Using Ultimate Windows Tweaker to Help You Rule Your OS

Does the name “TweakUI” sound familiar? If so, then you have no doubt been tweaking Windows OSes for quite some time. On its own, this Microsoft-developed tool didn’t accomplish anything that couldn’t otherwise be handled manually, with registry hacks and other things, but it did make the tweaking process for complicated things much simpler, and much more accessible to users of all skill levels.

In the earlier days, TweakUI came in the form of an applet that sat in your Control Panel. After Windows XP launched, Microsoft decided to turn it into a stand-alone application, and packaged it with other miscellaneous tools to create “Microsoft PowerToys”. Little did fans realize prior to Vista’s launch, the XP version of TweakUI was to become the last, as Microsoft apparently decided it wasn’t worth the effort to continue development.

TweakUI’s discontinuation is understandable, as it would add more workload for internal testers and require a fair amount of additional resources. Microsoft could have also seen it from the perspective that some ambitious programmers would take over and create an application that faithfully replicates what TweakUI was all about. Why sink development dollars into something that others will make for free?

That might not be the best mantra to live by, but in many cases it’s true. In this one, it is, as Microsoft fansite The Windows Club has made sure TweakUI’s spirit lives in, and the result is an application called “Ultimate Windows Tweaker”. After checking out the tool, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate name myself. Like TweakUI, the application is chock-full of tweaks to help you customize your Windows in ways you probably didn’t even know possible.

The reason I stumbled on this program is because I happen to be one of those people who hates the small little arrow icon that Microsoft applies to all shortcuts. I know what’s a shortcut and what’s not, so I’d rather just see the application icon in its original glory. This is the main reason I used TweakUI in the past, and it’s the same reason I decided to give UWT a try.

As hard as it is to believe, removing that small arrow isn’t exactly easy to do by hand, but with UWT, you simply enable the option (to disable the arrow), hit apply, log out and back in… and the arrows will be gone. It couldn’t be much simpler. Of course, that’s just one of the over 150 different tweaks that this tool can handle, and as I mentioned, there’s likely to be functionality here you didn’t even know existed.

For example, under the “Personalization” section alone, there are options to place the Windows version on the desktop, to restore last-opened folders after a reboot or re-login, to add checkboxes over each file for easier multiple selection (rids the need to Ctrl + Click), to disable the highlighting of newly-installed applications, to disable balloon tips, to removing tray icons from the taskbar, and much, much more.

As you can see in the shot above, there are a lot of options, and that’s just one of the seven menus available here. In addition to Personalization, there’s also User Accounts & UAC, System Performance, Security Settings, Network Tweaks, Internet Explorer and Additional Tweaks, which is where the shortcut arrow tweak happens to be.

Under the User Accounts & Users menu, there are a couple of options that I found interesting, because I have performed some of the same tweaks in the past by hand, and they weren’t fun. Here, you can customize various user account options that are difficult to find elsewhere in the OS, such as enabling the requirement to hit Ctrl + Alt + Del to get a login prompt at the login screen, the ability to disable or enable the built-in admin or guest accounts, and even apply a custom image to be displayed at that login screen.

The System Performance menu is also useful, because here you’re able to adjust various sliders that represent the amount of time a Windows shutdown will give an application to live before it kills it (Windows is a cruel beast), and even more important, there are options to quickly disable a bunch of different Windows services, from Superfetch to Security Center to Printer Spooling and more.

I am just scratching the surface here, but if the above shot doesn’t prove how much potential UWT has, then I’m not sure what will. But, if you do for some reason need even more enticing, does the fact that the tool is 100% free intrigue you at all? No? Well how about the fact that you won’t need to install it to use it? That’s right… download, run, delete (if you want to, that is). What more could you ask for?