Note: This article applies to Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista.

I stumbled across an interesting Windows feature that you can enable with N-Lite that will show extra boot messages when you login to Windows. I didn’t want to format my computer and do a fresh Windows install just to be able to see a message that says "Playing Logon Sound," so I searched around on Google and found that enabling this feature is an extremely easy registry hack. Do the following:

1. Go to the Start Menu and click Run…
2. Type regedit in the box and press Enter. This will open the Registry Editor.
3. Click on the folder structures on the left (which are known as hives and keys) in the following sequence.

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system

4. In the right hand side of the window, look for a value called named VerboseStatus.
5. If it exists, double-click on it, type a 1 in the box, and click ok. Once you reboot, you will see extra boot messages.
6. If it does not exist, right click on white space in the right-hand pane, choose New, then choose DWORD Value. You’ll see a key that says New Value #1. Type VerboseStatus and press Enter.
7. Double-click on your new VerboseStatus value, type a 1 in the box, and click OK.
8. Reboot, and you should see new boot status messages.

For some reason, I get a great deal of satisfaction out of seeing Playing Logon Sound before it happens. On a more practical note, these messages can allow you to see at what point your Windows logon becomes slow (if it ever becomes a problem).