The outcome of each modification will vary to each PC's. I had focused on the XP OS machine regardless of my experience on the individual setup and trouble shooting. Please do not perform any of this modification if you’re not sure and please back up your system first before attempting to modify the XP OS system.
1. Disable Unnecessary Services that is install in your system.
2. Defragment Your Pagefile(Harddrive)
Keeping your pagefile defragmented can provide a boost performance. One of the best ways of doing this is to create a separate partition on your hard drive just for your page file, so that it won’t get impacted by normal disk usage.
A new feature in Microsoft Windows XP is the ability to do a boot defragment. This places all boot files next to each other on the disk to allow for faster booting. By default this option in enables but on some builds it is not. How to enable this feature:
- Go to Start Menu and Click Run
- Type in “Regedit” then click ok
- Find “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOpt imizeFunction”
- Select “Enable” from the list on the right
- Right on it and select “Modify”
- Change the value to “Y to enable”
- Reboot
3. Windows XP has all the utilities and will operate these system along side of your preferred software and it eats a lot of memory and slows down the system. Below is a list of services that can be disabled on most of window XP machines:
- Remote Desktop Help Session Manager (disabled for extra security)
- Remote Procedure Call Locator
- Remote Registry (disabled for extra security)
- Remote Registry Service
- Alerter
- Help and Support - (If you use Windows Help and Support leave this enabled)
- Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing (disabled for extra security)
- Portable Media Serial Number
- Human Interface Access Devices
- Computer Browser
- Distributed Link Tracking Client
- Indexing Service
- IPSEC Services
- Server
- SSDP Discovery Service - (Unplug n’ Pray will disable this)
- Workstation
- Clipbook
- Secondary Logon
- Routing & Remote Access (disabled for extra security)
- Telnet
- Fast User Switching
- Messenger
- TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
- Windows Time
- Wireless Zero Configuration (Do not disable if you use a wireless network)
- Upload Manager
- Universal Plug and Play Device Host
To disable these services:
a. Go to Start and then Run and type “services.msc”
b. Doubleclick on the service you want to change
c. Change the startup type to ‘Disable”
4. Make Programs Load Faster
This small change tends to work for most programs. If your program doesn’t load properly just undo the change. For any program:
- Right-click on the icon/shortcut you use to launch the program
- Select properties
- In the ‘target’ box, add ‘ /prefetch:1′ at the end of the line.
- Click “Ok”
That simple now your program/software’s will load faster.
5. 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 it.
a. Go to Start and then Run and type “regedit”
b. Click through the file system until you get to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem”
c. Right-click in a blank area of the window on the right and select ‘DWORD Value’
d. Create a new DWORD Value called ‘NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate’
e. Then Right click on the new value and select ‘Modify’
f. Change the Value Data to ‘1′
g. Click ‘OK’
That all for now. I hope you find these tips useful - you should now see a noticeable speed improvement if you make all of these changes correctly.
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