hide Detail pane in Vista Explorer
• Show menu bar in Vista Explorer
• Use check boxes to select items
• Show Windows version on desktop
• Restore folder Windows at startup
• Launch folder Windows in a separate process
• Always show icons, never thumbnails
• Show drive letters

Start Menu

• Add or remove items from Start Menu
• Menu show speed
• Disable context menu and dragging and dropping on the Start Menu
• Disable highlighting recently installed programs
• Don’t open submenu when mouse hovers

Taskbar Settings

• Lock the Taskbar
• Restrict Locking of Taskbar
• Group similar Taskbar buttons
• Disable balloon tips
• Disable window preview (thumbnails)
• Restrict to add or remove default notification icons
  • Remove Network icon
  • Remove Volume Control icon
  • Remove Battery icon

• Remove tray icons from Taskbar
• User Accounts & UAC
• These tweaks help you manage User Account status and Customize access privileges by tweaking the User Account Control settings.

Welcome Screen Tweaks

• Enable verbose status message
• Disable to show last logged-in User Name
• Require user to press Control+Alt+Delete
• Enable shutdown tasks on welcome screen
• Enable or disable built-in Administrator account
• Enable or disable Guest account

User Account Control

• Enable/Disable User Account Control
• Admin Approval Mode for the Built-in Administrator account
• Elevate application without using the secure desktop
• Virtualizes file and registry write failures to per-user locations
• Detect application installations and prompt for elevation
• Behavior of the elevation prompts for common users
• Behavior of the elevation prompts for administrators

System & Performance

• These tweaks help you to increase system performance
• Waiting time to end services at shutdown process
• Waiting time to kill non-responding applications
• Waiting time to kill applications timeout during shutdown

• Auto-end Non-Responding applications
• Restart Windows Explorer (Shell) automatically
• Forcibly unload DLLs from memory
• Disable built-in feature to manage ZIP folders
• Disable Search Indexing in Windows Vista
• Enable support for 4GB of RAM (or more) in Vista x86
• Disable Automatic Folder View discovery

• Turn off Readyboost feature
• Turn off Windows Aero user interface
• Turn off Super fetch
• Turn off Printer Spooling service
• Turn off Tablet PC Input service
• Turn off Problem and Report solutions
• Turn off Data Execution Prevention (DEP)

Security

• This page contain restrictions and security choices for Windows Explorer,
• Windows Update and some Windows applications.

System Restriction

• Disable Registry Editor
• Disable Command Prompt and execution of batch files
• Disable Task Manager
• Disable Microsoft Management Console snap-ins
• Disable Win Key Shortcuts
• Disable Control Panel
• Disable parsing Autoexe.bat file
• Restrict to change path profile folders
• Disable Internet Communication
• Disable Auto play function for removable devices

Windows Explorer Restriction

• Disable Folder Options
• Remove Security tab
• Remove CD burn feature
• Remove Windows Explorer’s default context menu

Windows Applications Restriction

• Disable Windows Calendar
• Disable Windows Collaboration
• Disable Windows Mail
• Disable Windows Error Reporting
• Disable Windows Media Center
• Disable Windows Sound Recorder
• Disable Windows Movie Maker
• Disable Windows Mobility Center
• Disable Windows Sidebar
• Disable Windows Defender
• Disable Windows Firewall

Windows Update Settings

• Disable all Windows Updates
• Disable automatic restart after Windows Updating
• Disable Windows Update Service
• Remove access to all Windows Update features

Internet Explorer

The Tweaker detects the your IE version and adjust controls according to IE version and currently supports IE7, IE7 with SP1, IE8 Beta 1 and IE8 Beta 2.

General:

• IE has run first time – Complete IE first run wizard
• Run once has shown process
• Window title
• Change the location of download directory
• Clear DNS Cache
• Delete IE browsing history

Tab Browsing:

• Always switch to new tab
• Warn on closing multiple tabs
• Open first home page when IE starts
• IE behavior when a new tab is opened
• IE behavior when a pop-up is encountered
• IE behavior when open links from other programs

Controls & Toolbar:

• Always show menu bar
• Show favorite bar/links
• Show command bar
• Show status bar
• Move menu bar above navigation bar
• Show compatibility view button
• Show refresh & stop button before address bar
• View favorites and favorite bar align in single toolbar
• Use large icons
• Look and feel of common buttons (captions, icons etc)

Advanced Configuration:

• Turn off RSS Feed discovery
• Disable IE to check for updates
• Disable crash detection feature
• Phishing filter/SmartScreen filter settings
• Bandwidth settings

Network Optimization

• Offers options to optimize Network & to make the communication experience easier and more secure.
• Limit reserved bandwidth for QoS Scheduler Service
• Hide your server or workstation from general browser list
• Hide entire network from Network Neighborhood
• Disable Remote Desktop Sharing in the domain and network
• Disable Offline Files
  • Set disk space used by Offline Files
  • Total size of offline files
  • Size of auto-cached files

• Disable default Admin and Disk drive share server
• Restrict access of IPC$ for anonymous users
• Disable recent shares in Network Places
• Disable media sharing in Windows Media Player (free up memory from background process wmpnscfg.exe)
• Enable NTLM 2 support (No more sharing problems in between Vista & earlier version of Windows)
• Set global network/internet offline (includes all Windows applications that require internet for online services. ie. IE, Windows Mail etc.)

Additional Options:

• On this page, are tweaks which allow customizing Registered User information, along with some useful context menu and desktop tweaks.

Registered User and OEM information

• Change Registered User Information & Image and OEM information

Useful Context menu for Drives and Folders

• Show “Take Ownership”
• Show “Open Command Window Here”
• Show “Search…” (For Vista SP1 or higher)

Useful Context menu for Files and Folders

• Show “Take Ownership” (Files only)
• Show “Copy To Folder…”
• Show “Move To Folder…”
• Show “Encrypt” and “Decrypt”

Some additional tweaks

• Remove “Shortcut” suffix for new shortcuts
• Remove arrows from Shortcut Icons
• Disable Low Disk Space checks
• Disable Hibernation
• Disable Compression in NTFS file system
• Disable Encryption in NTFS file system
• Enable self-healing capability of NTFS file system
• Enable Encryption for Page file

It is always recommended to create a system restore point before tweaking your system, and hence an easily accessible button for creating the same has been provided in the tweaker.  Should you wish or need to, you can always restore your system to the Windows Vista default settings using the Restore Defaults button and applying them.