i know a few tweaks to increase performance of Windows XP. well here goes...

1. enter this in the run window without the quotations, and reboot. "FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 1"
this disables last access timestamps that XP has. When every you execute a file, along with of course executing the file, XP creates a timestamp, which saves the time/date you did it. This isnt going to be very noticable, but every little bit adds up

2. turn off the indexing service(the search feature). this process is a bit of a memory hog, and most people know where the needed files are. there are alternatives to the windows search as well. to do this in run, type services.msc and change the startup of type of indexing service to disabled or manual.

3.add this information to the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SYSTEM>CurrentControlSet>Control>PriorityControl
on the top menu of the registry editor click Edit>New>DWORD Value, name it Win32PrioritySeparation and then make the hexadecimal value 26. this makes the CPU pay more attention to foreground core proccesses running, and less to background processes. 3 times as much

4. In the registry editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SYSTEM>CurrentControlSet>Control>Session Manager>Memory Management and double click on DisablePagingExecutive and change the value to 1. next change the value of LargeSystemCache to 1. LargeSystemCache forces the operating system to allocate all of your RAM cept 4 MB as filesystem cache, and the 4mb left are used for diskcaching. DisablePagingExecutive restricts the core aspects of the OS from being sent to page file, and stored on RAM instead, which makes XP more responsive. OF course your gonna not have as much free ram, but if you have a decent amount installed(512+), this should not be a problem.a good way to see the effects of these tweaks is to fire up one of the microsoft office programs such as Word or Powerpoint, completely close it and then launch it again. IF the tweak worked properly the program should launch VERY fast. but dont forget to restart windows after registry changes or they wont take effect.

5. This one is hard for some to except, but the XP style GUI is laggier than the windows classic, even on computers with high-end graphics. go to Control panel>System, and under the advanced tab, click the settings button under performance, then the visual styles tab, and select adjust for best performance. check only the imporant boxes in the below window such as "smooth edges of screen fonts," and click OK. Windows will now look like Windows 2000, but it will run better.

hope these tips/tweaks help speed up XP for you, but remember it isnt always THAT noticable so dont hate me if you think you just wasted your time.

WARNING

Dont not follow this tweak unless you have 1 gigabyte of ram or more!!!!!! This can cause major operating system instability without alot of memory.

"4. In the registry editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SYSTEM>CurrentControlSet>Control>Session Manager>Memory Management and double click on DisablePagingExecutive and change the value to 1. next change the value of LargeSystemCache to 1. LargeSystemCache forces the operating system to allocate all of your RAM cept 4 MB as filesystem cache, and the 4mb left are used for diskcaching. DisablePagingExecutive restricts the core aspects of the OS from being sent to page file, and stored on RAM instead, which makes XP more responsive. OF course your gonna not have as much free ram, but if you have a decent amount installed(512+), this should not be a problem.a good way to see the effects of these tweaks is to fire up one of the microsoft office programs such as Word or Powerpoint, completely close it and then launch it again. IF the tweak worked properly the program should launch VERY fast. but dont forget to restart windows after registry changes or they wont take effect."

I have XP Pro SP2 on a Dell Latitude D600 with 512 MB of RAM.
Applied all changes recommended in this post.

I'm amazed at the improvement results.
Thanks a bunch Tim

awesome!! your very welcome

Techsomething, I would like to use these tweaks, but I was wondering if yours could have an adverse effect on gaming, or just the opposite. I have 1GB if RAM.

it wont make a difference in gaming

Oh, sorry Tim. I didn't realize he quoted you!

Thanx for the tips. Applying them now.

Lanscader

thats ok, i just hope that you guys see improvements!

Hey, I have tryed the steps as you say twice and each time windows restarts everytime its finished the loading screen!

Then i have to use GoBack- Wich is a VERY usful program- to revert back.

I have Win XP SP2, 2.4Ghz Intel, 1gig or ram, nvidia Geforce FX 256....

Is there somthing im doing wrong? thx

Are you getting "Blue screen"s ?

no im not getting a blue screen, just right when windows is finished loading it reboots. then i have to restor w/ goback. thx

Could it be than im not restarting after each and every step?

maybe, because u are making very drastic changes in the registry. it has to accept a little bit at a time. that is why when you install a new age game it has to reboot because it made changes to the registry.

Ok, thx I got it to work. took a long time tho- restart, restart, restart!
Great results!!

dang this stuff look really helpful and cool, but I ONLY HAVE 256MB of RAM

u can do everything EXCEPT step 4. other than that itll all work fine

Wow, just by doing the last one and I've seen better performance already.

I have done them all and i can tell the difference when loading the desktop yes, but my laptop (Compaq Presario V2002) still takes a while to load when the windows logo and black background loads at the start.

Also one small thing that tends to annoy me is the "humph" sound windows makes when an error has occured, and i hear it evertime i start the computer as if something has failed to load, but for the life of me just cant find out why.

These tweaks do nothing if you re-boot daily.

Whenever you open a program, it will always open quicker the next time.

The delete indexing made it so my XP search could not find even a *.bat file.

I may be a noobee, but I know what doesn't work....

i have 512 mb ram installed, but only 478 show in sysinfo. shou'ld i try these tweaks? thanx, p.

I'm trying to perform this edit but when I come to creating the Win32PrioritySeparation bit it I already have a file named that. It has the hex value of 2 in the one already there.

If I change that to 26 will it just bring the same effects or will it damage the computer in any way?

Change the value as posted, and reboot. But, it's always reccomended to backup the registry prior to editing (File-Export.....etc), or have a backup image of your system partition, just in case.

The tweak that I found really, really helpful was turning off the display setting and going with the Windows 2000 look. There was at least a 30% increase in speed for me. My free ram jumped from 545 mb free all the way up to 730 mb free at times. That was also including all of the other tweaks needless to say but it did work.;)

When I try to do step #2, I get an error "Your current security settings prhibit running Activex controls on this page. "

How do I change?

Nevermind, I got it..

i have just tried the #4 and now when restart my laptop is says insufficient memory and the computer does nothing. Its basically stopped working. A lot of stuff is really slow and it says a lot of .dll files are missing.

I tried to boot in safe mode and tried a system restore but they are not working.

Will ihave to reformat??

thanks

i have a amd ath 64 3500+ with 2 gigs memory installed will these tweeks help me.......



ok did all tweeks didnt notice much of a improvement but thanks anyway

A really good article: What Really Slows Windows Down

I tried the changes that Tim described plus changed the look to Win 2000, what a difference
all runs much smoother

Thanks for the tip

i love this forum because i really learn about.
i new here
please contact me

david lewis

//Mod edit to remove commercial URL link per BC Board Discussion rules.

Can anyone tell me if these changes would have any adverse affect with my networking (local)?

Thanks in Advance!

There shouldn't be any trouble.

Also I think that a warning should have been posted saying that if you edit your registry you could ruin the computer beyond repair.

-Steve

I have the slowest/oldest computer ever! It's like 6 or 7 years old and only 128MB of RAM..can I still perform all these steps (except #4) with any significant effect? I just don't want to make this computer worse than it already is.

.ashley.:

Most are just little tweaks (aside from the 2 registry edits) and will increase performance slightly. However the one that gives the most bang for the buck is definitely the last one. On a PC with (IMHO) less than 512MB RAM you should run the Classic GUI. If you decide to edit your registry make a backup before you do so and create a restore point as well.

the biggest performance tweak after the best performance one is keeping programs from loading at startup

out of 512 megs of ram I try to keep over 300 available for tasks that I will perform

it's easy to just throw more ram at the bloat

having plenty of free space and keeping your system drive clean and defragged is essential

run lean and mean

Hello .ashley.,

A more complete description of these tweaks, with more detailed cautions/warnings (and some humor ), can be found at:

http://kadaitcha.cx/performance.html

Thanks for all the info everybody! I really appreciate it. I'll try to figure out these things then.

Is there an automatic Windows XP optimizer available?

Yeah that's what we all need! It runs 24/7 continuously tweaking as we work.

There are many of them out there - but each has it's benefits and drawbacks. One that I remember was X-Setup - but that was a long time ago and it was more of a tweaking utility than an optimizer.

Optimizing is a long, drawn out process when done correctly - and it works by giving you a bunch of little "gains" that all add up to a visible gain in performance. But each choice has to be researched - otherwise you may end up hurting the system's performance (since everything is somewhat inter-related).

First try pruning your startups by using the Startup List at the top of the page. After that, move on to services - and go to http://www.blackviper.com for info about them.

It would be great if MS put the more useful tweaks in and set them as optional extras to turn on just like many more useless features they had turned off by default.
I've tested many XP optimizers and XP-Smoker has the best one click optimization but TweakXP Pro is by far the best at making your pc faster.
There are so, so many things that can be changed to make your computer faster - depending on user preference.

Thanks! Will try it!

Ha Ha couldn't fool me wit your sign I'm actually using IE8 beta 1 and it sucks use IE7 instead and also get the IE7Pro addon . Thanks for the Guide But some of them you shouldn't do

There is a utility from Microsoft called TweakUI. While it's not really an "optimizer" it does expose many, many tweaks in a concise package. Check it out (along with some other nifty tools from MS) on the Microsoft Powertoys for Windows XP page: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloa...ppowertoys.mspx

I would like to try #3, but how do I access my registry?

Before you snicker, there are no "stupid " questions.

Thank you in advance.

I might as well add this question too........

Do these changes need to be done every time I restart my computer or am I misunderstanding some replies in this thread?

Nevermind guys, I think I figured it out......regedit.

Let me know if I'm wrong.

Not wrong - just dangerous!

Make sure that you backup your registry prior to messing around inside it.

Actually, I ended up doing all 5 and it does seem to be faster without any problems.

I did not do a backup.

Hopefully it won't come back to bite me in the rear.