Useful Registry Patches
There are a whole lot of Windows functionalities that people just don't want - here are the ones that I routinely disable to make my Windows experience faster, and to remove unwanted snooping.
I'm listing these files and their contents individually, as putting everything in one file can make it tricky to separate out desired behaviours. You can always merge the files, however, by taking the first line from only one file, and putting the rest of the contents of all the files underneath. If you're not sure how to do this, keep the files separate, as you stand a good chance of wrecking your computer if you're not careful.
I hope some of these will be useful. If I find any more worth sharing, I'll update this page and bump it to the top of the article list.
AltTabSettings.reg
Used to change the default alt+tab interface with the huge window previews down to the previous Windows versions, with just window titles, etc. This has proved problematic on the latest Windows 11 releases, so reset this entry to value 00000000 if it gives you trouble.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"AltTabSettings"=dword:00000001
DisableWebSearch.reg
Used to stop the Start Menu search from retrieving search results from the internet. Why this is even in the OS is a mystery to most people, since everyone has their web browser open all the time, so here's an easy way to turn this off, and in so doing, speed up your searches considerably.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search]
"BingSearchEnabled"=dword:00000000
FixShareSpeeds.reg
Sometimes when browsing file shares, the computer will chug for ages, analysing everything in a particularly large directory before it'll display a listing, and contributing greatly to users' baldness issues. These entries remove this issue, and although in theory this should be fixed in Windows 11, I've still had problems reading files on NAS devices, which these entries helped resolve.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters]
"DirectoryCacheLifetime"=dword:00000000
"FileNotFoundCacheLifetime"=dword:00000000
"FileInfoCacheLifetime"=dword:00000000
ScrollbarWidth.reg
I always found the Windows 11 scrollbars to be frustratingly narrow, and make using them inconvenient. While there is a way to make them wider by enabling Always Show Scrollbars under Settings -> Accessibility -> Visual Effects, this never made them wide enough for my liking, so I found the following solution.
There are many values you can use here, from the default value of -255 or 15 pixels, to -450 or 30 pixels. It's not exactly clear how these numbers equate to their pixel values, but I settled on -375, which does the job nicely for me.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics]
"ScrollWidth"="-375"
Win11NoTPMRequirement.reg
With one of the more recent Windows 11 updates, TPM 2.0 is required on the computer, or the update will simply refuse to be installed. While most computers have this, some don't, and some computers even have the TPM disabled completely, for a variety of reasons. Flipping the switch in this one will prevent the TPM check being run, and any updates requiring TPM 2.0 will ignore this and continue. Of course, some functionality may not be available if you run this, so as always, look up the implications online if you're not sure how to proceed.