Few Tweaks

Increase Folder Cache

The default setting for WindowsXP is to cache the folder settings for 400 folders. If you notice that your folders keep losing their settings, you may want to increase this number if you have a good number of folders.

In regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/ShellNoRoam and double click on BagMRU. Select “Decimal” and then change the number value to whatever size you want. 2000 seems to be a good place to start, for it should be more than enough for most users. For users with several multiple storage drives; that number should be increased by another thousand or two.

Make Folders Private in XP

You can make any folders private to all other users on the system by right clicking on the folder and going to the “Sharing” tab. Check the “Make this folder private” box and hit OK. Note that this only works on NTFS file systems.

Set Folder Permissions in 2000

There is a neat little feature in 2000, however only applicable on NTFS drives. On and partition/drive/folder, right click and click “Properties” and go to the “Security” tab.

The different users will be listed according to user groups. Administrators on top, Creator, Everyone, SYSTEM, Users, and customized groups are inserted according to closest user group. If you only want a specific user access to a certain folder, turn every body’s permissions off except for the user, administrator and SYSTEM. Depending on how much freedom you want to give the user, you can make the folder read-only by unchecking “Full Control”, “Modify, “Read & Execute” and “Write”. If the user wants to open something, they would have to copy and paste the file to an area where they had permission to open files a.k.a. “Read & Execute”.

So, here’s a rundown on what each entry does: “Full Control” grants total unrestricted access; “Modify” allows users to change files (i.e., edit and save Word documents); “Read & Execute” allows the user to run *.exe files and open files; “List Folder Contents” allows the user to view anything in that folder; “Read” allows the user to see files, but not open or modify them; “Write” allows users to save new files, but not change any existing ones. Note that any change made to a folder will also change all the subfolder permissions. Anything left unchecked in the main folder can be checked in the subfolders, but anything left checked in the main folder cannot be unchecked in the subfolders. Folder hierarchies need to be kept in mind when changing these permissions.

Overall, it’s fairly simple to work with. You just need to keep track of where you are within the file structure.