I've just collated some tips/hints/tweaks for Windows XP that I've seen in various places on the WWW. I've tried them all, with no adverse effects, and my PC is faster for it. Have a try for yourself. If you don't like anything, just reverse what you did! Drop Luna. Dropping Luna will REALLY speed your PC up and free up resources. You can do one or all of these things, see how you like it. Right click an empty spot on your desktop, choose Properties, click the Appearance tab and click Effects. Here, uncheck 'use the following transition effect for menus and tooltips', 'use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts show shadows under menus' and 'show window contents while dragging'. These are all totally useless, only graphical **** that uses a little bit of your system resources. Also, if you're like me you can totally remove it and make XP look just like 98 or 2K by selecting 'Windows Classic Style' from the Windows and Buttons menu on the same Appearances tab. Dropping Luna can yield a 5 to 10 percent increase in performance- if you're trying to wring every bit of performance out of that old 1 Mhz box, 5 to 10 percent will DEFINITELY be felt. Open My Computer, click Tools click Folder Options click View and uncheck the box that says 'Automatically search for network folders and printers'. Every time you click on 'My Computer' by default XP searches for printers and network folders, apparently they thought this would help speed up the process later on. Turn it off and you'll be amazed the next time you access My Computer. Turn off Indexing. What this does is record all files on your computer so that when you do a search later on it'll go faster. If you don't search often, or even if you do, turning this off will slightly speed up some open and close commands. I didn't notice any difference in speed of search after doing this, but I did notice it opens and closes files faster. Go Start/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services/Disable Indexing Services. If your hard drive is getting full, these will be handy. By default XP System Restore is set to occupy 2 percent of your hard drive. Go to Start/Control Panel/System and click on the System Restore tab. Move the slider to adjust accordingly. While you're in the System thingie, click the Advanced tab and click Settings in the Performance box. Click the button next to 'Adjust for Best Performance' If you're one of those tools that don't use MS Explorer, just uninstall it and get that drive space back if you're not using it. Get all that crap off your desktop, it's slowing you down! If you've got a bunch of crap on your desktop, put it all in one folder. Turn the annoying sounds off. Believe it or not it's taking some resources, and on a marginal system every little bit counts. Start/Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices and click the Sounds tab and check 'No Sounds' and click OK. Turn off the Windows Startup screen- this will speed your boot-up up and give you a little more RAM and CPU. Hit Start-Run and type in msconfig and Enter. Click on the Boot.ini tab and check NOGUIBOOT click Apply and OK. While you're here, click the Startup tab and uncheck everything that's not necessary. If you're running some IM program in the background and you're not using it, it's taking up just that much more of your pc power, and if you're on a crappy DSL or a dialup, it's also leeching just that little bit more of your precious bandwidth. If you've got some suspect **** in your startup list and you don't know what it is, delete one at a time and reboot and see what happens. Turn unnecessary stuff off. I know, that's what we've been doing, but do more. Go to Start/Run/type in services.msc and start cleaning house. Be forewarned, if you disable the wrong thing here you will not be able to reconnect to the net and some other things might happen so don't get all fruity here. Luckily, for some unexplained reason, Microsoft put in lengthy explainations of what does what here. *Disable Clipbook. You don't use it, there's no reason to leave it running. *Disable Computer Browser. If you don't have a network, you don't need it. *Disable Distributed Link Tracking Client. If you don't have a network you don't need it. Even if you do have a LAN, if you're not sharing files among computers you don't need it. *Disable Error Reporting. You got it, this is the thing that pops up the 'Do you want to report this error to Microsoft?' On top of being a running app of sorts, turning it off will get rid of that annoying kick in the nuts when something crashes. *Disable Indexing Service. It's the same as what I referenced above, but for some reason it wasn't disabled in services after I disabled it as above. *Disable IPSEC. If you don't use VPN you don't need it. If you used VPN or even knew what it was you would be smart enough to not listen to me. *Disable Messenger. This isn't that vile Windows Messenger, it's a client/server thing used on your network. No network you say? Kill it I say. *Disable Remote Registry Service. Don't need remote modifications of your Registry? Didn't think so. Kill it. *Disable Telnet. It allows remote users to log on to your computer. Aside from letting you run with one less layer of Aluminium Foil on your head, it's unnecessary. *Disable Uninterruptible Power Supply. Not running a UPS? Turn the it off then. *Disable Windows Time. You don't need another flaming clock, and you don't need Windows keeping an eye on it either. Turn it off. *Disable WMI Performance Adapter. You don't need it, you don't know what it is. *Automatic Update. If you manually check for XP updates, disable this. Me, I'm apathetic lazy and shiftless, I leave it on. *Background Intelligent Transfer If you disable auto update disable this too, it's tied to it. *DHCP Client. If you have only one computer and no router, disable this. If you do disable it, try to connect to the net. If you can't connect, re-enable it. *Help and Support. You don't need this running all the time, chances are you don't use it at all. Disable it. When you use it, it'll just turn back on, no big deal- just remember it'll then STAY on, so you'll have to disable it again. *Webclient. Kill it, you don't use it you don't know what it is. *Windows Installer. Set this to Manual, you hardly ever need it and it'll only use RAM when you do need it if you put it to manual. *Wireless Zero Configuration Properties. If you don't have any wifi, turn it off.
most of that looks worth trying however I am currently on a wireless network - in a hotel vpn'ing back to the head office, and this afternoon I telnetting onto a remote workstation to start a VNC session so I could drive it down the web. a lot of what you say makes sense though
Can you help with a problem - my system restore wont it goes through the procedure - shuts down - restarts - then says unable to restore to earlier point. I have disabled Norton prior to doing this.
