Yeah, so I think it is time to start tweaking my XP! I have a 2.2ghz processor but I really want to get the most out of it.
I would be interested to know what the community members tweak and what it actually does to your system. That way I can investigate and try and do the same thing.
Particularly interested in performance tweaks, not customization stuff!
[half-sarcasm]Probably not a lot of folks here care about performance.GIYF - if anyone here even does use performance 'tweaks' they are most likely using a guide of some kind. Try the first 100,000 hits, I'm sure you'll find something of use.
Hmm all those performance tweaks you find on the web for XP really don't change much, especially on modern systems. Just make sure the list of programs that are loaded when your system boots is really small, most you really don't need. Like a virusscanner, i always manually scan and have only had one virus in 5 years or so. Or office/adobe reader, that stuff only loads those programs slightly faster. Same goes for adobe gamma correction, you don't need that unless you maybe do print. Well you can figure it ut yourself for the rest. Good luck!
Services that you don't necessarily need take up a lot of system memory. For the most part, this is what I tweak whenever I install a new system for myself. Here's two guides that I've used in the past.
I've tried using tweak programs, but they don't seem to give me any noticeable performance gains. Disabling services left me with the same functionality I had before with less memory usage.
You might also try pagefile/partitioning tweaking. For example, many users put their windows installation on a seperate partition (usually 5-10 gigs large) then put their software and other files on another, larger partition.
Depending on how many physical harddrives you have in your computer, spreading out the page file can increase performance as well. Just google a guide for pagefile tweaking.
Also, as naalo said, go to start - run, and type msconfig. The startup tab has all the programs starting up with your computer, keep it low, only the essentials really. If you don't know what an item is, either google it or ask around, you'll almost always find your answer.
First: If you're experiencing a slow down, its could be a possilbility due to hijackers, spyware, malware and such. Firstly, always keep your computer update on the lastest spybot update, adware etc. Keeping your computer clean of spyware is the first thing you wanna do.
Second:, As everyone has said, only use the programs that you want on startup. Having, Window's Live programs are quite the pesty ones on start up, especially WML. (Window's Messenger Live
Third of all, you want to defragment your drives once in a while to keep them clean.
Fourth: For your main windows drive, the one that you have windows installed, I usually have about 70 percent of free space on the hard drive that keeps the computer running optimal.
For me and performance tweaks (which I did/do use Mini!) I always tried to get the running processes down, mainly system programs and services. Black Viper's site being the main/famous one to help with that.
For the actual install, i.e. how much hard drive space it used. There's guides on Neowin for slimming it down manually, and getting rid of the crap you don't need.
"First: If you're experiencing a slow down, its could be a possilbility due to hijackers, spyware, malware and such. Firstly, always keep your computer update on the lastest spybot update, adware etc. Keeping your computer clean of spyware is the first thing you wanna do."
I'd recommend "Uniblue Powersuite" to help with this.
-Get the "Startup" control panel extension by Mike Lin. Programs have a nasty tendancy to use the registry to open at startup so you can't disable them, unless you get this little-known but powerful extension.
-I have a slow computer and Adobe/Acrobat PDF reader SUCKS. It took me a full minuet to scroll down a page. Get Foxit Reader - it's free, smaller in file size, lets you edit the PDFs to some degree, and actually WORKS.
-AVG Free is the best antivirus thing, so you don't need to do anything with that.
-Get TweakUI from Microsoft. It makes things much faster and chances are at least 9 out of 10 tweaks online are included. You won't have to hunt through the registry
-Get Virtual CD from Microsoft. It lets you mount most ISOs without having to burn them.
-There are some bizzare tweaks out there that attempt to get rid of the guest account. That's used not only for guests, but to share printers, connect to networks...leave Guest alone.
-Don't use Registry cleaners. You're better off using a sledgehammer. It's true that the Registry gets clogged with useless entries, but it doesn't make your computer slower.
-Some "learned sages" in this page think that any large hard drive should be split into multiply partitions. I say balderdash. All having on drive split into C:, D:, and E: drives does is cause inconsistency and makes it harder to find your data. Partitions are okay if you multiboot into different operating systems, but it makes no sense to chop up your hard drive. When one of the partitions get full, you'll have to buy expensive programs and monkey around with them for a few months. Not fun. If you just want to organize your data, don't chop up your drive! That's what folders are for!
The absolutely best way to speed up your computer is ugly but effective: BUY MORE MEMORY!
"-Get the "Startup" control panel extension by Mike Lin. Programs have a nasty tendancy to use the registry to open at startup so you can't disable them, unless you get this little-known but powerful extension."
Yeah, just type in msconfig into the run command. Much easier. No need for extra programs seeing as it is built into XP and Vista. But no, download this piece of software. Riiiight.
"-AVG Free is the best antivirus thing, so you don't need to do anything with that."
AVG is a well known resource hog. :) ESET Nod32 is easier, uses less resources as well.
"-Don't use Registry cleaners. You're better off using a sledgehammer. It's true that the Registry gets clogged with useless entries, but it doesn't make your computer slower."
Yes, it does if you have Windows XP set to read off the registry as it has to go through every single registry entry at bootup.
"That's what folders are for!"
You do realize that XP, by default, index's all folders. Well, that indexing uses up resources and will bog down a computer. :)
Also, Finch is right as TweakUI is limited. All tweaking programs are limited in what they can do. Tweaking your registry manually may be harder and might screw up your system if you don't follow directions, but hey, you have more options and more control.
"-There are some bizzare tweaks out there that attempt to get rid of the guest account. That's used not only for guests, but to share printers, connect to networks...leave Guest alone."
My guest account is gone on XP, but my network works, my networked hard drives work and even my networked printers, faxes and copiers are oddly fine. Strange? Not really. Especially if the main user account has 100% full admin access.
"The absolutely best way to speed up your computer is ugly but effective: BUY MORE MEMORY!"
How is that ugly? Also, hope you don't put 4 GB of RAM in that XP machine. It can only read 3.49GB's of RAM. :P All 32bit Windows systems are restricted to that much RAM and there is no way around it. Oh wait, there is a registry hack to access that extra 512MB's of RAM, but it doesn't actually work.
Also, another nifty way to get more oomph from your system is to upgrade the processor too. More RAM doesn't make the system significantly faster. But a faster CPU will.
Also, getting rid of on board videocards is another way of boosting the computers speed as it no longer needs RAM allocated to the graphics processing, but it will have it's own RAM to do so.
TheElderGeek has tons of tweaks. Okay, not really tons, but the ones he has are pretty cool and safe. Be sure to read all the warnings, though. I once tried to change my Start text on an sp2 machine and explorer.exe wouldn't start. Anyway, the tweaks are pretty cool. TweakXP has lots of stuff, too.
