I remember seeing a whole topic dedicated to this... not to mention it was also a sticky... but seems i cant find it... probably lost in the crash or something... Anyways im using my sister's laptop and it is as slow as HELLLLLL.... Now can anyone tell me a few good performance tweaks to make this computer a speed demon?
Ok guys i posted these on my home page-Digital styles...please Rep/creds if worth? they took me along time write up on dc...thanks Ok heres a few useful major and minor detials to tweak you complete system performance up If you are looking for perfomance....(Not the look!) 1->A real memory hog.....>>Disable all sound aplication (System start,System exit,Recycle bin,Click sound......ect).....Disable all. 2->No wallpaper 3->No Theme 4->No Screensaver 5->Apperance.....Set it to "Windows Clasic Style" 6->Apperance-Effects Tab........No effects at all 7->As an alternate option.....Desktop set as "16 bits" And Now the More Serious Tweaks Auto Delete the Temporary Folder: 1. Click Start > Run > Type gpedit.msc > Click "OK" 2. Double-click "Computer Configuration" > "Administrative Templates" > "Windows Components" > "Terminal Services" > "Temporary Folder" 3. Right-click "Do Not Delete Temp Folder Upon Exit" 4. Go to Properties > Click Disable Now next time Windows copies a temperary file in that folder, it will automatically delete it when its done! Note from Admin: GPEDIT (Group Policy Editor) is only available in XP Pro. Contiguous File Allocation Size: This tweak optimizes the Contiguous File Allocation Size for the File System, and can be especially useful for disk intensive applications. 1. Open Regedit (Click Start > Run > Type regedit > Click "OK") 2. Navigate Tto: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem 3. Create a DWORD value (Right-click > New > DWORD Value) named "ConfigFileAllocSize," and set the value to "200" (In Hex), or 512 (In Decimal) Decrease System Loading Time by Changing Network Settings: When you start up your computer, and you are connected to a LAN (your computer is set to DHCP), and your computer has to search for the DHCP server and requests the IP address and all other configuration. This process takes up a considerable amount of time, and slows down the time it takes to boot up the computer. Following the directions below will help your set a static IP address. Even if your ISP says to use DHCP, this tweak may still work for you, but you are warned! 1. Click Start > Run > Type CMD > "OK" 2. In the Command Prompt, type ipconfig > Push Enter This will show you your current IP's that your NIC and PPPoE adapters have. Only pay attention to your Ethernet Card Adapter, not to the PPP adapter. 3. Right-click "My Network Places" > Select Properties from the drop down menu. This will open up the Network Connections window. In here, locate your Local Area Network connection > Right-click it > Select Properties from that drop down menu. 4. When the Next Window opens up, select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and click "Properties" at the bottom. 5. In the proceeding window, click "Use the following IP Address". This is where that DOS window comes in handy. 6. Copy the same exact IP Address from your Ethernet card (in the Command Prompt window) and place it where it says IP Address. Same goes for the Subnet Mask and Default Gateway. If your Default Gateway is blank, then just leave it blank. Click "OK", then "OK" again. 7. Exit the DOS window (Or just type Exit > Push Enter), and reboot. Now there is absolutely NO loading. You can connect as soon as you see your desktop. Quick Note: If you use DHCP (Dynamic IP Address) to connect to the net, you may find that your net connection does not work after this. So if some day your network connection stops working, just go back into the NIC card properties and select automatically get IP address and reboot. Decrease your Applications Startup Time: By default, mi@rosoft includes the /prefetch:1 switch to speed up the Windows Media Player application start time. This switch can be used for other Windows applications, and also many third party applications. Example #1 If you have AOL 8.0 installed on the computer, complete these steps outlined below to add the /prefetch:1 switch to AOL's Target path. 1. Right-click on the AOL shortcut and select properties from the menu. 2. In the "Target:" Field, add the "/prefetch:1" switch to the very end of the path. IE: "C:\Program Files\America Online 8.0\aol.exe" /prefetch:1" 3. Click "OK" Now start AOL. It should load at least 50 times faster than ever before. Example #2 1. Click on Start >Go to "All Programs" > Accessories > System Tools 2. Right-click on "System Restore" > Select "Properties" > Add the "/prefetch:1" suffix to the Target Path entry > Click "OK" It should look something like: "%ystemRoot%\System32\restore\rstrui.exe /prefetch:1" 3. Click "OK" Now System Restore will start immediately when executed. Note: This switch will only work with some programs. Others will return a message saying the program in the target box is invalid. If this occurs, just remove the switch. Delete Your Prefetch Automatically: Here's an easy way to delete your prefetch, Automatically!! 1. Go to My Computer, and double-click your hard drive (C. 2. Right-click anywhere that a file is not and selected > Click "New" > "Text Document" 3. Name it "deleteprefetch" 4. Double-click on the text file you just created. 5. Type "del C:\Windows\Prefetch\*.* /Q" (without the quotes). 6. Go to File > Save As > Choose "All Files" from the "Save as Type" box > Save it as "deleteprefetch.bat" 7. You just created a batch file that will automatically delete all the files in your Prefetch folder. Run it whenever you please (approximately once every month is recommended). Disable Automatic Updating: A lot of people already know about Automatic Updates, and how to disable them by selecting the appropriate option from within the Automatic Updates tab in My Computer. A lot of you might not realize this, but the Automatic Update service still runs even when you select to disable it here. To turn it off completely (And for good), do as follows: 1. Open the Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services. 2. Highlight the service called "Automatic Updates". You will know when you have the correct file because you will see a description of its purpose. 3. Right-click Automatic Updates once you highlighted it, and click "Stop" to terminate the service. 4. Right-click on it again, and go to Properties. Half way down the first tab there is "Startup Type:". Change this to "Disabled." Congratulations. You have now disabled Automatic Updates service. Not only will this make certain the service won't run, but by disabling it properly you are freeing up system resources, as they won't be diverted to running a service that you don't use. Disable Auto-Reboot: When Running Windows and it crashes, you will get a blue screen and it will automatically restart, or it will restart too fast for you to see the error message. You could check the error log in this case but that is too easy. The following will show you how to disable auto restart on system failure. 1. Open the Control Panel > Double-click System 2. Go to Advanced 3. Under the Startup and Recovery section, Click "Settings..." 4. Under System Failure, un-check "Automatically Restart" Disable Debug Scripting in Internet Explorer: Don't you hate it when you are browsing a page, and IE asks you "Would you like to debug this page?" Well here's a nifty and easy way to turn it off: 1. Right-click on Internet Explorer > Click Properties ----- Or ----- Open Internet Explorer > Click the Tools dropdown menu > Click Internet Options 2. Click The "Advanced" Tab 3. The 4th Item in "Browsing" should say "Disable Script Debugging" 4. Check it, and you are all set! Enjoy a debug-free browsing experience! Disable Indexing Services: Indexing Services is a small program that hogs HUGE amounts of RAM, and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of the files on your system, so you can search for them quickly, but it's completely unnecessary. To disable it, do the following: 1. Open the Control Panel > Double-click "Add/Remove Programs." 2. Click the Add/Remove Window Components. 3. Simply uncheck "Indexing Services" and click Next. Note from Admin: Indexing service creates a database index of all files on your system when the system is otherwise idle. Unless you do frequent searches, it is suggested you disable this service. Disable Prefetch for Low Memory Systems: If you have an older computer, (about 3 years old), it probably has about 128megs of RAM. The Windows XP Prefetch can take a lot of this up by preloading programs at boot as well as preloading programs you often use, thus sucking away your valuable RAM. Here's how to disable (disable, not delete) your Prefetch. 1. Open Regedit (Start > Run > Type regedit > Click "OK") 2. Navigate to: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher] 3. Set the value to either 0-Disable. 4. Exit and reboot Disable Recent Documents History: Normally when you open or access a document or file, it is added to the list of recent documents on the Start Menu. This tweak will stop files from being added to the list. 1. Open Regedit (Start > Run > Type regedit > Click "OK") 2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\mi@rosoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ Explorer 3. Create a new DWORD value (Right-click > New > DWORD Value), or modify the existing value called 'NoRecentDocsHistory' 4. Set the value to equal "1" to enable the restriction. 5. Exit and reboot. Edit Hidden System Settings using Group Policy Editor: Windows XP Pro has a great program called Group Policy Editor, that allows system administrators to modify the settings, and configure a great number of windows features. To start the program, follow the directions below: 1. Click Start > Run 2. Type gpedit.msc and click "OK" 3. Navigate through the different nodes of the tree to see all the hidden features of Windows XP that you can edit without touching the registry. Examples: Changing IE displays, Clearing the Pagefile at shutdown, Boot-time Defrag settings, and many many more! Note: Many tweaks in this section will use the GPE, please refer to them before making any alternations you are unaware of. Enable or Disable Boot Defrag: A great new feature in mi@rosoft 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 is enabled, but in some builds of Windows XP, it's not available. The following will show you how to turn it on/off. 1. Open Regedit (Start > Run > Type regedit > Click "OK") 2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\mi@rosoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction 3. Select "Enable" from the list on the right. 4. Right-click it > Select Modify. 5. Change the value to Y to enable and N to disable. 6. Exit and Reboot. Modify Application Timeout: The Windows XP operating system has a set amount of time that a program must be idle for before it is timed out. Often, this number is set too high. But in some circumstances, it is set too low. Depending on if the program is doing a lot of calculations in the background, the computer may think that it is timed out. To prevent this increase do the following: 1. Open Regedit (Start > Run > Type regedit > Click "OK") 2. Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop 3. Select HungAppTimeout from the list on the right. 4. Right-click it > Select Modify. 5. Change the value to the new timeout value to approximately 200. 6. Exit and reboot. Remove Start-Up Items: Having programs run when Windows loads obviously slows down startup time. There are two ways do disable programs that may be in your startup (like ICQ, Messenger, Etc) The easiest is to do the following: 1. Start > Run > Type msconfig > Click "OK" 2. Click the "Startup" tab (furthest right) 3. Uncheck any items you don't want to load when Windows starts. The second method is deleting invalid registry entries. This can be done by doing the following: 1. Open Regedit (Start > Run > Type regedit > Click "OK") 2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\mi@rosoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run 3. Delete any entry's that you don't want to load up 4. Exit and reboot Shave 2 Seconds Off Boot Time: The following is script that runs on shutdown, that deletes the temp folder and any history. To do so, you must create a batch file by doing the following: 1. Open Notepad and copy the following code into the blank document: ---------------------------------------------Code Start--------------------------------------------- RD /S /q "C:\Documents and Settings\"UserName without quotes"\Local Settings\History" RD /S /q "C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\History" RD /S /q "D:\Temp\" <--"Deletes temp folder, type in the location of your temp folder" ---------------------------------------------Code End--------------------------------------------- 2. Save the file as anything .bat (IE: deltemp.bat) 3. Now click Start > Run > Type gpedit.msc > Click "OK" > Double-click "Computer Configuration" > "Windows Settings" > "Scripts and double-click on Shutdown" > Click Add and find the batch file you created and press ok to set the script Speed up Menu Appearance Without Causing Problems with Zero Delay: Follow these steps to avoid menus popping up too fast when opening up the Start Menu, or any other menu you may use: 1. Run Regedit (Start > Run > Type regedit > OK) 2. Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop 3. Select "MenuShowDelay" from the list on the right. 4. Right-click on it > Select Modify. 5. Change the value to only 150. It's the perfect speed setting for menus appear quick, but not to quick so that the un-wanted ones appear. 6. Exit and reboot. Unload .Dll's to Free Memory: Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in the memory for a period of time, after the application using them has been closed. This can definitely be an inefficient use of memory. Here's how to reclaim it: 1. Run Regedit (Start > Run > Type regedit > OK) 2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\mi@rosoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer 3. Create a new Sub-key named "AlwaysUnloadDLL," and set the default value to equal "1" to disable Windows caching the DLL in the memory. 4. Exit and reboot.
Wow, amazing guide it is worth a +rep but I can't. I suggest you throw in another 512mb stick of ram for a more expensive solution.
