Tips on speeding up Windows XP

[Motoxrdude]

Okay, this document is for those people can't afford the hardware upgrading damands by Microsoft Windows XP, and have enjoyed the new XP look and "feel" for quite a while. This is very useful for people who are doing serious work on their Windows XP, requiring lots of system resources.

Removing Some Visual Features
Visual Effects



Display Properties
Well, it is sad to say goodbye to special effects, but we want to speed up the computer.

1. Open Control Panel from the Start menu and choose Display.
2. Choose the "Desktop tab and set the Background to "None."
3. Select the "Appearance" tab.
4. Under "Windows and buttons," choose "Windows Classic Sytle" from the drop-down menu.
5. Click the "Effects" button.
6. Unselect all options and click OK.
7. Click OK to close the Display Properties and apply the changes.



There's more ways to speed up your XP.
Start Menu and Folders
Start Menu and Taskbar

Context click (usually known as Right click) on the Windows XP Start button and choose "Properties" from the contextual menu.
1. Choose "Classic Start Menu"
2. Click the "Customise" button
3. Select the "Show Small Icons in Start Menu" option
4. Unselect any other items that you don't use often.



Folder Options

1. Open My Computer
2. Open the C: Drive or any other drive
3. Choose "Folder Options" from the Tools menu
4. Select "Use Windows classic folders"
5. Select the "View" tab.
6. Unselect the "Automatically search for network folders and printers" option.
7. Click "Apply"
8. Click the "Apply to All Folders" button
9. Click OK.

Windows XP contains a huge list of special effects and visual enhancements such as nimated menus, fade effects, cursor shadows, menu shadows, ... etc. Disabling some of these settings can make Windows XP running faster and use less system resources.

1. Open Control Panel from the Start menu and choose "System."
2. Choose the "Advanced" tab.
3. Select the "Settings" button under the Performance section.
4. Check the "Adjust for best performance" box and click "Apply" to apply the settings.
5. Alternatively, you can choose the "Custom" open, you can then selectively enable or disable each specific effects.


The cursor shadowing effect can have a noticable impact on performance.

Remote Desktop
So you want to allow someone from another location to control your Windows? Disable it.

1. Choose the "Remote" tab.
2. Make sure both "Allow Remote Assistance ..." and "Allow users to connect ..." are not selected and click OK.



Automatic Updates
Having Microsoft automatically screwing up your computer is not a good idea. There are a number of reasons not to let your Windows updates itself. (I will add reasons if I have time to write those.)

1. Choose the "Automatic Updates" tab.
2. Uncheck the "Keep my computer up to date..." box
OR
tick the box that says "Turn off automatic updating..."


Speeding Up Your Hard Drive
Keeping Your Hard Drive Fragmented:
1. Download PerfectDisk 7.
2. Install it.
3. Open it and smart defragment each partition.

Cleaning Up Your Registrys
1. Download and install Abexo Free Registry Cleaner 1
2. Run Registry Cleanup and press delete when it runs the scan.

Freeing Up Space
There is no specific way to do this. Just go through and remove unnecessary programs and files.

Removing Spyware, Adware, etc.
A few good programs are Adware SE, Spybot, and SpyWare Blaster. Remember to update each program when you download them. Adware SE and Spybot are pretty straight forward; just scan and fix the items it finds. SpyWare Blaster is different, it keeps your computer from getting adware in the first place. Just enable all protection.

Removing Some Extra Features In XP
Windows XP contains a huge list of special effects and visual enhancements such as nimated menus, fade effects, cursor shadows, menu shadows, ... etc. Disabling some of these settings can make Windows XP running faster and use less system resources.

1. Open Control Panel from the Start menu and choose "System."
2. Choose the "Advanced" tab.
3. Select the "Settings" button under the Performance section.
4. Check the "Adjust for best performance" box and click "Apply" to apply the settings.
5. Alternatively, you can choose the "Custom" open, you can then selectively enable or disable each specific effects.


The cursor shadowing effect can have a noticable impact on performance.

Remote Desktop
So you want to allow someone from another location to control your Windows? Disable it.

1. Choose the "Remote" tab.
2. Make sure both "Allow Remote Assistance ..." and "Allow users to connect ..." are not selected and click OK.



Automatic Updates
Having Microsoft automatically screwing up your computer is not a good idea. There are a number of reasons not to let your Windows updates itself. (I will add reasons if I have time to write those.)

1. Choose the "Automatic Updates" tab.
2. Uncheck the "Keep my computer up to date..." box
OR
tick the box that says "Turn off automatic updating..."


I hope this has helped

 

[Christian Darrall]

i also found that removing the page file or increasing it help increase the os's stabability.

 

[Trizoy]

Or making the page file go onto more than 1 hard drive.

 

[loque]

Some bad tips there.

Windows already has a built-in defragmenter that does the job quite well. Why bloat your system with another defragger?

Remote Desktop doesn't let "anyone" connect to your box. They need to have an explicit invitation and then you get several prompts asking you if you want to allow them to connect and then further prompts again if you want them to control the system.

Removing the page file is only useful if you have a boatload of RAM, otherwise you'll die in a sea of "out of memory" errors. Not good.

Disabling auto updates is fine for power users who update their machines manually and regularly but the average user simply won't remember and will be hit by some zero-day exploit such as the new VML exploit making the rounds this week.

Registry cleaners typically cause more problems than they solve. You'll rarely improve performance just by removing a couple of registry entries and when the "cleaner" removes an entry that's needed, you'll know about it.

 

[dznutz]

Some bad tips there.

Windows already has a built-in defragmenter that does the job quite well. Why bloat your system with another defragger?

the built in defragger only defrags broken files. but when your disk is almost full simply defragging files isn't enough as new files can be easily fragmented due to empty clusters. other defrag allows defragging and putting files one after another to prevent small empty clusters.

i use ultimate defrag. tried them all and this is the best. recommended for gamers. it allows selective placement for high performing files to be on the outer disk and slower/archive files to be in the inner disk. http://www.disktrix.com/

 

[epidemik]

Great guide. Thanks.
Gonna have to try these.