TURN OFF SYSTEM RESTORE

System Restore can be a useful if your computer is having problems, however storing all the restore points can literally take up Gigabytes of space on your hard drive. To turn off System Restore:

Open Control Panel
Click on Performance and Maintenance
Click on System
Click on the System Restore tab
Tick ‘Turn off System Restore on All Drives’
Click ‘Ok’

DEFRAGMENT YOUR PAGEFILE

Keeping your pagefile defragmented can provide a major performance boost. One of the best ways of doing this is to creat a separate partition on your hard drive just for your page file, so that it doesn’t get impacted by normal disk usage. Another way of keeping your pagefile defragmented is to run PageDefrag. This cool little app can be used to defrag your pagefile, and can also be set to defrag the pagefile everytime your PC starts. To install:

Download (http://www.sysinternals.com) and Run PageDefrag
Tick “Defrag at next Reboot”,
Click “Ok”
Reboot

SPEEDUP FOLDER ACCESS – DISABLE LAST ACCESS UPDATE

If you have a lot of folders and subdirectories on your computer, when you access a directory XP wastes a lot of time updating the time stamp showing the last access time for that directory and for ALL sub directories. To stop XP doing this you need to edit the registry. If you are uncomfortable doing this then please do not attempt.

Go to Start and then Run and type “regedit”

Click through the file system until you get to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Cur rentControlSet\Control\FileSys tem”

Right-click in a blank area of the window on the right and select ‘DWORD Value’

Create a new DWORD Value called ‘NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate’

Then Right click on the new value and select ‘Modify’

Change the Value Data to ’1′

Click ‘OK’

DISABLE SYSTEM SOUNDS

Surprisingly, the beeps that your computer makes for various system sounds can slow it down, particularly at startup and shut-down. To fix this turn off the system sounds:

Open Control Panel

Click Sounds and Audio Devices

Check Place volume icon in taskbar

Click Sounds Tab

Choose “No Sounds” for the Sound Scheme

Click “No”

Click “Apply”

Click “OK”

RUN BOOTVIS – IMPROVE BOOT TIMES

download from(http://www.majorgeeks.com)
BootVis will significantly improve boot times

1. Download and Run

2. Select Trace

3. Select Next Boot and Driver Trace

4. A Trace Repetitions screen will appear, select Ok and Reboot

5. Upon reboot, BootVis will automatically start, analyze and log your system’s boot process. When it’s done, in the menu go to Trace and select Optimize System

6. Reboot.

7. When your machine has rebooted wait until you see the Optimizing System box appear. Be patient and wait for the process to complete

REMOVE THE DESKTOP PICTURE

Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.

1. Right click on Desktop and select Properties

2. Select the Desktop tab

3. In the Background window select None

4. Click Ok

REMOVE FONTS FOR SPEED

Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.

1. Open Control Panel

2. Open Fonts folder

3. Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.

DISABLE UNNECESSARY SERVICES

Because Windows XP has to be all things to all people it has many services running that take up system resources that you will never need. Below is a list of services that can be disabled on most machines:

Alerter

Clipbook

Computer Browser

Distributed Link Tracking Client

Fast User Switching

Help and Support – (If you use Windows Help and Support leave this enabled)

Human Interface Access Devices

Indexing Service

IPSEC Services

Messenger

Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing (disabled for extra security)

Portable Media Serial Number

Remote Desktop Help Session Manager (disabled for extra security)

Remote Procedure Call Locator

Remote Registry (disabled for extra security)

Remote Registry Service

Secondary Logon

Routing & Remote Access (disabled for extra security)
Server

SSDP Discovery Service – (Unplug n’ Pray will disable this)
Telnet

TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper

Upload Manager

Universal Plug and Play Device Host

Windows Time

Wireless Zero Configuration (Do not disable if you use a wireless network)

Workstation

To disable these services:

Go to Start and then Run and type “services.msc”
Doubleclick on the service you want to change
Change the startup type to ‘Disable”

SPEEDUP FOLDER BROWSING

You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

1. Open My Computer

2. Click on Tools menu

3. Click on Folder Options

4. Click on the View tab.

5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box

6. Click Apply

7. Click Ok

8. Reboot your computer

IMPROVE MEMORY USAGE

Cacheman Improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings.

Once Installed:

1.Go to Show Wizard and select All

2.Run all the wizards by selecting Next or Finished until you are back to the main menu. Use the defaults unless you know exactly what you are doing.

3.Exit and Save Cacheman

4.Restart Windows

OPTIMISE YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION

There are lots of ways to do this but by far the easiest is to run TCP/IP Optimizer.

1. Download(http://www.speedguide.net/files/tcpoptimizer.exe) and install

2. Click the General Settings tab and select your Connection Speed (Kbps)

3. Click Network Adapter and choose the interface you use to connect to the Internet

4. Check Optimal Settings then Apply

5. Reboot

OPTIMISE YOUR PAGEFILE

If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.

1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties

2. Select the Advanced tab

3. Under Performance choose the Settings button

4. Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change

5. Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

Make Your Windows Xp Run Faster Than Never Before Part 1

DISABLE INDEXING SERVICES

Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:

1. Go to Start

2. Click Settings

3. Click Control Panel

4. Double-click Add/Remove Programs

5. Click the Add/Remove Window Components

6. Uncheck the Indexing services

7. Click Next

OPTIMISE DISPLAY SETTINGS

Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:

1.Go to Start

2. Click Settings

3. Click Control Panel

4. Click System

5. Click Advanced tab

6. In the Performance tab click Settings

7. Leave only the following ticked:
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Show translucent selection rectangle
- Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons

DISABLE PERFORMANCE COUNTERS

Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea.

To disable:

1. download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List(http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/remove404.mspx)

2.Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom.button below.