Speeding Up your Windows XP

This tutorial helps in speeding up your system significantly.
Before you begin using this tutorial, kindly follow these tips:

•     Follow every instructions very carefully.
•     Make a back-up copy of your hard disks, in case you do anything wrong.
•     Make a system restore point. In case you do anything wrong, you can just restore your PC to earlier settings.
•     Before editing the registry, backup the registry first.
•     Most changes take place after you reboot your PC.

OK…Lets Begin

1. Convert Your Hard Drive to NTFS

If your drive is using FAT16 or FAT32, you can gain performance by converting it to NTFS.

•     Click on the Start
•     Click Run
•     Type cmd
•     Enter
•     Type CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS
•     Enter

Follow the instructions and your drive will be converted to NTFS.
NOTE: NTFS drives can only be accessed by Windows 2000/NT/XP and Vista. Older versions of Windows are only compatible with FAT, FAT16 and FAT32.

2. Remove Malware from your System

Spyware comes bundled with a lot of free software found on the Internet. It can slow your machine down to a crawl. Download and install Spybot Search & Destroy, start your computer in Safe Mode and give your machine a full scan for spyware.

3. 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:

• Click Start
• Click Settings
• Click Control Panel
• Double-click Add/Remove Programs
• Click the Add/Remove Window Components
• Uncheck the Indexing services
• Click Next
• Click OK

4. Reduce Visual Effects

Reduce Windows XP can look good …but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources.

• Click Start
• Right click My Computer
• Go to the Advanced tab in the Performance area
• Click Settings
• Choose "Adjust for best performance"

If you still want to keep the look of Windows XP, you can leave the last 3 check boxes selected. It is recommended that you do uncheck these boxes when installing a big or graphics heavy program (like the Adobe programs). Sometimes unchecking these will help rendering pictures, movies or listening music.

5. 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:

• Open My Computer
• Click on Tools menu
• Click on Folder Options
• Click on the View tab
• Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
• Click Apply
• Click Ok
• Reboot your computer

6.Improve Swapfile Performance

It basically makes sure that your PC uses every last drop of memory (faster than swap file) before it starts using the swap file.

• Click Start
• Click Run
• Type msconfig
• Enter
• Click on the System.ini tab
• Expand the 386enh tab by clicking on the plus sign
• Click on new
• In the blank box type ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
• Press Enter
• Restart your PC for the changes to take effect

7. 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.

• Right click on Desktop and select Properties
• Select the Desktop tab
• In the Background window select None
• Click Ok

8. Optimize Display Settings

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

• Click Start
• Click Settings
• Click Control Panel
• Double-click System
• Click Advanced tab
• In the Performance tab click Settings
• Leave only the following ticked

   1. Show shadows under menus
   2. Show shadows under mouse pointer
   3. Show translucent selection rectangle
   4. Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
   5. Use visual styles on windows and buttons

9. Optimise Your Pagefile

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

• Right click on My Computer and select Properties
• Select the Advanced tab
• Under Performance choose the Settings button
• Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
• 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.

10. 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.

• Open Control Panel
• Open Fonts folder

Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBACKUP) 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.

11. Disable Services

• Click Start
• Click Run
• Type services.msc
• Enter

To turn off a service, double-click on it and select Disabled under Startup type.
For normal use, disable the following services:

• Alerter
• Background Intelligent Transfer Service
• ClipBook
• Computer Browser
• Error Reporting Service
• Help and Support
• Indexing Service
• IPSEC Services
• Messenger
• NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
• Network DDE
• Network DDE DSDM
• Performance Logs and Alerts
• Portable Media Serial Number
• QOS RSVP
• Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
• Remote Registry
• Secondary Logon
• Server
• Smart Card
• Smart Card Helper
• SSDP Discovery Service
• System restore Service
• TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
• Uninterruptible Power Supply
• Universal Plug and Play Device Host
• WebClient
• Windows time
• Wireless Zero Configuration
• WMI Performance Adapter

Before disabling any services, read the description. You might need it for proper functioning of your system.

12. Remove Unwanted Programs from Startup

• Click Start
• Click Run
• Type msconfig
• Enter
• Click on the Startup tab
• Uncheck any programs you dont want Windows to load at startup

Please be careful what you remove from here.If you don’t know what a particular program is do a Google search on the name of the process and then decide whether to keep it or not.

13. Remove Widgets and Background

Different third party widgets and visual styles like for Vista like look and feel make your system slow. If you remove such packages you system will perform better on CPU and memory intensive tasks. Selecting default and no wallpaper as background also gives better performance than that of "high quality" wallpapers.

14. Enable Direct Memory Access (DMA)

• Right Click My Computer
• Select properties
• Select the Hardware tab
• Click the Device Manager button
• Double click IDE/ATAPI controllers
• Keep on checking if DMA is enabled for each, you have to double click each option
• Click Advanced Settings tab. The tab may or may not be available for each option. It is only available in Primary and Secondary Channels.
• Set the transfer mode to "DMA if Available" both for Device 1 and 0
• Perform the same operation for other items in the list, if applicable.

15. Defragmentation

Defrag your disk drives twice a month for faster data access.

• Click Start
• All Programs
• Accessories
• System Tools
• Disk Defragmenter
• Select a drive and click ‘Defragment’

This will start the defragmentation process.

16. Update Windows

I recommend that you use Windows XP Service Pack 3, and update your computer using Windows Update to resolve known security and stability problems. This will give you a stable operating system that has been built to handle your system resources best. Also, make sure all your device drivers are up-to-date.

17. Disable Fast User Switching

• Click Start
• Click Run
• Type control userpasswords
• Enter
• In the User Accounts window, click on Change the way users log on or off
• Make sure the Use the Welcome screen option is ticked
• Uncheck Use Fast User Switching
• Click on Apply Options
• Close the window

Few Registry Tweaks

18. Make Menus Load Faster

• Click Start
• Click Run
• Type regedit
• Enter
• Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
• Select MenuShowDelay
• Right click and select Modify
• Reduce the number to around 20, but not too less
• Close Registry Editor

19 Improve Boot Times

• Click Start
• Click Run
• Type regedit
• Enter
• Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
• Select Enable from the list on the right
• Right click on it and select Modify
• Change the value to Y to enable
• Enter
• Close Registry Editor

20. Improve Shutdown Speed

This tweak reduces the time XP waits before automatically closing any running programs when you give it the command to shutdown.

• Click Start
• Click Run
• Type regedit
• Enter
• Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
• Right click WaitToKillAppTimeout & Select Modify
• Change the value to 1000
• Enter
• Right click HungAppTimeout and Select Modify
• Change the value to 1000
• Enter
• Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control
• Right click WaitToKillServiceTimeout and select Modify
• Change the value to 1000
• Enter
• Close Registry Editor