I hate Windows, the operating system family, but I'm too lazy to spend the 10 minutes it would take to switch over to a nice open-source operating system. Instead, I spend hours figuring out crap like this:
When I plug a monitor into my laptop, a stupid script in Windows gets activated that starts changing all of my display settings, assuming that I want to do a formal presentation on the new screen, instead of just doing work. I don't want this. Ever. Ever ever.
There is a "feature" called Mobility Center which allows you to quickly change/toggle a small subset of configuration parameters, one such parameter being "Presentation Mode", the state of which causes the stupid script to change my display settings. Turning "Presentation Mode" off is useless, as it checks for a monitor and restarts the insanity right away.
Permanently disabling Presentation Mode is the best thing in the world, but no-one knows how to do it. Except me. Because it made me angry and I went and figured it out.
In regedit, find or create the following key:
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\PresentationSettings
In this key, create a DWORD called NoPresentationSettings and set the value to 1.
Restart Mobility Center and verify that the Presentation Mode box is grayed out.
Viola.
Now I can work without losing my mind.
P.S. Microsoft has, at the Microsoft Download Center, a list of all the group policy settings and their location in the registry. Here's the page I downloaded the Vista settings from. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=25250 . You can use this to find other interesting modifications for windows.
