Top 15 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your Windows Xp:
Here is Collection of Top 15 simple and easy ways to boost your windows XP performance and speed up tasks.Make your Xp Super Fast after reading this article.
1.Disable Extra Startup Programs
There are certain programs that Windows will start every time you boot up your system, and during the startup phase, they’re all competing for a slice of your CPU speed. Extra or unwanted items in the startup list will definitely increase your startup time, perhaps by several minutes. Some common examples are things related to AOL, RealPlayer, Napster, instant messengers, and video managers. If you’re not sure about an item, no big deal. You can turn it off, restart your PC, and see if everything seems to work. If not, you can always go back and re-enable an item in the Startup list. This tip alone should speed up your start-up by 250%.
Here are is what you have to do:
1. Click Start -> Run -> type MSCONFIG -> Ok
2. Click Services Tab
3. Uncheck Hide all Microsoft Services (It can be found besides Ok and Cancel button)
4. Uncheck the services that you don’t want to start when the computer boots. If you are not sure, you can disable everything except Antivirus software
5. Click Ok and Restart the computer.
2.Remove Spyware, Adware,and Malware:
Have you scanned your system for spyware, adware and other unwanted pests?
1 of 6 Computers has some sort of Spyware or Malware! They dramatically slow down your computer because they use resources to generate popup ads, send spam, and often interfere with the operation of good programs.
If you haven’t scanned recently, I recommend a free scan from a good anti-spyware program. I usually prefer to use stand-alone, high quality anti-spyware programs like XoftSpy Pro, which give us the ability to scan and repair these problems in seconds.
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3.Optimize Display Settings
Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources.
To optimize:
1. Click the Start button
2. Select Control Panel
3. Double-click the System icon
4. Click the Advanced tab
5. In the Performance box click Settings
6. 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
7. Finally, click Apply and OK.
4.Speed-Up File Browsing:
You may have noticed that every time 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 every time you open Windows Explorer.
To fix this and to increase browsing speed significantly:
1. Open My Computer
2. Click the Tools menu
3. Select 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
5.Reduce Page File Size:
Page file size is not constant by default. Due to this, the operating system has to resize the file each time more space is required. This is a performance overhead. All you have to do is to set the file size to a reasonable limit.
Follow the steps:
1. Right-click My Computer, Select Properties
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. Click the Settings button under the Performance section
4. Click the Advanced tab
5. Under the Virtual Memory section click the Change button
6. “Virtual Memory” dialogue box will appear.
7. Highlight the C: drive containing page file
8. Select the Custom Size radio button and give same values in Initial size and Maximum size fields:
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.
9. Click Set, then Click OK.
6.Clean Your System Registry:
The most effective and easiest way to give your computer blazing speed is to clean up your system’s Registry.
Regcure
Your computer is like your car: it needs periodic maintenance to keep it running at optimum performance. Installing and un-installing programs, surfing the Internet, emailing, and other everyday activities create a sort of “sludge†that builds up in your computer over time, much like an automobile engine. After a while, it doesn’t startup like when it was new, it stalls unexpectedly, and performance is sluggish on the (information) highway.
I strongly recommend running a free Registry scan to find out how many errors you computer is hiding from you. Your computer will likely have hundreds of Registry errors that are dramatically slowing down the potential speed and performance.
7.Run Disk Clean-Up:
Both Windows and application programs tend to leave temporary files lying around on your hard drive, taking up space. A hard drive that is close to being “full†can cause Windows to slow down or interfere with efficient disk access and virtual memory operations.
If you surf the web a lot, your temporary internet files folder can become quite large, causing Internet Explorer to slow down or malfunction. Cleaning up unneeded files, scanning for disk errors and defragmenting the hard drive can help to restore some zip to your system. Try to run once a month for peak performance.
1. Double-click the My Computer icon.
2. Right-click on the C: drive
3. Select Properties.
4. Click the Disk Cleanup button(to the bottom-right of the Capacity pie graph)
5. Select / check Temporary Internet Files and Recycle Bin
6. Click OK
8.Enable Direct Memory Access (DMA):
1. Right-click on My Computer, select Properties
2. Select the Hardware tab
3. Click the Device Manager button
4. Double-click IDE/ATAPI controllers
5. Double-click on the Primary IDE Channel.
6. Click on the Advanced Settings tab (as shown in figure) The tab may or may not be available for each option. It is only available in Primary and Secondary Channels.
7. Set the Transfer Mode to “DMA if Available” both for Device 1 and 0
8. Click OK
9. Perform the same operation for other items in the list, if applicable.
9.Disable File Indexing:
Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of memory 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, this system service is completely unnecessary.
To disable do the following:
1. Click Star.
2. Select the Control Panel
3. Double-click Add/Remove Programs
4. Click the Add/Remove Window Components icon on the left side of the window
5. This may take a few seconds to load. Be patient.
6. Look for the “Indexing Services†component in the list
7. Uncheck the Indexing Services
8. Click Next
9. Click Finish
10.Remove Un-Used Programs & Files:
You may have a bunch of software packages on your hard drive that are no longer needed, or they were gratuitously installed when you downloaded some other package. Toolbars, file-sharing programs, free email enhancers, online shopping “companions” and download managers are notorious for this practice. These uninvited guests can put a big drag on your startup time, cause web pages to load slowly, and generally bog down your computer.
1. Click Start button
2. Select Control Panel
3. Double-click Add/Remove Programs icon
4. See what programs are installed that you don’t typically use
5. Select the Remove button for the ones you know you don’ need
If you’re unsure about some programs, do a web search to learn about the ones that you need to keep.
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When using the Start menu then you will notice a delay between different tiers of the menu hierarchy. For the fastest computer experience possible I recommend changing this value to Zero. This will allow the difference tiers to appear instantly. Start –> Run (Windows + R) –>Regedit.
*Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
*Select MenuShowDelayfrom the list on the right.
*Right click on it and select Modify.
*Change the value to 0.
*Reboot your computer.
12. 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:\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.
13.Perform a Boot Defragment:
There’s a simple way to speed up XP startup: make your system do a boot defragment, which will put all the boot files next to one another on your hard disk. When boot files are in close proximity to one another, your system will start faster.
On most systems, boot defragment should be enabled by default, but it might not be on yours, or it might have been changed inadvertently.
To make sure that boot defragment is enabled:
- Run the Registry Editor
- Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
- Set the Enable string value to Y if it is not already set to Y.
- Exit the Registry
- Reboot
14.Defragement your PC:
Regularly scheduled defragmentation your PC is very important in maintaining your hard drive’s optimum performance.By defragmenting your hard drive you do just that, your computer organizes all of its files and thereby makes retrieveing them faster and easier every time.
15.Improve Windows Xp Shutdown Speed:
This tweak reduces the time XP waits before automatically closing any running programs when you give it the command to shutdown.
1.Go to Start–> Run
2.Type ‘Regedit’ and click ok
3.Find ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop’Select 4.Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
5.Right click and select Modify
6.Change the value to 1000
7.Click OK
8.Now select HungAppTimeout
9.Right click and select Modify
10.Change the value to 1000
11.Click OK
12.Now find HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
13.Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
14.Right click and select ‘Modify’
15.Change the value to ‘1000′
16.Click ‘OK’
17.Now find ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control’
18.Select ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’
19.Right click and select ‘Modify’
20.Change the value to ‘1000′
21.Click ‘OK’
That’s it. I hope you find these tips will be Very useful – you should now see a noticeable speed improvement if you make all of these changes correctly.Hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised!