By default, taskbar grouping comes into play only when the taskbar fills up. Even if you have multiple windows from the same application open, if there's room for a separate button for each window, that's what you get.
If you are using Windows Aero, you can perform a neat Registry trick to slow down the animations (minimize/maximize) when you hold down the Shift key on your keyboard. But you are going to have to modify the Registry a little.
Theoretically, when you shut down Windows, your computer should be powered down in less than 15 seconds. The problem is that all of the cleanup Windows tries to do before it considers it "safe" to power the system down can sometimes cause delays. This includes shutting down your
open applications, stopping any running services, and writing any pending cache data to the disk.
Automatic logins are also good for machines you wish to use in public environments (typically called "kiosks"), but you'll want to take steps to ensure that a visitor can't log in to a more privileged account. There are two ways for a user to skip the automatic login and log in to another user account.
A larger DNS cache will mean fewer trips to the nameserver and faster overall performance.
Among the restrictions you may want to impose on others who use your computer is that of shutting down Windows. For instance, if you're logging in remotely, you'll want to make sure that your PC is always on.
It's possible to limit the automatic login feature, so that the Log On dialog (or Welcome screen) reappears after a specified number of boots.
The following settings allow you to fine-tune NTFS to squeeze the most performance out of your NTFS drive; experiment with these settings to find the configuration that works best for you.
Most components directly attached to your motherboard - including PCI slots, IDE controllers, serial ports, the keyboard port, and even your motherboard's CMOS - have individual IRQs assigned to them. An interrupt request line, or IRQ, is a numbered hardware line over which a device can interrupt the normal flow of data to the processor, allowing the device to function.