Simple Ways to Increase the Performance of your Windows XP in 5 Minutes or Less
# 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. Go to Start button > Run
2. Type "msconfig", without quotations
3. Hit enter key or click the OK button
4. A System Configuration Utility window will show up
5. Click the Startup tab
6. In the Startup tab you will see several boxes and some of them
will selected (checked). All you have to do is to uncheck
extra items that are of no use. If you run an antivirus
program it is not recommended to uncheck it.
7. After making you choices press the OK button, you will be
prompted to restart computer to apply changes.
8. After restarting your computer a dialogue will be displayed.
You can check the option for not showing this dialogue every
time your PC reboots.
# 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, we recommend a free scan from a good anti-spyware program. We 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.
FINAL NOTE: Recent testing has shown that stand-alone programs
do a much better job than the “all-in-one” packages (eg. Norton Internet Security) at detecting spyware, adware, and malware.
# 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:
a. Show shadows under menus
b. Show shadows under mouse pointer
c. Show translucent selection rectangle
d. Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
e. Use visual styles on windows and buttons
7. Finally, click Apply and OK
# 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. Double-click on 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
# 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 (also shown in the figure below)
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 OK buttons to apply the changes
