Performance Tweaks

Windows XP has a lot of new cool looking visual elements, however, those new elements take up more RAM and cause your computer to be less responsive. By tweaking your graphics settings, you can increase the performance of your computer.

To get started, Let's reduce the color quality. This setting determines how many colors are displayed on your screen.

Right click on your desktop and select properties.
Click on the settings tab and adjust the color quality drop down box to Medium (16 Bit).
Click OK.

Next, let's use the windows performance settings to optimize your computer for performance. This will revert back to the old Windows 2000 look as well as take away a lot of the fancy graphics effects. However, if you are really into performance, this is the price you have to pay.

Right click on the My Computer icon on your desktop or in your start panel and select properties.
Next, Click on the Advanced tab and hit the setting button under performance.
On the visual effects tab, select Adjust for Best Performance and hit OK.
Hit OK once more to exit system properties.

Now your computer will run slightly faster!

2 Application Defrag

Application and Boot file Defrag

This type of defrag pushes all commonly used programs and boot files to the edge of the hard drive for faster access. Windows XP normally schedules this every three days when it is idle, however you can force it to do this by using the b switch anytime

i.e defrag c: -b

Partially correct. The "partial defrag" that the defrag -b performs takes the boot/system files indicated in \prefetch\layout.ini and moves them to the first largest piece of free space where they will fit - regardless of where on the partition the this piece of free space is. If the space is at the beginning of the partition, it will put them there. If the free space is at the end of the partition, it will move them there. Usually, the beginning of the partition does NOT have a large enough piece of contiguous free space - this process will NOT clear out free space in order to place the files.

3 ASPI Drivers

I have had some bad times trying to get CD/DVD programmers working with XP. This was do to the ASPI drivers which I have now downloaded and installed. PowerDVD, AudioCatalyst and a few others now work how they were meant to.

Click Here to download the ASPI drivers from Adaptec

4 Automate Disk Cleanup

Cleanmgr.exe is designed to clear unnecessary files from your computer's hard disk. You can use command-line options to specify that Cleanmgr.exe cleans up certain files. You can then schedule the task to run at a specific time by using the Scheduled Tasks tool.

To start the Disk Cleanup tool, either run the Cleanmgr.exe command, or click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Cleanup.

Disk Cleanup supports the following command-line options:

/d driveletter: - This option specifies the drive that you want Disk Cleanup to clean.
/sageset: n - This option displays the Disk Cleanup Settings dialog box and also creates a registry key to store the settings that you select. The n value, which is stored in the registry, allows you to specify tasks for Disk Cleanup to run. The n value can be any integer value from 0 to 65535. To have all of the options available when you use the /sageset option, you might need to specify the drive where Windows is installed.
/sagerun: n - This option runs the specified tasks that are assigned to the n value if you use the \sageset option.

For example, in Scheduled Tasks, you could run the following command after you run the cleanmgr /sageset:11 command:

cleanmgr /sagerun:11

This command runs Disk Cleanup and includes the options that you specified with the cleanmgr /sageset:11 command.

5 Backup - The easy way

NT Backup utility is, by default, installed only with XP Pro

To install it in XP Home Editon double-click this file on your Windows XP install disk cd:\VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP\NTBACKUP.MSI

Start>run>NTBACKUP

6 CD ROM Stops AutoPlaying...

...and the AutoPlay Tab has disappeared in My Computer, Devices With Removable Storage, Right Click on CDROM, Properties.

Solution:
The service: "Shell Hardware Detection" has been set to Manual or Disabled. Go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services. Return this service to "Automatic".

7 Changing CD Staging Area Folder Location

If you have a slave drive that you would rather be fragmented by multiple CD ripping, might I suggest moving your temporary CD staging folder to the slave drive? Please note that this is a WEE bit of a security concern, since you are moving your personal files into the open & out of the protection of your personal folders... BUT, if you are like me and you have only yourself on your system, and don’t care well then LETS do it!!

Go to this folder :

(your root folder)\Documents and Settings\(your username)\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\

Here you SHOULD have a folder called CD Burning - This is your temporary folder for CD burning.

In windows explorer - move this folder (Using cut & paste) to another local drive. I don’t recommend moving this folder to a removable or network drive unless you are VERY confident in its connection reliability.

You may also want to start up regedit and go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\CD Burning

and change the value of CD Burning to your new folder location.

You can reboot if you want, I don’t think you need to....

Now, you SHOULD not notice any difference, other than that you are not scratching you your system drive to burn data CD's

Enjoy...

(P.S. Use this at your own risk!)

8 Classic Start Menu Mode (Browsing Boost)

WARNING: Keep in mind that this tweak is intended for people using the "Classic Start Menu" mode to browse trough the Start Menu.

If your Start Menu loads right away when you click on it, but goes slow while you browse trough it, this will certainly solve your problem. It's quite simple actually, just follow these steps:

1. Right Click on your taskbar and choose "Properties"
2. Choose the "Start Menu" Tab and then click on "Customize"(Classic Start Menu :) Obviously)
3. Scroll Down the "Advanced Start Menu Options" list and uncheck the "Use Personalized Menus" option, click "OK", then "Apply" and "OK" to finish.

There's no need to reboot, you'll see the difference right away. Another good advice to keep you start menu working smooth is to restrict the number of programs and icons listed as much as possible, keep in mind that it works just like any other regular folder, the less you index, the faster it gets.

9 Clean your prefetch to improve performance.

This is an unique technique for WinXP. We know that it is necessary to wash registry and TEMP files for Win9X/ME/2000 periodly. Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP. However, after using XP some time, the prefetch folder can get full of rarely used or obsolete links which can slow down your computer noticeably. My suggestion is: open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete all files (or at least those more than 3 weeks old), reboot. I recommended that you do this every month.

Editor Note: Deleting prefetch files too often (Every reboot) can decrease system performance!

10 Clicking AVI Files on explorer causing 100% CPU Usage

Well windows seem to have a REALLY big problem when it comes to reading AVI files. It seems that when you click on an AVI file in explorer, it'll try to read the entire AVI file to determine the width,height, etc. of the AVI file (this is displayed in the Properties window). Now the problem with Windows is that if you have a broken/not fully downloaded AVI file that doesn’t contain this info, Windows will scan the entire AVI file trying to figure out all these properties which in the process will probably cause 100% CPU usage and heavy memory usage.

To solve this problem all you have to do is the following:

1. Open up regedit
2. Goto HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler
3. Delete the "Default" value which should be "{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}"

Voila! Please note that this will no longer provide you with the windows properties displaying the AVI file information such as width, height, bitrates etc. But it’s a small price to pay for saving you resources.

NOTE: Please use caution when using regedit. Improper usage may cause windows to behave incorrectly. Also, I cannot be held responsible. Backup your registry first.

11 Contiguous File Allocation size

This setting optimizes the contiguous file allocation size for the file system and can be especially useful for disk intensive applications. Open up your registry and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
Create a DWORD value named 'ConfigFileAllocSize' and set the value to '200' (in hex) or 512 (decimal)

12 Convert FAT32 To NTFS

To change from FAT 32 to NTFS file system for more stability, security and less fragmentation, open the command prompt and type:

Convert C: /FS:NTFS

"C" being the drive you wish to convert. Make sure there is a space between the C: and the forward slash (/). Once you press enter it will ask you for confirmation and press Y. Then press Y and enter once more to reboot.. This also works for windows XP Home.

13 Correcting System Hang at Startup

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't work for me. Here's what you do:

1. Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
2. Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

This problem with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service should have been corrected in Windows update Q 314862, part of Service Pack 1. (yoyo)

14 Decrease system loading time by changing network settings

When you start up your computer and you are connected to a LAN and your computer is set to DHCP and your computer has to search for the DHCP server and then request and IP address and all other configuration. This process takes up some time and slows down the time it takes to boot the computer up. 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!

Click Start and click on Run.
Type command in the text box and click OK.
In DOS, type ipconfig and hit enter.
This will show you your current IPs that your NIC and PPPoE adapters have. Only pay attention to your Ethernet Card Adapter, not to the PPP adapter.
Next, right click My Network Places and select Properties from the drop down menu. This will open up the Network Connections window. In here, locate your Local Area Network connection and right click it, select Properties from the drop down menu.
When the next Window that opens up, select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click Properties at the bottom.
In the next window, click 'Use the following IP Address'. This is where that DOS window comes in handy. Copy the same exact IP Address from your Ethernet card (in the dos 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.
In the DOS window type exit dos then enter. Reboot your machine.

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.

15 Decrease your Applications startup time

By default, Microsoft includes the /prefetch:1 switch to speed up it's Windows Media Player application start time. This switch can be used for other Windows applications and also many third party programs.

Example #1

You have AOL 8.0 installed on the computer. Complete the steps outlined bewlo 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, like this: "C:\Program Files\America Online 8.0\aol.exe" /prefetch:1 and then click ok.

Now start AOL. It would load at least 50 times faster than ever before.

Example #2

1, Go to the Start button/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools

2. Right click on System Restore and select properties from the menu that appears. Add the /prefetch:1 to the Target Path entry so it looks like this %ystemRoot%\System32\restore\rstrui.exe /prefetch:1 and 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. Just remove the switch (by Allan, forum admin).

16 Delete Prefetch Automatically

Here's an easy way to delete your prefetch -- Automatically!!

1. Go into My Computer and go into your hard drive.

2. Right-click anywhere that a file is not and select the 'New' submenu and click '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... and choose "All Files" from the "Save as Type" box and save it as "deleteprefetch.bat"

7. You just created a batch file that will automatically delete all the files in your Prefetch folder. Congrats.

Note: For more information on Prefetching see the following URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/platform/performance/benchmark.mspx

17 Disable automatic updating

To save memory and CPU time turn off the automatic update system in windows. You can always check manually for updates and most users have no problem with that. For those of you lazy bums out there you can leave this feature on but I warned you.

1. Open control panel.

2. (if using XPstyle control panel, click on performance and maintenance.)

3. Click on System.

4. Then click on the automatic updates tab and select Turn off automatic updating. If Service Pack 1 is installed uncheck Keep my computer up to date.

5. Click Ok.

18 Disable auto-reboot

When Running windows and it crashes you will get a blue screen and it will automatically restart, ofter 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. We are going to disable auto restart on system failure.

1. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> System (Windows+Pause works, too)
2. Go to Advanced
3. Under the Startup and Recovery section, click Settings...
4. Under System Failure un-check "Automatically restart"

19 Disable Debug Scripting in Internet Explorer

Don't you hate it when you are browsing a page it asks you "Would you like to debug this page?" Well here's a nifty and easy way to turn it off.

Right Click on Internet Explorer and Click Properties
----- or -----
Open Internet Explorer. Click Tools | Internet Options

Click The "Advanced" Tab

The 4th Item in "Browsing" should say "Disable Script Debugging"

Check it and you are all set! Enjoy a Debug-Free Browsing experience.

20 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 indexing and updates lists of the files on your system, so you can search for them quickly, but it's completely unnecessary.

To disable it, go to the Control Panel and click Add/Remove Programs. Click the Add/Remove Window Components. Simply unclick the Indexing services and click next!

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.

21 Disable Prefetch for low memory systems

If you're like me your system only 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 available RAM.

On my system, a Dell PIII 866 with 128 megs of RAM, I was able to greatly boast my system performance by disabling Prefetch all together. It used to take a half hour for the disk to stop thrashing after stopping Nortons SpeedDisk, Now it stops instantly.

Note: This tweak worked for this user and their system configuration but disabling prefetch on other systems may have a bad effect as it might free up ram but it also could increase program start up time.

Here's how to disable Prefetch.

1. run "regedit";
2. goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher];
3. Set the value to either 0-Disable.
4. reboot.

22 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.

Open your registry and find the key below.

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value called 'NoRecentDocsHistory' set the value to equal '1' to enable the restriction.

Exit your registry, you may need to restart for the changes to take effect.


(Default)	REG_SZ	(value not set)
NoRecentDocsHistory	REG_DWORD	0x00000001 (1)


	HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\...

Registry Settings

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
Value Name: NoRecentDocsHistory
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disable restriction, 1 = enable restriction)

23 Disable Search from looking in zip (compressed) files

Windows XP Search can get slow if you have a lot of compressed files on your hard drive. Speed up your searches by disabling this. Open the Run command and type the following:

regsvr32 c:\winnt\\system32\zipfldr.dll /u or

regsvr32 c:\windows\\system32\zipfldr.dll /u if installed in the windows directory

To turn this feature back on:

regsvr32 c:\winnt\\system32\zipfldr.dll or

regsvr32 c:\windows\\system32\zipfldr.dll if installed in the windows directory

24 Disable unnecessary programs

When you install some programs they will insert themselves into an area of your registry that will cause them to load when your computer starts up. Obviously this will use memory and slow down your system.

Start Regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Run
Once there, locate any entry's on the right. You can identify the program by the path to the executable. Find programs that you can live without starting up from the list.
Right click on them and select Delete
You may also want to navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Runonce and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \Run.
Delete unnecessary programs.
Also go to START - PROGRAMS - STARTUP and see if there is anything there you wish to remove.
Reboot your computer.

25 Disable unnecessary programs

You will find that many of the programs you install on your system set portions of themselves to run automatically when you start up your computer. Each program that runs on startup not only consumes system resources but also extends the length of time it takes your PC to fully boot.

Since it is generally unnecessary to have any programs running in the background (other than security software like virus-scanners or firewalls) disable your unwanted startup programs to increase your startup speed and conserve system resources.

The easiest way to go about this task is to use the MSCONFIG utility, which may be familiar to users of Windows 9x. This handy program contains a list of software which is set to start when you boot your PC. You can then easily disable and re-enable (if necessary) these items.

Go to 'start\run' and type 'msconfig' to access the utility.

The 'startup' tab in MSCONFIG provides access to several other applications that are started at boot up and are running in the background. By examining their Filenames and directories, you should be able to get a feeling for what is necessary and what is not.

Be aware than several viruses and worms have a habit of disguising themselves with authoritative sounding Windows system file names, such as the Win32.spybot.worm as MSCONFIG32.EXE. Leave these for now if you are not sure.

The next place you should go is 'start\programs\startup' which is a directory Windows XP uses to launch application shortcuts on boot-up. If you remove the shortcuts from this directory, the applications will not load on startup. This directory can also be a repository for various badness such as spyware and virus software, so if there are files here which are not shortcuts and you don't recognize them, you may wish to consider removing them anyways, as Windows will not place critical files in this directory.

26 Disable unnecessary services to free system resources

Services are programs that run when the computer starts up and continue to run as they aid the operating system in functionality. There are many services that load and are not needed which take up memory space and CPU time. Disabling these services will free up system resources which will speed up your overall computer experience. I recommend that you sort through the list and read the descriptions to decide if you need that service depending on what you want to do with your computer. Remember, you can always turn the service back on if you find that you need it in the future. Below is the procedure to turn off a service.

Click the start button.
Select run from the bottom of the right column.
Then type services.msc in the box and click ok.
Once the services window has loaded we are ready to turn off unneeded services.
For instructional purposes we are going to turn off the Portable Media Serial Number service.
Find this service in the list and select it with the mouse.
Right click and select Properties.
Once the properties windows has loaded locate the Start up type drop down box and select disable.
Then just click ok and the next time the computer starts the service will not be loaded.

27 Disable XP Boot Logo

It is possible to disable XP splash screen, which will slightly speed up the overall boot process. Be aware that removing the splash screen will also cause you not to see any boot-up messages that might come up (chkdsk, convert ... ), but if your system runs without any problems then it should not matter.

1. Edit boot.ini
2. Add " /noguiboot" right after "/fastdetect".

(or check the /noguiboot switch in msconfig on the boot.ini tab)

Upon restarting, the splash screen will be gone. It can be re-enabled by removing the new switch.

28 Disable zip folders

Are the ZIP folders too slow for you? Disable it by unregistering the file zipfldr.dll.

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

29 Disabling Automatic Updates properly

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. Go into Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.

2. Highlight the service called "Automatic Updates". You will know when you have the correct one because you will see a description about it telling you what it does.

3. Right click once highlighted 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.

30 DMA Mode on IDE Devices

Just like Windows 2000, Windows XP still fails to set the DMA mode correctly for the IDE device designated as the slaves on the primary IDE and secondary IDE channels. Most CD-ROMS are capable of supporting DMA mode, but the default in XP is still PIO. Setting it to DMA won't make your CD-ROM faster, but it will consume less CPU cycles. Here's how:

1. Open the Device Manager. One way to do that is to right click on "My Computer", select the Hardware tab, and Select Device Manager.
2. Expand "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" and double-click on "Primary IDE Channel"
3. Under the "Advanced Settings" tab, check the "Device 1" setting. More than likely, your current transfer mode is set to PIO.
4. Set it to "DMA if available".

Repeat the step for the "Secondary IDE Channel" if you have devices attached to it. Reboot.

(Note: You will not see the Advanced Settings section if your hardware does not support it)

31 Easily Disable Messenger

Open Task Manager (Start - Run - taskmgr.exe)

Go to processes tab and verify "msmsgs.exe" is not running. If it is click on the process and choose "End Process"

Go into your Program Files folder.

Rename the Messenger folder to "MessengerOFF"

If you are unable to rename the folder in this manner then boot to safe mode and make the change.

32 Easy Way to Adjust LargeSystemCache

Normally, the tweak I've seen asks you to go into HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and change the value to either O or 1 to the adjustment the
LargeSystemCache.

However, in Windows XP, all you have to do is:

1. Right click My Computer
2. Select Properties
3. Click Advanced
4. Choose Performance
5. Click Advanced again
6. Select either Programs or System Cache under Memory Usage.

Programs = 0 for the registry tweak equivalent
System Cache = 1 for the registry tweak equivalent

From arstechnica.com:
On NT Server (in this case XP), the Large System Cache option is enabled, but disabled on Workstation. The two different settings effect how the cache manager allocates free memory. If the Large Cache option is on, the manager marks all the free memory, which isn't being used by the system and/or applications, as freely available for disk caching. On the flip-side (with a small cache), the manager instead only sets aside 4MB of memory for disk caching in an attempt to accelerate the launch of applications. Or in a more technical approach, if enabled the system will favor system-cache working sets over process working sets (with a working set basically being the memory used by components of a process).

33 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 to a great number of windows features. TO start the program up follow the directions below.

1. Open the start menu and click Run
2. Type gpedit.msc
3. The Group Policy MMC appears
4. Click 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

Another tip is to add this to your Administrative Tools by adding the shortcut to gpedit.msc

34 Enable or disable boot defrag

A great 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 so below is how to turn it on.

Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
Select Enable from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to Y to enable and N to disable.
Reboot your computer.

35 Enabling/Disabling PIO/DMA

To enable or disable PIO/DMA modes simply follow these steps:

Open Device Manager: Start - Run - DevMgmt.msc

Expand the category "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers"

Right click the desired IDE controller (Primary/Secondary) and choose Properties.

Choose the "Advanced Settings" tab.

Change "Transfer Mode" as necessary.

Note: This option will only be available on hardware that supports this feature. If you are unsure please contact your hardware manufacturer.

36 Faster Boot-Up without tons of Fonts

Many of the files that load during the boot-up process are fonts. You probably only use a handful of them. I suggest moving some you never use into another folder. You won't be able to access the fonts in Word or Notepad.

Create a New Folder by right clicking on desktop. New>Folder.
Open "Fonts" in Control Panel. Switch to Classic View to find them easier.
Highlight a group of fonts you never use and move them to the other folder. Repeat if you have tons of fonts.
Put the folder into My Documents for easy access.
Reboot and see if it starts any faster for you. If not, just copy the fonts back to the original font folder.

Another Method:

Create a new directory called 'font backup' or something similar on your c: drive.

Go to 'start\control panel\fonts' and select all fonts (for now, we will be more selective later). Drag and drop all the fonts into the backup folder you just created. Things will get garbled for a moment, never fear. Windows XP will automatically re-install the base fonts that it needs to display text into the font’s folder in a second or two.

Now you have the bare minimum of fonts installed. Go through the backup folder and cherry pick the fonts that you are sure to use (like Times New Roman or Arial).

If you removed a large volume of fonts, your system should now boot faster.

37 Faster Dual Boot Timeout

If you dual boot your PC using Windows XP's dual boot process, you can reduce the timeout period your PC uses before booting to the default OS. This tweak is useful if you boot to the default OS most of the time and only boot to the other OS's on a limited basis.

1) Locate and Open the hidden file "boot.ini" in notepad or your favorite text editor. This file will likely be in the root directory on the boot partition of your "master" HD. For example, mine is located in "C:\boot.ini" even though I have Win98 loaded on this partition and the boot.ini file was generated when I loaded WinXP on "D:/"

2) Locate the line - timeout=30 (default is 30 seconds). Change this value to any time desired. I chose 10. Be careful not to choose too low of a setting or you may not have time to select your other OS's. Also, be careful not to change other lines as this may prevent your PC from booting at all.

3) Save the file. The next time you boot your PC, the changes will take effect.

Editor's note: You can also adjust this in Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup and Recovery > Settings > Time to display list of operating systems

38 Faster startup of Windows XP

If your computer takes a long time to become useable after starting up or logging on, or you want a clean boot of Winodws XP try this,

Click Start > Run > Type "msconfig" > On the Startup tab click Disable All and on the Services tab check the Hide All Microsoft Service box and then click Disable All. Click Restart and Windows XP will restart with only the system services and applications running resulting in a vey fast logon / startup.

N.B This tweak will disable all non-system startup services and applications so if you have anything you want to run in the background such as anti virus software do not disable that item.

Note from tweakxp Staff - While this tweak will do what it promises, it's not one we recommend. Rather, we suggest you visit the Common Questions area in our support forum and follow the directions in the Services post to disable unnecessary services. - Allan

39 Fonts: more thereon ...

As a relative beginner, wrestling with fonts is making me fairly frantic, but I found something ...

First off, I open the fonts folder. Then I simplify the whole matter by clicking on toolbar View drop down, and click on the "Hide variations" phrase, (three-quarters down the menu.) Font variations disappear, simplifying the matter. This may be helpful for people with a couple hundred fonts or more.

My XP Home system, seems to let me select all fonts (from Edit drop down in Windows explorer toolbar, once I open the fonts folder), and let me 'delete' from a pop up menu inside the opened fonts folder in right pane (the big one.) Then, it tells me access is denied to one font, so I click OK on that Grey pop up message. The other fonts seem to negotiate themselves nicely under this deletion process, with Windows only deleting the ultimately unnecessary ones (apparently!)

This is after much unnecessary searching on the Internet for real and complete info on fonts saving and removal (how-to, what to keep, how to determine what to keep, etc.) Don't bother: stick with the above for now.

Note: your Word program may add extra fonts to your system.

Also: if leery of this process, you can at least satisfy yourself by getting rid of some more obviously needless fonts, like Gautama or whatever, assuming your system lets you, as per the above.

You can always reload your fonts from some process involving your operating system disc, or perhaps even download them from some location on the Internet, should you decide you need those old deleted fonts back. I just delete them, and don't even bother to make a separate folder for them.

(If you do make a separate folder for unused fonts, for rescue later, if need be, I wouldn't put them in a sub folder of the regular Fonts folder. I'd rename it something entirely out of its alphabetical realm. Maybe you could store them in Program folder, away from the Windows operating system folder entirely. That should guarantee Windows from doing any possible searching of any possible kind, in the extra folder for unneeded fonts, and slowing your system down, especially at boot up. This is the whole point of this 'negotiation of the fonts' problem.)

(Note also that apparently Windows needs some surplus and apparently useless fonts, because it does "other things" with them. This is researchable on the Internet, for those who need to know.)

40 Free-up some more disk space

Windows XP uses a file called hiperfil.sys to save everything it needs when Windows XP goes into hibernation. If you are like me, and never use the hibernate function, you can turn it off. By turning hibernate off, Windows XP deletes the hiberfil.sys. This can free up the as much disk space as the amount of ram that you computer has.

Go to Control Panel/Power Options/Hibernation and uncheck the box. It's as easy as that. Now you will have plenty more disk space to install those mega programs!

41 Fresh Install with no ACPI (updated)

Here is an easier way to do the Fresh Install with no ACPI. When setup is loading, the blue screen will ask if you have any raid devices, and to press F6. When it does that, press and hold F7, & Congratulations! No ACPI will be installed.

42 Fresh install with no ACPI.

Just press F5 after the first screen asking
if you have raid devices to install (will ask at
bottom of screen to press F6) keep pressing F5 to second screen where it will ask to press F2 for recovery console. Keep holding F5 and should get another screen where it will say that it cannot recognize type of pc. There you have two choices: standard pc and other. Select standard and voila no ACPI will be installed.

43 Gaming Machine:

Hardware Profile to free up System Resources

Instead of disabling HW and stopping services, let's say for gaming, create a Hardware Profile.

Right click on My Computer - select Properties. Select Hardware Tab, then click Hardware Profiles.

Mark "Original Configuration", then Copy and then Rename to e.g "Game" Now you have created a menu that shows up when you boot your computer. Set the properties for your boot option in the "Hardware profiles selections" You normally would boot with the Original Configuration. Never delete your "Original Configuration" if you boot in another profile. Reboot your computer to see that this takes effect.

Now, to tweak the different services for a Game Machine listed in this document

http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakxp/display.asp?id=114

Select each service to configure, right-click, select Properties, Choose "Log on" tab. In the lower part of this box select "Disable" or "Enable" dependent on which hardware profile you configure. If you configure for "Game" you choose "Disable" to free up system resources.

Careful: You can also disable/enable different hardware in the Device Manager - "Device Usage" box according to what Hardware profile you boot on, this is only recommended if you have any hardware that causes problems for games, etc.

Also; if you configure Virtual Memory according to this document http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakxp/display.asp?id=203
you should set "Initial Memory" and the "Maximum" to be the same to avoid this pagefile to be defragmented, i.e you get better performance. Use 384 MB pagefile if you have installed 256 MB RAM. (256MBx1.5=384MB, Microsoft.)

If you used XP "clean-up" on your hard disk, then defragmented it, the PC would perform even better. Enjoy.

44 Get rid of IM and no slow OE startup

If you have OE 6 got to tools > windows messenger > options > preferences and in the general area uncheck "run this program when windows starts" and "allow this program to run in the background." After doing this IM does not load on startup and OE loads as usual.
Hope it helps.

45 Getting More Processing Power

A clarification is needed on Spongebob's Tweak post for getting more processing power.

"In the Run box, type "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks". This frees up any idle tasks running in the background so that Windows XP can devote its full attention to what you want it to do. For example playing graphic intensive games."

While it DOES free up idle tasks, according to Microsoft, it can take up to 15 minutes to do so. You would not want to run this task before playing a game or using your machine as it will actually cause any tasks waiting for the system to become idle to be performed immediately.

Quote from Microsoft:

"When called from the command line, the ProcessIdleTasks work is done in the background asynchronously. It can take 10 to 15 minutes for idle tasks to complete. Task Manager will report processes running, and the disk will likely be active during this time"

46 HDD slowdown when booting

If, like I had , you have a 3min+ or slower boot time where Windows XP seems to sit for 2+ or so minutes with the XP logo doing nothing before everything comes to life, then do the following.

Download Bootvis from www.microsoft.com and run it the next time you boot. Do a 'Trace'
If it shows a very long 'HDD init' time of minutes rather than seconds then this is how to fix it.

This example assumes you have 1 Hard drive on your primary IDE channel and a DVD-ROM(or CD)
and CD-R on your two secondary IDE channels.

Go to start > right click on my computer > click properties. Click Hardware > Device Manager.

Go to IDE/ATAPI Controllers. Select primary channel. Right click properties. Click the Advance settings tab. Then on the device (0 or 1)that does not have 'device type' greyed out select 'disable' instead of 'autodetect'. This should stop windows trying to find a drive that isn't there.

If you have your IDE channels set up differently simply repat the above for the secondary IDE channel settings.

When I did this my boot time went from 3mins 20 to 35 seconds.

47 Increase speed by tweaking prefetcher settings

This is an unique technique for XP, which could improve the performance significantly by tweaking the prefetcher (which is a cache folder).

1. run "regedit";
2. goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher];
3. Set the value to either 0-Disable, 1-App launch prefetch, 2-Boot Prefetch, 3-Both ("3" is recommended).
4. reboot.

It should decrease the boot time and the time it takes to load programs.

48 Increase XP NTFS performance

Last access time stamps
XP automatically updates the date and time stamp with information about the last time you accessed a file. Not only does it mark the file, but it also updates the directory the file is located in as well as any directories above it. If you have a large hard drive with many subdirectories on it, this updating can slow down your system.

To disable the updating, start the Registry Editor by selecting Run from the Start menu, typing regedit in the Open text box, and clicking OK. When the Registry Editor window opens, navigate through the left pane until you get to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem

In the right pane, look for the value named NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate. If the value exists, it's probably set to 0. To change the value, double-click it. You'll then see the Edit DWORD Value screen. Enter 1 in the Value Data field and click OK.

If the value doesn't exist, you'll need to add it. Select New | DWORD Value from the Edit menu. The new value will appear in the right pane, prompting you for a value name. Type NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate and press [Enter]. Double-click the new value. You'll then see the Edit DWORD Value screen. Enter 1 in the Value Data field and click OK. When you're done, close Regedit. Your registry changes will be saved automatically. Reboot your workstation.

The Master File Table
The Master File Table (MFT) keeps track of files on disks. This file logs all the files that are stored on a given disk, including an entry for the MFT itself. It works like an index of everything on the hard disk in much the same way that a phone book stores phone numbers.

NTFS keeps a section of each disk just for the MFT. This allows the MFT to grow as the contents of a disk change without becoming overly fragmented. This is because Windows NT didn't provide for the defragmentation of the MFT. Windows 2000 and Windows XP’s Disk Defragmenter will defragment the MFT only if there’s enough space on the hard drive to locate all of the MFT segments together in one location.

As the MFT file grows, it can become fragmented. Fortunately, you can control the initial size of the MFT by making a change in the registry. Making the MFT file larger prevents it from fragmenting but does so at the cost of storage space. For every kilobyte that NTFS uses for MFT, the less it has for data storage.

To limit the size of the MFT, start the Registry Editor by selecting Run from the Start menu, typing regedit in the Open text box, and clicking OK. When the Registry Editor window opens, navigate through the left pane until you get to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem

In the right pane, look for the value named NtfsMftZoneReservation. If the value doesn't exist, you'll need to add it. Select New | DWORD Value from the Edit menu. The new value will appear in the right pane, prompting you for a value name. Type NtfsMftZoneReservation and press [Enter]. Double-click the new value. You'll then see the Edit DWORD Value screen.

The default value for this key is 1. This is good for a drive that will contain relatively few large files. Other options include:

2—Medium file allocation
3—Larger file allocation
4—Maximum file allocation

To change the value, double-click it. When the Edit DWORD Value screen appears, enter the value you want and click OK. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't give any clear guidelines as to what distinguishes Medium from Larger and Maximum levels of files. Suffice it to say, if you plan to store lots of files on your workstation, you may want to consider a value of 3 or 4 instead of the default value of 1.

When you're done, close Regedit. Your registry changes will be saved automatically. Reboot your workstation. Unlike other registry changes, which take place immediately for maximum benefit, NtfsMftZoneReservation works best on freshly formatted hard drives. This is because XP will then create the MFT in one contiguous space. Otherwise, it will just modify the current size of the MFT, instantly fragmenting it. Therefore, it's best to use this if you plan to have one drive for data and another for applications.

Short filenames
Even though NTFS can support filenames with 256 characters in order to maintain backward compatibility with DOS and Windows 3.x workstations, Windows XP stores filenames in the old 8.3 file format as well as its native format. For example, if this article is named "Increase XP NTFS performance.doc," Windows XP will save this file under that filename as well as INCREA~1.DOC.

To change this in the registry, start the Registry Editor. When the Registry Editor window opens, navigate through the left pane until you get to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem

In the right pane, look for the value named NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation. If the value exists, it's probably set to 0. To change the value, double-click it. In the Edit DWORD Value screen, enter 1 in the Value Data field and click OK.

If the value doesn't exist, you'll need to add it. Select New | DWORD Value from the Edit menu. The new value will appear in the right pane, prompting you for a value name. Type NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation and press [Enter]. Double-click the new value. You'll then see the Edit DWORD Value screen. Enter 1 in the Value Data field and click OK. When you're done, close Regedit. Your registry changes will be saved automatically. Reboot your workstation.

Other ways to speed drive access
There are other ways to speed drive access that aren't NTFS-specific. These include:

Caching—If your XP workstation has more than 256 MB of RAM, you might be able to increase hard drive access speeds by tweaking the amount of RAM cache that XP uses. For more information about how to do this, see the article "Squeeze more performance out of Windows XP with CachemanXP 1.1."
Striping—If you have more than one hard drive on your system, you can use XP's striping feature to have the file system store data across multiple drives. This feature works best with SCSI drives, but it can work with multiple ATA drives as well. You'll make the change using the Logical Disk Management service in the Computer Management utility.
Defragmenting—Even though NTFS is more resistant to fragmentation than FAT, it can and does still fragment. You can either use XP's built-in defragmenter or a third-party utility such as Diskeeper.
Disable Compression—Compressing files may save space on your workstation's hard drive, but compressing and decompressing files can slow down your system. With the relative low cost of hard drives today, investing in an additional hard drive is better than compressing files on a workstation.

49 Intel Application Accelerator - speed up disk access

It would be great to download drivers that sped up your hard-disk access by 10's of percent wouldn't it? Well perhaps you can, Intel has made their Application Accelerator (IAA) available since last September. It reduces storage sub-system bottlenecks apparently. If you have a compatible Intel chipset (810 to 860) and a Pentium Celeron, III , 4 or Xeon chip then get on down to :

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa

Read through everything before you start downloading and installing. You may need to pre-install the Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility if you have XP running on a 830 or 845 chipset. Intel also provide a chipset identification utility if your unsure of what you have - it's linked from the same page.

Intel claim very significant increases in boot times and application speed. On a personal note, on my P4 2GHz, applications do start a lot faster. I suggest you do some benchmarking first (a stopwatch is an easy way to measure boot time). I would be interested in results people have had. This also works for 98SE,ME,NT4 and 2000.

NOTE: IAA works well for most, but not all. Judge for youself. It's easy enough to uninstall if you don't like it.

50 Its all about your priorities

In life, the only way to succeed is to get your priorities straight. Well tough-luck, to all you slackers, the computer world ain't much different. Windows has setup a system controlled hiearchy which is notably called the Priority System. By increasing a programs priority, the task manager tells the system to pay more attention to it, by feeding it RAM and optimizing that program to use the system cache more effifiently. Lets explore into the wonderful world of priorities.

1.) Right click on your taskbar and select TASK MANAGER
2.) Under the Processes pane select a program that you would like sped up.
3.) Now right click, and under Set Priority, set the system priority to High.

That program will be much faster, and will run more efficiently. Beware, by setting it to Realtime requires a motherload of RAM (256MB a minimum). Note, the system priority won't always be high, it will only be high for the current session. Meaning, once you restart your computer, all your priorities will be set back to its default (most of the time normal). Another hint, is not to set a system priority, because system managed files will give you an Access Denied error.

Happy Tweaking!

51 Launch apps with desired priority setting

This tweak will launch most executables with the priority setting you want it to have.

Let's say you have a game installed called HIGH NEEDS and the executable is called HN.exe

Here's what to do:

-Create a new textfile in the game-app wathever-directory (let's say C:\HN), but instead of giving it the .txt extension you name it HN.bat
-Right-click this file and choose 'Edit', you'll see it'll open notepad. Put this line in:
cmd /c start /High HN.exe
-Save (make sure you save it as .bat, not as .txt) and close.

Now create a shortcut to this file and place it on your desktop. Every time you doubleclick this shortcut HIGH NEEDS will open with priority set to 'high'. (ofcourse you can also create a batchfile on your desktop, containing the full path of the app you want to start but the nice thing of creating a shortcut is you can give it an icon).

These are all the settings: Realtime, High, AboveNormal, Normal, BelowNormal, Low.

*Realtime is not recommended unless you have a dual-CPU system!

52 Make icons in windows appear quicker

In Windows XP everytime you open My Computer to browse folders XP automatically searches for network files and printers. This causes a delay in displaying your icons. You probably see the "default" windows icon and as you scroll it changes to the correct icon. This is how to stop that...

1. Open My Computer
2. Click on the Tools menu and select Folder Options...
3. Under Folder Options select the view tab.
4. Uncheck the very first box that reads "Automatically search for network folders and printers".
5. Click "Apply" or "OK"

You should see a dramatic increase in speed when Windows displays your icons.

53 Memory Performance Tweak

These Settings will fine tune your systems memory

management -at least 512MB of ram recommended

go to start\run\regedit -and then to the following key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive yeilds faster performance.

2.LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernel to Run in memory improves system performance alot

Reboot and watch your system fly ..happy tweakin

Note: This tweak may cause problems with ATI cards *this is documented by ATI(tweak forum Admin)

54 MFT Fragmentation

After installing your XP/2000 PC with all software and data. Run at Cmd line like FOR /L %f in (1,1,10000) do md %f

And then (not on root dir. C:\) FOR /L %f in (1,1,50000) do echo Hey > %f

This will create 10000 dir and 50000 files that you can delete. This increases the MFT size. Download Diskkeeper demo. Run MFT defrag once and you will probaby never need it again :).

Bye ;)

55 Modify application timeout

The operating system has a set amount of time that a program must be frozen for before it is timed out. Often this number is set too high, but in some circumstances it is set too low. 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 the value of the timeout in the registry.

Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Select HungAppTimeout from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to the new timeout value.
Reboot your computer.

56 Modify application timeout

The operating system has a set amount of time that a program must be frozen 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 the value of the timeout in the registry.

Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Select HungAppTimeout from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to the new timeout value.
Reboot your computer.

57 Modify auto-reboot setting

Since Microsoft has worked so hard to make this version "the most stable ever," then this tweak is not needed. However, I am fairly sure that they have not perfected millions of lines of code in less than a year. Below you will discover how to turn the auto reboot feature on and off. This allows your computer to instantly reboot upon a system fault. (The blue screen)

Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl
Select AutoReboot from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to 0 to disable and 1 to enable.
Reboot your computer.

58 No DOZE

If you don't plan to use the 'hibernate' function, and if you're running a desktop. You can reclaim a number of megabytes equal to your RAM on the hard drive:

Go to the following.........

*Control Panel | Power Options | Hibernate

*Deselect 'Enable hibernation' and click OK.

59 No more low disk space messages

go into registry with REGEDIT.EXE, go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\
and (if not already there) add DWORD (without quotes) "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" and change the value to 1. Restart.

60 NTFS Cluster size

Cluster is an allocation unit. If you create file lets say 1 byte in size, at least one cluster should be allocated on FAT file system. On NTFS if file is small enough, it can be stored in MFT record itself without using additional clusters. When file grows beyond the cluster boundary, another cluster is allocated. It means that the bigger the cluster size, the more disk space is wasted, however, the performance is better.

So if you have a large hard drive & dont mind wasteing some space, format it with a larger cluster size to gain added performance.

The following table shows the default values that Windows NT/2000/XP uses for NTFS formatting:

      Drive size

   (logical volume)             Cluster size          Sectors

   ----------------------------------------------------------

     512 MB or less               512 bytes           1

     513 MB - 1,024 MB (1 GB)   1,024 bytes (1 KB)    2

   1,025 MB - 2,048 MB (2 GB)   2,048 bytes (2 KB)    4

   2,049 MB and larger          4,096 bytes (4 KB)    8

However, when you format the partition manually, you can specify cluster size 512 bytes, 1 KB, 2 KB, 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB, 64 KB in the format dialog box or as a parameter to the command line FORMAT utility.

The performance comes thew the bursts from the hard drive. by having a larger cluster size you affectivly have a larger chunk of data sent to ram rather than having to read multiple smaller chunks of the same data.

61 Open Outlook Express faster

For some users when they remove windows messenger or just disable it from starting up automatically they experience a great slow down when launching Outlook express. Users who experience such a slow down will find a error in the system error log saying The server {FB7199AB-79BF-11D2-8D94-0000F875C541} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

The solution to this problem is quite simple. Just Open up regedit and search for the string {FB7199AB-79BF-11D2-8D94-0000F875C541} and modify the keys InProcServer32 and LocalServer32 default key to a empty string.

62 Optimise NTFS

NTFS is a great filesystem, but its feature-set comes at a slight cost in performance. You can negate this a little with the following tips:

* By default NTFS will automatically update timestamps whenver a directory is traversed. This isn't a necessary feature, and it slows down large volumes.

Disable it by pointing regedit to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem and set 'NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate' to 1.

* NTFS uses disparate master file control tables to store filesystem information about your drives. Over time these core MFT files grow and become fragmented, slowing down all accesses to the drive. By setting aside a little space, MFT's can grow without becoming fragmented. In the same key where you disabled the last access feature creat a new DWORD value called 'NtfsMftZoneReservation' and set it to 2.

Note: This tweak will not work on FAT32 file systems!

63 Problems enabling DMA on IDE drives

Are you experiencing jerky DivX;-) movies or does your mp3s click and pop on your new fancy Pentium IV 3Ghz+?

Then the reason is probably that XP has set your IDE drives into PIO mode instead of DMA! Remedy? Enter the device manager by right clicking “my computer” and choosing “properties” and then “hardware”.

Double click on the “IDE primary drive” and then “advanced settings”. There you can see the current setting for the master and the slave drives on the primary IDE channel. There you can select transfer mode. If it is set at “PIO only”, then select “DMA if available” instead and reboot!

If the computer persists on having only PIO after reboot even though the hard drive is a flashing super-duper ATA133 and transfer mode set to “DMA if available”, then you have to do the following:

Remove the primary device in the device manager and reboot! Voilà, now the harddrive should be running in DMA mode.

Repeat on the secondary IDE channel if necessary.

Now enjoy your smooth running DivX;-) and mp3s and the overall increased performance of your computer!

(Note: You will not see the Advanced Settings section if your hardware does not support it)

64 Performance Increase through My Computer

Easy enough tweak to usually find out about it on your own, but still, some of use still don't find it right away. So here it is:
1: Start > Right Click on My Computer and select properties.
2: Click on the "Advanced" tab
3: See the "Perfomance" section? Click "Settings"
4: Disable all or some of the following:

Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show Shadows under menus
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type
Use common tasks in folders

There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster.

65 Reduce 10 second scandisk wait time

Start MS Dos Prompt (Start run CMD)
CHKNTFS/T:4
where 4 is the amount of waity time

CHKNTFS/?
for more info

66 Remove hibernation file

If you do not use hibernation, make sure you do not have it enabled, which reserves disk space equal to your RAM. If you have a hidden file on the root directory of your C-drive called hiberfil.sys, hibernation is enabled. To remove that file, go to Control Panel, select Performance and Maintenance, Power Options, Hibernate tab, and uncheck the Enable hibernation box.

67 Remove start-up items

Having programs run when windows loads slows down your start.

There are two ways do disable programs that may be in your startup (like icq, messanger,)

The easiest is to do the following:
1. start --> run --> msconfig
2. Click on the "startup" tab (furthest right)\
3. Unclick any items you don't want to load when windows starts.

The second is by deleting registry entrys, this can be done the following way:
1. Start --> run --> regedit
2. Navigate to : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
3. Delete any entry's that you don't want to load up

***NOTE***
Deleting keys from the registry will not allow you to set them to startup again if you change your mind.
**********

68 Sacrifice Graphics for Speed

XP is very graphic-intensive which results in a large consumption of RAM. Sometimes to squeeze in the nitty-gritty megs of memory can be, by sacrificing the pretty little bits and colors that are on your screen.

- For starters, reducing the color density and and bit display of your screen will ultimately increase speed to your computer.

1.)On your desktop, right click and go to PROPERTIES.
2.)In properties go to Settings, and set your color quality to the lowest bit-rating (most likely 15 bit). This will reduce color density, and icon quality, but will heavily boast system performance.

- If you really want to increase your system performance, new Windows themes are NOT the way to go, if you are ill-equipped with RAM.

1.) Go into Control Panel and into Performance and Maintenence (If you are using the "classic" view skip to step 2).
2.) Get into System and click on the Advanced tab.
3.) Now click on Performance
4.) Under your visual effects, select CHOOSE BEST PERFORMANCE.
5.) This will undoubtedly increase your system performance by returning XP into Classic Style and getting rid of the fancy-shmancy fading menus, shadows and whatnot.

Now your graphically challenged computer, has turned into a mean, lean, computing machine.

Happy Tweaking!

69 Service Settings for Gamers

Below is a list of windows services that we recommend you change to the manual setting. If you do not know how to do that, refer to our tweak on disabling windows services by clicking http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakxp/display.asp?id=34.

Routing and Remote Access
Alerter
Application Layer Gateway Service** (only if firewll is not used)
Application Management
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
ClipBook
COM+ System Application
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Distributed Transaction Coordinator
Help and Support
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service** (only if do you not use the cd-rw xp record suport)
IPSEC Services
Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service
MS Software Shadow Copy Provider
Net Logon
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network DDE
Network DDE DSDM
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
NT LM Security Support Provider
Performance Logs and Alerts
Portable Media Serial Number
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator
Remote Registry
Removable Storage Server
Smart Card
Smart Card Helper
SSDP Discovery Service
System Restore Service
Telnet
Themes
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Volume Shadow Copy
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)
Windows Installer
Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions
Wireless Zero Configuration
WMI Performance Adapter
Fast User Switching Compatibility ** (only if fast user shiching is not used or the machine have one user only)
Protected Storage
Windows Time
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Task Scheduler
Secondary Logon
Print Spooler ** (only if the pc do not have or use a printer)
Indexing Service
Error Reporting Service
Computer Browser
Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) / Internet Connection Sharing

70 Services

Here are a list of MY Services and what they are set to, these settings may not work for everyone and they include some third party programs, but they might help you decide what you need and do not need. FYI - my setup is a stand alone pc using a cable modem. For a little more explanation of what the Services are look HERE .

Name............................................Startup Type
Alerter.........................................Disabled
Application Layer Gateway Service...............Manual
Application Management..........................Manual
Automatic Updates...............................Disabled
Background Intelligent Transfer Service ........Disabled
ClipBook........................................Manual
COM+ Event System...............................Disabled
COM+ System Application.........................Disabled
Computer Browser................................Manual
Cryptographic Services..........................Manual
DHCP Client.....................................Automatic
Distributed Link Tracking Client................Disabled
Distributed Transaction Coordinator.............Disabled
DNS Client......................................Automatic
Error Reporting Service.........................Disabled
Event Log.......................................Automatic
Fast User Switching Compatibility...............Disabled
Help and Support................................Disabled
Human Interface Device Access...................Disabled
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service....................Disabled
Indexing Service................................Disabled
InteractiveLogon................................Disabled
Internet Connection Firewall (ICF)/
Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)...............Disabled
IPSEC Services..................................Disabled
Logical Disk Manager............................Disabled
Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service.....Disabled
Machine Debug Manager...........................Manual
Messenger.......................................Disabled
MS Software Shadow Copy Provider................Disabled
Net Logon.......................................Manual
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing...............Disabled
Network Connections.............................Manual
Network DDE.....................................Disabled
Network Location Awareness (NLA)................Manual
NT LM Security Support Provider.................Disabled
Performance Logs and Alerts.....................Disabled
Plug and Play...................................Automatic
Portable Media Serial Number....................Disabled
Print Spooler...................................Automatic
Protected Storage...............................Automatic
QoS RSVP........................................Disabled
Remote Access Auto Connection Manager...........Manual
Remote Access Connection Manager................Manual
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager.............Disabled
Remote Procedure Call (RPC).....................Automatic
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator.............Manual
Remote Registry.................................Disabled
Removable Storage...............................Disabled
Routing and Remote Access.......................Disabled
Secondary Logon.................................Disabled
Security Accounts Manager.......................Disabled
Smart Card......................................Disabled
Smart Card Helper...............................Disabled
SSDP Discovery Service..........................Disabled
System Event Notification.......................Disabled
System Restore Service..........................Disabled
Task Scheduler..................................Automatic
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper...........................Disabled
Telephony.......................................Manual
Telnet..........................................Disabled
Terminal Services...............................Disabled
Themes..........................................Automatic
Uninterpretable Power Supply....................Disabled
Universal Plug and Play Device Host.............Disabled
Upload Manager..................................Disabled
Voulume Shadow Copy.............................Disabled
WebClient.......................................Disabled
Windows Audio...................................Automatic
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA).................Automatic
Windows Installer...............................Manual
Windows Management Instrumentation..............Automatic
Windows Management Instrumentation
Driver Extensions...............................Manual
Windows Time....................................Disabled
Wireless Zero Configuration.....................Disabled
WMI Performance Adapter.........................Disabled
Workstation.....................................Disabled

71 Services Info and Configurations

Do you mean that out of 89 services, 36 are set to Automatic as DEFAULT, but, we MAY only need 5 running? In short, yes.

More detail on XP Service decriptions and dependencies can be found at:

http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/service411.htm

Suggested configurations for tuning internet gateway and gaming systems can be found at:

http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

72 Shutdown XP Faster

1) Start - Run - Regedit
Navigate to the following Registry key:
HKEY CURRENT USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Double click on the AutoEndTasks entry and replace the 0 with a 1 in the Value data text box

For the next two, if the dword value indicated does not exist, create it:

Double click on the WaitToKillAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 2000

Double click on the HungAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 1000

Reboot

If still having a problem, make the next change:

2) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Right-click on WaitToKillServiceTimeout and change it to 2000

NOTE: The lowest value Windows will recognize is 1000 (1 second)

ADVISORY: While rare, the "WaitToKillService" tweak can cause problems. If an application is in the process of saving data and the associated service is stopped prematurely, the data will not be saved and may be lost. (Tweak, Note and Advisory from Forum Admin)

73 Shutdown XP using your keyboard!

Wouldn’t it be great to easily shut down or restart your computer with a simple keystroke? Well now you can! You know about “Ctrl, Alt, Delete”, but what about “Ctrl, Alt, END”?

Here's how it's done. The instructions are quite simple, and as long as you follow along, this should be rather painless! Please follow step by step!

1. Right click on your desktop. Go to new, and then click on shortcut.
2. A window comes up. Type in “shutdown” (without quotes) add a space and enter one of the following commands:

Usage: shutdown [-i | -l | -s | -r | -a] [-f] [-m \\computername] [-t xx] [-c "comment"] [-d up:xx:yy]

-i Display GUI interface, must be the first option

-l Log off (cannot be used with -m option)

-s Shutdown the computer

-r Shutdown and restart the computer

-a Abort a system shutdown

-m \\computername Remote computer to shutdown/restart/abort

-t xx Set timeout for shutdown to xx seconds

-c "comment" Shutdown comment (maximum of 127 characters)

-f Forces running applications to close without warning

-d [u][p]:xx:yy The reason code for the shutdown
u is the user code
p is a planned shutdown code
xx is the major reason code (positive integer less than 256)
yy is the minor reason code (positive integer less than 65536)
------------------------------------------

2. (Continuation) a good example of a shutdown line would read as follows:

“shutdown -s -t 0” (of course, without the quotes)

This tells the computer to run the shutdown program, and to shutdown the computer (marked by –s). The timer is set to zero, which will shut down the computer instantly (marked by –t 0)

3. After you have created your customized shutdown command, click next. Enter a name for it and hit finish

4. Right click on the shortcut you just created, and go to properties.

5. Note where it says “Shortcut Key”. Enter your combination here. I recommend “Ctrl, Alt, END” as stated before, but the choice is purely up to you.

6. Click OK. Your shutdown string is now effective! Just hit that key combination and your computer is off!

74 Simple Outlook express loading after msn messenger is removed

For those of you who have a slow-loading outlook express after msn messenger has been removed this may help. I tried the other tweaks stating this and i didn't have the registry settings that it said. So I looked at the options and found this:

1. Open Outlook Express
2. Click on tool, options
3. Click on the general tab
4. Uncheck "automatically log on to windows messenger"

75 Skip Operating System selection on boot

If you have more then one OS installed on your computer, but you don't use it very often, then you would probably want to boost up the startup by skiping the OS selection screen.

First make sure your windows is set not to hide "protected oporating system files" (by going to Control Panel\Folder Options\View tab, and ucheck the "hide protected oporating system files" checkbox)

Edit the boot.ini file in your c: drive, so that the timeout value will be "0" (timeout=0)

This will make your pc skip the os selection menu on startup.

If you ever want to use your other os you can change the value back to what it was in the first place.

76 Slow logon to domain in XP Pro

You may experience extremely long delays (up to 5 minutes) when logging into domains using Windows XP Pro. This is caused by the asyncronous loading of networking during the boot up process. This speeds up the login process in a stand-alone workstation by allowing the user to log in with cached logon credentials before the network is fully ready.

To disable this "feature" and restore your domain logons to their normal speed, open the MMC and add the group policy snap-in. Under Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->System-->Logon, change "Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon" to ENABLED.

This can be fed to clients via a group policy from a Windows 2000 server by upgrading the standard policy template with the XP policy template. Since this is an XP only command, non-XP systems will ignore it in a domain distributed group policy.

77 Slow logon to domain in XP Pro

78 Smooth Mouse

If you use a PS/2 mouse the following tweak will give you smoother mouse movement, which is also great for gaming.

*Drill into Device Manager via Control Panel | System | Hardware | Device Manager and scroll to your mouse device.

*Under Advanced Setting set the sample rate to 200.

79 Speed Boot - Shave 2 Seconds

I found that creating a script to run on shutdown that deletes the temp folder and history shaved 2.5 seconds on my boot time, down do 10.5 secs.

Create a batch file by doing the following:

1) Open notepad and enter the following lines:

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"

2) Save the fily and then rename is something like deltemp.bat

3) Now click Start, Run and type in gpedit.msc --->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

80 Speed up boot by disabling unused ports

What do you figure the chances of you ever using your computer's serial ports are? Exactly. The same with that parallel port. Disabling unneeded ports in your computer's BIOS can streamline the boot process and net you a little performance gain. Better still, no pain is involved.

If you need the ports in the future, simply reactivate them in the BIOS. Look in the 'integrated peripherals’ section of the BIOS to find your ports and disable them.

81 Speed up Detailed view in Explorer

If you like to view your files in Windows Explorer using the "Details" view here is a tweak to speed up the listing of file attributes:

Viewing files in Windows Explorer using the "Details" mode shows various attributes associated with each file shown. Some of these must be retrieved from the individual files when you click on the directory for viewing. For a directory with numerous and relatively large files (such as a folder in which one stores media, eg: *.mp3's, *.avi's etc.) Windows Explorer lags as it reads through each one. Here's how to disable viewing of unwanted attributes and speed up file browsing:

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Navigate to the folder which you wish to optimize.
3. In "Details" mode right click the bar at the top which displays the names of the attribute columns.
4. Uncheck any that are unwanted/unneeded.

Explorer will apply your preferences immediately, and longs lists of unnecessary attributes will not be displayed.
Likewise, one may choose to display any information which is regarded as needed, getting more out of Explorer.

82 Speed up Menu Appearance Without Causing Problems with zero delay

This is a response to all the people that have posted this tweak. Follow these steps to avoid menus popping up too fast when opening up the start menu or any other menu, making it less annoying because un-wanted menus won't pop up first.

Start Regedit. (Click on Run in the start menu, then type "regedit" without the quotes and hit enter)
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Select MenuShowDelay from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to only 150, its the perfect speed setting so menus appear quick, but not to quick so that the un-wanted ones appear.
Reboot your computer.

This little toggle will amke a big difference and cause less agony. :-)

83 Speed up menu display

When using the start menu 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 different tiers to appear instantly.

Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Select MenuShowDelay from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to something lower (note: a setting of zero (0) is virtually instantaneous - experiment with other settings (200 or 300 or 400 perhaps) to see what you are most comfortable with..
Reboot your computer.

84 Speed up menu display

Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Select MenuShowDelay from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to 0
Reboot your computer.

Note from forum Admin - a setting of zero (0) is virtually instantaneous - experiment with other settings (200 or 300 or 400 perhaps) to see what you are most comfortable with

85 Speed up Network Browsing

There was a bug in windows 2000 that would cause the scheduled tasks folder to be searched when ever the user would browse network drives. Microsoft developed a fix for this bug. The fix fixed the problem and it also had nice side affect of speeding up browsing of Microsoft networks. Below are instructions how to apply the fix.

1. Open up regedit.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace.
3. Find a key named {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}.
4. Right click on it and delete it.
5. Restart

86 Speed-up log-in tremendously!

If you've tried everything and your log-in and log-off to XP is still slow then you might try this little trick. First, if there are any other users on your computer see if they have a similarly long log-in. If they don't the problem might be your roaming profile, which is a folder where XP stores your settings you can access them from anywhere in the network. Since these profiles can get really bloated(as in my case) and are not really necessary unless you log-in from different computers in a large network, you should disable it. Here's how:

1. Right click on My Computer, select the Manage option.

2. From the Management Console, select the Local Users and Groups option.

3. Double-Click on the Users folder that appears on the right panel.

4. Right click on the account with the slow log-in and select Properties.

5. Click on the Profile tab of the Properties Window.

6. Erase (but keep note a not of this) whatever path appears for Profile Path under User Profile and Local Path under Home Folder: LEAVE THESE LINES BLANK.

7. Reboot. Try to log-in into the problematic account, you should see a significant speed-boost, the computer might warn you once or twice that your Roaming Profile is not available, ignore it and it will go away, good luck!

Note: You also will not have your settings and files that a roaming profile provides across a network.

87 Stop Jerkey Graphics

I have for a long time had problems with "jerky" graphics in some 3d games and 3dmark, and have had relativly high cpu loads in idle condition.
The cpu load would pulse from 1-2% up to 10-12%-load with about three-five seconds intervals...(in idle)
The jerking has not been due to low perfomance hardware or old drivers and I have had the problems on two seperate systems.
If you are connected to a LAN and have similar problems, this might be the solution:

1.RightClick "MyComputer"
2.Select "Manage"
3.Click on "Device Manager"
4.DoubleClick on your NIC under "Network Adapters"
5.In the new window, select the "Advanced" tab
6.Select "Connection Type" and manuelly set the value of your NIC. (Not "Auto Sense" which is default.)
7.You should reboot...
On my systems the "jerking" in 3D games was completly gone, and so was the high idle cpu load.

This tip also applies to Win2K.

88 Stop jerky graphics. The alternative way.

Since I started using XP, I noticed that games performance was terrible. Idle CP load stayed at around 12% all the time. This lead to jerky graphics, choppy sound, every game I tried was the same, even DVD playback suffered. I tried the tweak
http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakxp/display.asp?id=822
but I didn't see any difference. If you also experience this problem and have a Zip drive, here's how I solved it.

1.Right click "My Computer"
2.Select "Manage"
3.Click on "Device Manager"
4.Double click on your Zip under "Disk Drives" ( it may be listed as "IMG VP01" or something similar - pick the one that's not a hard drive)
5.Disable the device

If you then need to use the Zip drive, simply re-enable it by following similar steps.

This worked fine for me, XP is now as fast as 98 (well, almost!).

89 Stripping Page File across Multiple Hard drives

This is an incredible tweak that has improved the performance of my system by leaps and bounds.

There have been lots of articles and tweaks concerning the Page File. I have tried them all, however, whilst researching articles for work, I came across this tweak directly from Microsoft that has been the best improver of my system performance.

If you have two or more hard drives, especially if they reside on separate IDE channels, it is possible to Strip the Page File across these two drives. Windows XP has code within it that will enable a RAID-Type Stripping. Therefore, Windows XP will through its internal algorithms place information in the separate drives. By accessing both of the Drives at the same time to read/write information, Windows XP will considerably improve its performance!

Simply go to System Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Virtual Memory and assign the page file a size on each drive.

The way I did mine is as follows:

I have two hard drives each formatted with two partitions each. Hence I have a total of 4 Partitions being displayed. On my secondary HD, I created the first Partition and called it my SWAP. Since I have 512 MB of RAM, I created the partition with 1.5 GB. On this partition, I assigned the Swap File of 764 - 1500 MB. On the Primary Partition which Contains my Operating System, I also have a swap file of the same 764-1500 MB.

Try this out my friends. I guarantee you will be impressed with the results. As a comparison, when I had a single partition, one application used to suck 100% of my cpu cycles and my swap file usage jumped way high. Ever since I started the page file stripping, that very same application sucks only 5% CPU cycles!

90 System Settings for a Game Machine

If you are a hard core gamer then the below tweak is for you. Below is a list of windows services that we recommend you change to the manual setting. If you do not know how to do that, refer to our tweak on disabling windows services by clicking here.

Routing and Remote Access
Alerter
Application Layer Gateway Service** (only if firewll is not used)
Application Management
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
ClipBook
COM+ System Application
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Distributed Transaction Coordinator
Help and Support
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service** (only if do you not use the cd-rw xp record suport)
IPSEC Services
Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service
MS Software Shadow Copy Provider
Net Logon
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network DDE
Network DDE DSDM
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
NT LM Security Support Provider
Performance Logs and Alerts
Portable Media Serial Number
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator
Remote Registry
Removable Storage
Server
Smart Card
Smart Card Helper
SSDP Discovery Service
System Restore Service
Telnet
Themes
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Volume Shadow Copy
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)
Windows Installer
Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions
Wireless Zero Configuration
WMI Performance Adapter
Fast User Switching Compatibility ** (only if fast user shiching is not used or the machine have one user only)
Protected Storage
Windows Time
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Task Scheduler
Secondary Logon
Print Spooler ** (only if the pc do not have or use a printer)
Indexing Service
Error Reporting Service
Computer Browser
Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) / Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)

Have Fun!

91 The System Configuration Utility

A Handy utility for speeding up system performance in Windows XP (or any version of Win9x/me for that matter as well) is the System Configuration Utility. To access the system configuration utility, go to Start and click Run. Type msconfig and click ok. Click the tab labeled Startup. Uncheck any items for which you do not care if they load when Windows loads or you do not have any idea what they are. In Windows XP, no items that are listed here are essential to Windows running properly, so feel free to experiment. After you removed everything you don't need, click apply and then ok. Say yes when it asks you to restart your system. Enjoy the significantly enhanced performance!

92 Turn off disk performance monitors

In Windows 2000 and XP Performance Monitor disk counters for physical disks are turned on by default, disk counters for logical disks are turned off by default.

You can disable all disk monitoring by running this command

DISKPERF -N

To turn it on again run this command

DISKPERF -YD

all DISKPERF switches:
   -Y Sets the system to start all disk performance counters
       when you restart the computer.
   -YD Enables the disk performance counters for physical drives when you
       restart the computer.
   -YV Enables the disk performance counters for logical drives
       or storage volumes when you restart the computer.
   -N Sets the system to disable all disk performance counters when you
       restart the computer.
   -ND Disables the disk performance counters for physical drives.
   -NV Disables the disk performance counters for logical drives.

93 Turn off Indexing to speed up XP

Windows XP keeps a record of all files on the hard disk so when you do a search on the hard drive it is faster. There is a downside to this and because the computer has to index all files, it will slow down normal file commands like open, close, etc. If you do not do a whole lot of searches on your hard drive then I suggest turnning this feature off:

1. Control Panel
2. Administrative Tools
3. Services
4. Disable Indexing Services

94 Turn off System Restore to save space

By default, Windows XP keeps a backup of system files in the System Volume Information folder. This can eat up valuable space on your hard drive. If you don't want Windows to back up your system files:

1. Open the Control Panel
2. Double-click on system
3. Click the System Restore tab
4. Check "Turn off System Restore on all drives"
5. Hit Apply
6. You may now delete the System Volume Information folder.

Warning! If you turn this off you will not be able to use Windows System Restore to restore your system in case of failure.

95 Unload .dll's to Free Memory

Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory.

1. Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer].
2. Create a new sub-key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1' to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory.
3. Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

96 Users not interested in fancy windows and colors

It’s understood that most computer users decide they want fancy desktops windows, cool fades and colors. But if you’ve changed your mind and want better performance try this!

1. Right click "My Computer" and choose properties.

2. Click on the advanced tab, and than performance settings.

3. You now are now in the visual effects tab, check adjust for best performance, and uncheck every squared box you see starting from "Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing, all the way down.

4. Click OK, OK, and restart computer to see the difference in speed.

97 Very Slow boot when networking

On some XP Pro installations, when connected to a network (peer-peer in this case), the computer boot time is over 1:40. The system seems to freeze after logging in and the desktop may not appear or will freeze for a minute. As timed with the utility, Bootvis.exe, the problem was with the driver mrxsmb.dll, adding over 67 seconds to the boot time. Turning off and restoring file and printer sharing eliminated 65 seconds from the boot time.

1. Alt-click (or right click) on Network Places > Properties
2. Alt-click on Ethernet Adapter connection > properties
3. Un-check "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" > OK
4. reboot
5. If you need file or printer sharing, repeat the above, re-check the box and re-boot again.

98 View and manage startup programs

Type msconfig in Start / Run and then go to the startup tab. Here you can select which programs you want to enable and which you want to be disabled from starting up.

99 View XP System Uptime

To view the amount of time that XP has been running with out rebooting or restarting the computer:

1) Open the Command Prompt (located under Accessories)

2) Type 'systeminfo' (without the dashes)

3) Once the system has finished gathering the information, scroll up and the time is displayed in the System Up Time field.

As you can see, running systeminfo also gives a lot of useful information.

100 Watch movies with 'AboveNormal' priority

This tweak will launch WindowsMediaPlayer with the 'AboveNormal' priority setting when opening a mediafile.

Having trouble watching a movie when you also have a lot of background processes going on?

Here's what to do:

1. Create a new textfile in the root of c:\, but instead of giving it the .txt extension you name it wmp_AboveNormal.bat

2. Right-click this file and choose 'Edit', you'll see it'll open notepad. Put this line in:
start /AboveNormal C:\"Program Files"\"Windows Media Player"\wmplayer.exe %1 %*

3. Save (make sure you save it as .bat, not as .txt) and close.

Now all you have to do is register your mediafiles to this batchfile. Here's how to do that:

4. In Windows Explorer choose Tools>Folder Options >File Types

5. Scroll down(press A) to the AVI filetype

6. Click 'Change' and point to c:\wmp_AboveNormal.bat . Click OK and Close.

Now everytime you dubbleclick an .avi WMP will open with the 'AboveNormal' -priority setting ! (Repeat steps 4-6 to register all mediatypes you want to be opened this way.)

These are all the settings: Realtime, High, AboveNormal, Normal, BelowNormal, Low.

*Realtime is not recommended unless you have a dual-CPU system!

101 Windows XP does have a back-up Utility!!!

Insert your windows XP disc into your PC. Click exit if your installation screen comes up. Now go too your CD drive in *My Computer*. Right-click and select open. Choose VALUE ADD\MSFT\NT BACK-UP FILE. In the *files of type* drop down list be sure that *select all files* is on. Click on the NTBACK-UP.msi file and click okay. Click the finish button and now go over too the start button\ALL PROGRAMS\ACCESSORIES\SYSTEM TOOLS\ and there it is now.. BACK-UP FILES...Great little tool that Microsoft never should have hidden.

102 Windows XP Icon Cache

Are you experiencing icon lag, while browsing thru all your Start icons and programs? Do you have a smaller menu delay and your icons need ages to load? No need to give up.

Just refresh the icon cache by deleting the IconCache.db file from your profile directory (usually /Documents and Settings/Username/Local Settings/Application Data). It will be automatically recreated.

Also this tweak will speed up the icons even more: http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakxp/display.asp?id=905

103 Obtain the newest drivers for your hardware

This may seem a bit obvious, but keeping your system's drivers up to date can give both your performance and stability a boost. Video card manufacturers release updates especially often, and these can often give "significant boosts" to gaming performance as video card in question is "optimized."

Don't neglect the other components of your system either. Your motherboard manufacturer may have released newer versions of its Input/output drivers for your board, and sound cards and other peripherals can also benefit from newer software.

104 Backing up and editing the registry

Several of the performance tweaks in this guide require you to edit the Windows registry, which can be extremely hazardous to the health of your operating system unless it is done carefully. Editing the registry opens up a world of possibilities for tweaking WindowsXP that would otherwise be unavailable, but it also offers you the ability to completely mess up your system in the time it takes to reboot...

For this reason, we strongly recommend that you back up your registry to a file before attempting any of the registry-related tips in this guide.

To back up the entire registry, open REGEDIT and ensure that 'my computer' is highlighted, then go to file\export.

In this window, you need to enter a location to save the exported registry (as a single file) and choose the type of file to create. Also, check the 'all' button at the bottom of the screen to backup the entire registry.

There are several possible file types, but we will focus on one only, as the ".reg" file type is the easiest to use. A .reg backup will copy over all changes made to existing portions of the registry when it is restored, while leaving additions to the registry made since the backup untouched.

Select the .reg file type and click 'save.'

Restoring the registry from this .reg file is a simple matter of locating the file you created, right clicking it and selecting 'merge.'

The REGEDIT program which can be accessed from the run command ('start\run') by typing 'regedit'.

105 Creating a system restore point

One of Windows XP's brand new features is the System Restore utility, an update of the registry rollback tool first seen in Windows ME. The program has been considerably enhanced since these humble beginnings, and is a very useful safety tool. It uses 'restore points' which are snapshots of your registry and system condition at a specific time. The points are stored on disk and can be used to effectively move your PC back through time to a previous condition.

As you can imagine, this utility comes in quite handy for heavy-duty tweaking (though it wastes a LOT of disk space by default, more on this later), acting as a safety net.

To create a restore point:
Go to 'start/all programs/accessories/system tools/system restore.'
Click 'create a restore point.'
Give your restore point a name and click 'ok.'

That's all. To restore your system to its previous condition, fire up system restore again and select 'restore my system to an earlier time.' You will be presented with a calendar view of all current restore points. Windows creates them automatically by default under certain conditions such as program installs. Choose the one you created, click 'next' and follow the instructions.

106 Saving your hard drive space from
the system restore utility

By default, Windows XP's system restore utility uses a mammoth 12% of each hard drive in your system. That's a lot of wasted space. By reducing this number, you reduce the amount of restore points system restore can create, but this does not adversely affect the functionality of the program. System restore will delete older restore points to make room for newer ones.

To decrease the amount of space system restore uses:

Right click on 'my computer' and select 'properties' then the 'system restore' tab.

The window below contains each of the hard disks installed on your system. Highlight each one in turn and press the 'settings' key.

Move the slider to adjust the amount of drive space used. I would recommend no more than 2-4% of each drive.

107 Editing registry settings without restarting

Once you have made a change to the registry in Windows XP, you generally have to reboot the computer in order for your change to take effect. This is not actually necessary, as with a simple set of commands, you can cause the system to reload the registry by stopping and restarting the 'Explorer' process.

To do this:

Save and close all open files you might be working on. For example, if you are writing a document, you'll need to close this before reloading the registry.

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the task manager.

In the 'processes' tab, highlight 'explorer.exe' and click 'end process.' All windows and desktop icons will disappear except for task manager.

Now go to the 'file' menu in task manager and select 'new task (run…).' Type 'explorer' into the text box. This will relaunch explorer and load your new registry settings without restarting.

108 Accessing & Updating your BIOS

Getting access to your BIOS is done when you first start booting your computer. You keep tapping one of the function keys while it’s booting. Which one depends on your computer but usually it’s one of the following: DEL (Dells), F1 (IBM, HP, Gateway), F2, ESC etc. Often the key to press will be displayed for a short period of time when you first turn the computer on.

In order to ensure that you get the maximum performance and stability out of your system, it's a good idea to make sure that you are using the latest version of your motherboard's BIOS.

Motherboard manufacturers periodically release updated BIOS versions for their products, which are designed to be written over the older software. Traditionally, the process of BIOS 'flashing' involved using a bootable floppy to start the computer in DOS, then using the motherboard companies BIOS programming software in combination with the newest BIOS version that you had acquired to update the motherboard.

Most manufacturers now offer more user friendly BIOS updating methods, some working within Windows itself. Check the website of your motherboard manufacturer for updated BIOS versions and the software to install them, which will include instructions.

The current version number of your motherboard is available both on the POST screen and within the BIOS settings screen.

109 Overclocking your processor and memory

Caution! While overclocking your memory, processor and video card can and probably will net you more performance gains than any other tip in this article, the process of overclocking also generally voids the warranty of most of your computer hardware. Actual damage to your components is also possible, though rather unlikely if you are careful. Please be careful. We take no responsibility for any damage incurred while following these directions.

Overclocking the memory/front side bus

The Front Side Bus (FSB) is the data channel used to carry information between the processor and the main memory. Generally this runs at the speed of the memory itself, though some newer chipsets allow the memory to run faster than the actual speed of the FSB. Since almost all data dealt with by your computer is passed over this link, increasing the speed of the FSB by overclocking it is the single best way to increase the performance of your PC.

Overclocking the FSB stresses both the processor and the memory, since both are forced to work faster.

The rated speed of the processor (in MHz or GHz) is derived from the speed of the front side bus x the CPU multiplier, which multiplies the FSB speed to arrive at the internal speed of the processor (the amount of operations it can perform in a second).

For example, a recent AMD Athlon XP 2800+ processor uses a 166MHz FSB speed (which is actually 333MHz with DDR memory, but this is not taken into account when calculating the processor speed). The AthlonXP 2800+ has a multiplier of 13, so that works out to 12.5 X 166MHz which equals roughly 2.075GHz.

So you can see, as the FSB increases, so does the speed of the processor.
FSB overclocking also increases memory bandwidth (the amount of data that can be carried at one time between the processor and the memory) and this has a huge impact on performance in some applications.

To overclock the FSB:

First benchmark your system with one of the 'whole system' benchmarks listed above, or one of the 3D gaming benchmarks listed in the 'video' section of this guide. It's good to know where your system stands before you go about overclocking. That way, you'll have an idea of what kind of advantage the tweak has brought you and your system.

Find the memory/FSB frequency setting (generally found within the 'frequency\voltage control' section of the BIOS) and begin increasing the speed in small increments (3-10Mhz). Save and reboot after each change. If your PC boots successfully, run the benchmark(s) again and compare the numbers.

Repeat the process until the system fails to boot into Windows successfully. Retry once to be sure, then boot back into the BIOS and change to the previous highest setting. By running the benchmark each time, you are also testing to see how stable the overclocked system is; so if the benchmark crashes, chances are you've pushed your PC too far to run reliably.

110 Move the page file from system drive

The page file is the area of a hard drive which Windows reserves for use as virtual memory when there is more data than can be stored in the actual physical memory of the system.

Page file access is extremely slow as compared to standard memory, since the hard disk, as a mechanical device, is slower to read and write information than the purely electronic memory. There are still some ways to optimize your page file use so it is a bit less of a burden on your system, however.

One of the best of these methods, provided you have two physical hard drives, is to move the page file off the disk which hosts the Windows system files. This ensures that Windows is not constantly accessing the disk for the system files as well as the page file.

To do this in Windows XP:

Right click on 'my computer' and select 'properties.'

Select the 'advanced' tab.

Under 'performance' choose the 'settings' button.

Select the 'advanced' tab again and under 'virtual memory' select 'change.'

The virtual memory window allows you to select and change the allocation of hard disk space to be used as virtual memory for your system. For best performance; if you have two physical hard disks of roughly equivalent speed, remove the page file from your system disk (c:) and place it on the other drive.

111 Create a 'permanent' page file

Make the minimum size of the page file the same as the maximum size. This saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file, and does not lose you any extra space, since the 'maximum' size the page file can reach is the amount of hard disk space that is reserved by the OS.

Right click on 'my computer' and select 'properties.'

Select the 'advanced' tab.

Under 'performance' choose the 'settings' button.

Select the 'advanced' tab again and under 'virtual memory' select 'change.'

Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the 'initial size' of the file the same as the 'maximum size' of the file.

112 Optimize your page file size

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. As a simplified guideline. 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.

See Tip 110 to access the Virtual Memory setting page.

113 Check your hard drives for errors with “Chkdsk”

With time and heavy use, a myriad of data problems and physical problems can develop and mar the performance of your hard drive, not to mention cost you precious space. While defragmenting the drive can help restore much of the performance you might have lost, there are other issues such as lost clusters and bad sectors which the defragmentation utility cannot touch.

Because of this, it is a good idea to run XP's built in error checking utility on your drives once in a while. This utility will scan your disks for errors and optionally attempt to correct them.

Open 'my computer.'

Right click the hard disk you wish to check and select 'properties.'

Choose the 'tools' tab and under 'error checking' select the 'check now…' button.

Check both options. You will need to restart the computer to do the full disk check.

Your disk will be fully checked for errors upon reboot, but be aware that this can take quite a while.

114 Force XP to unload DLL files after closing a program

Dynamic Link Libraries, or DLLs, are files containing data or functions that Windows programs can call when needed by linking to them. Every piece of windows software will include instructions to the operating system as to which DLLs it will need to access, and XP will cache these particular files in memory for faster access.

The trouble is, Windows XP keeps these DLLs cached after the relevant program has closed, wasting memory space. While DLLs are generally tiny, enough of them can make a dent, so it's worthwhile to implement this registry tweak, which will force Windows XP to unload DLLs used by a specific program when that program halts.

To do this, first run REGEDIT.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer.

Create a new key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1.'

115 Thaw out your desktop

Every version of Windows has suffered from occasional 'desktop freezing.' You know the symptoms... You tell Windows to do something it doesn't like and everything except your mouse pointer slows to a c-r-a-w-l. You can open the start menu but applications won't load or close. Very frustrating.

Fortunately there can be a cure for desktop freeze, at least in Windows 2000 and XP, and it's an easy one. First, save any data you are working on, the press CRTL + ALT + DEL to bring up the task manager.

Select the 'processes' tab and highlight 'explorer.exe' then click 'end process'.
Without exiting from task manager, click 'file\New Task' and type 'explorer.exe.'
You should find that your computer has thawed itself out again.

116 Change to the NTFS file system

If you are using Windows XP, it's a good idea to convert your system drive to the NTFS file system if you have not already. In addition to providing numerous security and data recovery improvements over FAT32 (the file system of choice for Windows 9x/ME and XP Home) it can also speed up your system slightly.

In fact, the only real reason for sticking with the FAT32 file system for any of your data is if you have more than one operating system on your PC and the other OS's can only see FAT32 partitions (as would be the case with Windows 98, for example, which is incapable of reading NTFS data).

To convert your drives to NTFS:

Right click on 'my computer' and select 'manage'

From the computer management window, expand storage and select 'disk management.'

Using the 'file system' column of the upper pane of this window, you can easily check what file system each of your logical drives is using. Make a note of this information.

Now open a command prompt window by going to 'start\run' and typing 'cmd'

To convert a disk to NTFS, type 'convert (drive letter): /fs:ntfs'

So for example, if you were going to convert your C: drive, you would type 'Convert c: /fs:ntfs' at the prompt.

117 Reduce recycling bin reserved space

By default, Windows XP reserves 10 percent of each hard drive to store deleted files in the recycling bin. This is a bit excessive. Actually it's a lot excessive, unless you habitually delete files a gigabyte in size or more. Fortunately, there is an easy way to reduce the amount of hard disk space that is reserved for the recycling bins on each drive.

Right click on the recycling bin and select 'properties.'

Choose the 'global' tab.

The slider shows the percentage of each drive that is reserved by the recycling bin. Reduce this to a more appropriate amount, like 2-3% or more depending on the size of your drives. The larger the drives, the smaller the number you should use. If you wish to configure each drive independently, check the 'configure drives independently' button and adjust the slider to the desired amount in each of your hard disk's tabs. The advantage to doing things this way instead of using the 'global' setting is that you can see the actual amount of space on each drive that is being reserved.

Note that files larger than the recycling bin's capacity on a given drive are deleted for good. Windows XP will warn you when this condition occurs.

118 Enable write caching on hard disks

If it is not already selected, enabling the hard drive write-back cache setting on each of your hard drives can improve their performance by making the transferring of data between the drive and the memory more efficient. The only reasons not to enable this setting would be if the drive in question is in a hot-swappable drive rack, or if you expect your PC to be shut down incorrectly (I.E. not through the windows shutdown procedure) often.

To enable write caching right click on my computer and select 'properties.'

Select the hardware tab, then 'device manager.' From the device manager window, expand 'disk drives' and highlight your hard disk. Select 'properties' then the 'policies' tab.

Check the 'enable write caching on the disk' box.

Repeat the above steps for all hard drives in your system.

119 Defragment your hard disk(s)

When an operating system writes data onto a hard drive, it will generally attempt to place the data on the drive as sequentially as possible, in order to facilitate faster retrieval of the information. Over the operational life of the drive, various factors can cause data to become scattered, or fragmented, over the surface of the drive.

This does not mean it cannot be read, since the file system retains a table which links each cluster (the smallest unit of storage available on a hard drive) of data with the other clusters on the disk that contain data for a particular file.

Fragmentation does slow down drive access considerably though, since the drive has to constantly seek for a new disk location to piece a file it is reading together from the fragmented clusters, rather than just being able to grab it off the disk in one continuous stream of data. Factors that can cause fragmentation include incomplete uninstalls of software, system crashes while the disk is in use, improper shutdown of the operating system, etc.

Defragmentation is the process of reassembling the data on the disk into coherent and sequential order, making disk access easier and faster. If your drive has gone a long while without being defragmented, you may find that this process restores a lot of zip to your Windows install. All recent versions of Windows include a built-in defragmentation utility.

To access this utility in Windows XP, go to 'start\programs\accessories\system tools\disk defragmenter.'

To begin with, you need to analyze your hard disk(s) to see if defragmentation is needed. Select a drive and hit the 'analyze' button. This could take a little while depending on the amount of data on the drive.

Once the analysis is finished, you will have a graphical representation of your disk's level of fragmentation. See the pic below for an example of a highly fragmented drive (red indicates fragmented files).

Windows will also inform you if it recommends defragmenting the drive. You must have 15% of the drive free in order to fully defragment it. Anything less will result in only a partial re-ordering of the files. You may need to delete a few things to obtain this free space.

To defragment the drive, select it and hit the 'defragment' button. Note that depending on the size of the drive and the level of fragmentation, this can take a long time. It's a good thing to leave overnight, since you should not run anything else while doing the defrag.

120 Enable AGP Fast Write

The AGP fast write BIOS setting allows the processor to communicate directly with the graphics processor, ignoring the need to send data through the system's memory. This should be enabled to provide a performance boost. You should ensure that your video card supports fast writes before setting this option, however.

Almost all recent video cards do support AGP fast write. This setting is generally found in the 'advanced chipset features' section of the BIOS.

121 Wifi 802.11b devices slow down 802.11g networks

802.11g wireless devices have recently become extremely affordable, and given their clear speed advantage over the previous generation of 802.11b devices, they are being adopted quickly. 802.11g is also completely backwardly compatible with 802.11b, but... this backwards compatibility carries one major disadvantage.

Connecting an 802.11b client to an 802.11g wireless network will drag down the speed of the entire network due to signaling compromises that need to be made to accommodate the older device. Expect average throughput to be about half of what it would be if the network contains only 802.11g devices. So if you are hosting an 802.11g wireless network, consider upgrading your clients to WIFI 'g' devices also.

122 Reduce menu delays

The Windows XP start menu incorporates a built-in delay between the time your mouse pointer lands on a menu and the time that menu unfolds. This can get annoying after a while. Using the registry, you can speed up menu response, speeding up your computing experience.

First, open REGEDIT and then navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\
Edit the MenuShowDelay value.

The default is 400; lower values will speed up the start menu.

Setting it to 0 is not a good idea unless you like 5 or 6 menus popping out at you every time your mouse pointer strays, but experiment to find your favorite setting.

123 Make 'my computer' open faster

The Windows XP operating system automatically searches for attached and network printers and remote drives and folders each time you open 'my computer.' This can cause a considerable delay before you can actually see the icons.

If you find yourself using 'my computer' often and gritting your teeth at the delay, there is an easy way to speed things up.

Open 'My Computer.' Go to 'Tools\Folder Options...'Select the view tab and uncheck the 'Automatically search for network folders and printers' box. Click OK.

'My computer' will now open much faster.

124 Disable floppy drive seek

The floppy drive seek BIOS option sets whether your PC will attempt to detect the floppy (a:) drive during boot up. Whether it finds one or not, once Windows has loaded it becomes irrelevant, as control of hardware devices including drives are handed over from the BIOS to the operating system.

Disabling the 'floppy drive seek' option in the 'advanced BIOS features' section of the BIOS can save you a few seconds on boot up, and since the setting has no actual effect, disable it.

125 Enable quick POST/memory test

Many motherboards have a setting in the BIOS which can instruct the system to skip through certain portion of the POST (Power On Self Test), speeding up boot times considerably. A variety of settings performing this function can be found on various motherboards.

Some examples are: 'perform quick memory test,' 'quick boot,' 'quick power on self test,' etc. Enabling these options will cause your system to boot faster.

Be advised that you should disable this option when you have made modifications to your computer's hardware, especially the memory.

126 Reduce wait time after XP boots

A common performance problem with Windows XP is 'start lag,' in which the operating system boots up normally, the desktop is visible and usable, but programs will not start, and selecting icons and using the start menu are extremely slow. This can take anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes to clear up, and can make using the operating system extremely frustrating, especially if you are in a hurry after the reboot.

This delay is generally caused by Windows XP's networking services looking for other computers and advertising their functions over the computer's network connections.

If this problem is driving you nuts, there is a way to reduce or eliminate the delay, though if you are attached to a home network, it will reduce your computer's functionality on that network.

If your computer is not attached to a home network:

Right click on 'my computer' and select 'manage.'
Expand 'services and applications' and select 'services' to open the services window.
Highlight the 'workstation' service, right click and select 'properties.'
Set the 'startup type' dropdown box to 'disabled.' Click 'ok.'
Note that you will need to re-enable the workstation service should you wish to network your PC in the future.

If your computer is part of a home network:

Go to 'start\control panel\network and internet connections\network connections.'

Right click your current network connection (should be 'local area connection' unless you have more than one network adaptor) and select 'properties.'
Uncheck the 'File and Print Sharing' box and press 'ok.'
Note that this will disable your computer's ability to share files and printers over the network, though it should not affect your ability to access such resources on another system.

127 Shutdown XP Faster

Don’t have XP clear your paging file at shutdown

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

set ClearPageFileAtShutdown = 0

128 Schedule a Task for Idle Time

Run / Control Panel / Classic View – Scheduled Tasks
Double-click on Scheduled Tasks
Double-click on Add Scheduled Task
Use the wizard to schedule your task (defrag, antivirus scan, etc.) to run daily
Check the box titled Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish
Click Finish
Click the Schedule tab near the top of the dialog that pops up
Pull down Schedule Task list
Choose When idle
Click OK

That’s it. Now the task will run when the computer is idle.

129 Turn off BIOS disk detection

Most modern motherboards will attempt to detect any IDE devices, such as hard drives and CD drives, during the POST sequence each time the computer boots. By configuring the BIOS with the correct drive information, you can shave a few seconds off your boot time by avoiding this detection process.

To do this enter your system's BIOS setup screen.

Depending on your motherboard, you may have an IDE drive auto-detection menu. If you do, simply select it to automatically set your drives. If not, configure the drives through the 'standard CMOS settings' menu.

Note that some motherboard chipsets (like Nvidia's Nforce 2) do not allow this auto-detection to be disabled.

130 Disable boot virus detection

The boot virus detection setting is a holdover from the early days of computer viruses, when the greatest threat was from virus programs that wrote themselves into the boot sector of hard disks or the partition table. Some motherboards are equipped to monitor any attempt to write to these areas during boot up, and halt the process with a warning for the user.

Since every version of Windows after 3.1 needs to write to these areas during install, and the modern virus style of choice is the email worm, this feature is now obsolete. Disable it for convenience and increased boot speed. It will commonly be found in the 'advanced BIOS features' section of the BIOS.