XP Animations

You can turn off window animation (“exploding” windows), displayed when you play around with minimizing/maximizing open windows. This makes navigating Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP a lot quicker, especially if you don’t have a fast video controller, or if you got tired of seeing it all the time (like I did).
To do this, run Regedit (or Regedt32) and go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER | Control Panel | Desktop | WindowMetrics
or if you are the only user of your Windows computer go to:

HKEY_USERS | .Default | Control Panel | Desktop | WindowMetrics

Right-click on an empty spot in the right hand pane. Select New -> String [REG_SZ] Value. Name it MinAnimate. Click OK. Double-click on “MinAnimate” and type 0 to turn OFF window animation or 1 to turn it ON. Click OK. Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows. Done.

TweakUI, the famous Microsoft Power Toy [110 KB, free, unsupported] can also turn off animated windows.
Just remove the check mark from the “Window Animation” box under the General tab.