6. When I first saw the default search pane in windows Xp.

6. When I first saw the default search pane in windows Xp.

My instinct was to return it to its classic look; that puppy had to go. Of course, I later discovered that a doggie door is built into the applet. click "change preferences" then "without an animated screen character." if you'd rather give it a bare-bones "windows 2000" look and feel, fire up your registry editor and navigate to:

Hkey_Current_User \ software \ Microsoft \ windows \ CurrentVersion \ explorer \ cabinet state.

You may need to create a new string value labeled "use search asst" and set it to "no".