To minimize potential bugs, risks and notification popups of applications, it is best to uninstall all unneeded applications from your computer. Click Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs and verify the list of installed products. If one of the installed applications is a delete candidate, click Remove at the selected program.

Click Start > Control Panel > Display and select the Desktop tab. Set the background image to None. Additionally you might want to set the background to a more neutral color, e.g. black. To do so click the arrow button at Color on this form. Here you select a new color. Click OK to close this form.

Click Start > Control Panel > Display and select the Screen saver tab. Set the active screen saver to None. Click OK to close this form.

Click Start > Control Panel > Display and select the Desktop tab. Click the Power button and set the Power scheme to Presentation. Hit OK twice to close the forms.

Right click the Start button and choose Properties. Select the Taskbar tab and enable the Auto-hide the taskbar option. Click OK to close this form.

Click Start > Run > Type in 'regedit' and hit OK. Now navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Desktop \ NameSpace and delete the {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} entry completely. Now click File > Exit to complete this action. For this modification to take effect, a restart of your computer is required at the end of this instruction list.

Click Start > Run > Type in 'regedit' and hit OK. Now navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced. Right click EnableBalloonTips and choose Modify from the menu. At the Value data textbox, set its value to 0 and hit OK. Now click File > Exit to complete this action. For this modification to take effect, a restart of your computer is required at the end of this instruction list.

Normally when your computer starts, you will have to log on to the system with a valid username and password. In case of a power failure on a dedicated computer, you would have to go to that computer and log on interactively. By setting auto logon properties, you can let your computer log on automatically whenever it starts.

Again we need to modify the registry for this option. Click Start > Run > Type in 'regedit' and hit OK. Now navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon. Right click DefaultUserName and choose Modify from the menu. At the Value data textbox, set its value to the username you want to use to log on to this computer. At the DefaultPassword setting you enter the corresponding password of the user entered above. Finally the AutoAdminLogon value should be set to 1.

Now click File > Exit to complete this action. For this modification to take effect, a restart of your computer is required at the end of this instruction list.

If you are using ShowPoint to start Microsoft PowerPoint presentations:

Click Start > My computer and navigate to C:\Program Files\PresentationPoint\ShowPoint. Right click the ShowPoint.exe and select Create Shortcut from the popup menu. This action would create a new item called 'Shortcut to ShowPoint.exe' in the same folder. Now right click the Start button and choose Open. Go to Programs > Startup and move the newly created Shortcut to ShowPoint.exe into this location. This will automatically launch ShowPoint whenever you are logging on to the system. ShowPoint will take further care of opening the desired presentation.

If you are using a dedicated Microsoft PowerPoint presentation at startup:

Navigate to your startup presentation and make sure that a PPS (PowerPoint slideshow) version exists. If not you can easily copy the file and rename the extension to pps. Now right click this file. From the popup menu you choose Create Shortcut. This will create a new file called 'Shortcut to [yourname].pps'. Now right click the Start button and choose Open. Go to Programs > Startup and move the newly created shortcut file into this location. This will automatically launch the given Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow whenever you are logging on to the system.

If you are using DataPoint-enabled presentation some errors like a network breakdown might show up when a slideshow is completed. To avoid these error messages at the end, you can insert a DataPoint registry setting on your computer.

Click Start > Run > Type in 'regedit' and hit OK. Now navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ PresentationPoint. Choose DataPoint VWR 1.1, DataPoint STD 1.1 or DataPoint ENT 1.1 for DataPoint Viewer, DataPoint Standard Edition or DataPoint Enterprise Edition respectively. Right click in the right frame and choose New > String value. Enter the name 'HideMsgBoxErrorsDuringPresentation' and hit Enter. Now double click the newly created item and set the Value data to 1. Now click File > Exit to complete this action. For this modification to take effect, a restart of Microsoft PowerPoint is required.

Most of the registry settings only become active when you reboot your computer. Click Start > Shutdown and choose Restart from the list and hit OK. After that your computer will be ready to act as a full dedicated computer with the best configuration.