Best Tweaking Methods to Increase HTC Performance

Although there are many ways available on the net to tweak the registry setting to improve performance of Windows Mobile for HTC Touch Cruise, I find that the most effective ways of doing this is to disable all the buttons of your HTC device.

To tweak the registy you need the register editor. You can use Total Commander or FdcSoft Task Manger to edit Windows Mobile's registry.

I find that a lot of these examples on the web such as the following are useless or do not really contribute a lot in term of the user experiences performance:


Don’t do This (No effect on performance):

(1) Tweaking TouchFlo setting (i.e. sensitivity and scrolling).
I have tested this and after disable the scrolling for example, it won’t save the memory consumption. Therefore no point disable the scrolling or change any sensitivity setting of TouchFlo

(2) Playing around with the font and file system cache.
I have tested and no effect.

(3) Disable HTC Task Manager.
This is a very useful feature therefore you shouldn’t consider to disable it at all.


Do This (it does improve the performances):

(1) Disable Large Start Menu

• Go to "Start -> Settings -> Personal -> Large Start Menu"
• Uncheck “Enable large Start menu”

(2) Disable ClearType of screen fonts
I personally do not do this because the font sucks after I disable the ClearType but if you don't mind, here you go:

• Go to "Start -> Settings -> System -> Screen"
• Select the "ClearType" tab
• Uncheck "Enable ClearType"

(3) Disable keyboard input method that you don’t use
(disable=0 , enable=1)

For example, I only use one type of input method and disable the rest. You can do the same the following list out all the registry key for all the keyboard input types:

• E.g. disable Transcriber: KEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F0034DD0-2AD4-11D1-9CB0-E84BE8000000}\IsSIPInputMethod\(Default) = 0
• E.g. disable Letter Recognizer: KEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{42429690-AE04-11D0-A4F8-00AA00A749B9}\IsSIPInputMethod\(Default) = 0
• E.g. disable Chinese Star (CE-Star) HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{903D7A20-A2E9-11D2-9272-00A0C919143A}\IsSIPInputMethod\(default) =0

More registry keys as follow for your reference:

• TOUCH KEYPAD {198D503A-EFFE-4AFD-BC54-EED333C80E6D}
• TOUCH KEYBOARD {62B00599-25D2-4E09-8C48-03BF26DB8517}
• Letter Recognizer {42429690-AE04-11D0-A4F8-00AA00A749B9}
• Block Recognizer {42429691-AE04-11D0-A4F8-00AA00A749B9}
  

(4) Disable the Useless Cube
Honestly, the HTC cube is completely useless. You can disable it here by setting the EnableCube to 0 in the following registry:

• HKLM\Software\OEM\TFLOSettings

This does not help much because the following application still remains in the memory:

• APLauncher.exe
• Biotouch.exe
• MediaHubMini.exe
• QuickDial.exe

You need to kill all these 4 application using the FdcSoft task manager and use the Total Commander Explorer go to the \windows\ directly and look for these 4 files. Delete these files or you can copy these 4 files to other folder for backup purpose.

Note: Default explorer does not allow you to make any changes in the \windows\ directory therefore, you need to use the third party explorer such as Total Commander.

You need to replace these 4 files with the empty files (i.e 0 bytes file size). Download biotouch.zip and unzip it.

• Use Total Commander Explorer to copy these 4 files to the \windows\ folder and restart your PC.

Conclusion

By doing all the above that I suggested, now my HTC boots up only with 39% used memory. :D

Best Free Advanced Explorer for Windows Mobile – Total Commander

For some reasons the original explorer in the windows mobile disallow you to modify or delete some of the system files in ROM especially in the windows folder, therefore I’m looking for an alternative solution.

The best explorer so far in the industry (in my opinion) is the “Resco Explorer” but it is not a freeware! So, what should you do? At last, I found the free one and it is called “Total Commander” and I have been using for quite some times. I’m satisfied with it but may not be as good as “Resco Explorer” but it is still better than nothing.

Some common advanced features of Total Commander:

• Zip and unzip (File -> Pack with ZIP )
• Properties dialog, change attributes (File -> Properties)
• Useful to hide files or folder that you don’t want to let other to see
• Search function including text content (File ->Find files)
• FTP client (Access through \\Plugins\ftp)
• Registry Editor (Access through \\Plugins\registry)
• LAN access (Access through \\Plugins\LAN)

It is not as user friendly as Resco Explorer but it is the best free advanced explorer that I have ever used so far.

You can visit the official Total Commander page and download Total Commander here for pocket PC or Windows Mobile.

Should I Install Safari Web Browser?

If you have installed “Quick Time Player”, most likely they will install the “Apple Software Update” tool as well which force you to download and install safari web browser. This is the thing I hate Apple, why keep popping up dialog box and force me to install your web browser? *sign*

Honestly, Safari is famous in screwing up its security and I would recommend you NOT to use it. In my opinion, there are only 3 options that you should only consider:

1. Firefox
2. Internet Explorer
3. Google Chrome.

That’s it. Don’t install safari web browser because it doesn't safe. If you find the notification annoying, you can disable it from Edit->Preference... menu and in the schedule tab, choose never.