This is how to speed up your Computer
1. Disable Indexing Services
Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don't search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:
1. Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Double-click Add/Remove Programs
5. Click the Add/Remove Window Components
6. Uncheck the Indexing services
7. Click Next
2. Optimize Display Settings
Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimize:
1.Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Click System
5. Click Advanced tab
6. In the Performance tab click Settings
7. Leave only the following ticked:
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Show translucent selection rectangle
- Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons
3. Disable Performance Counters
Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC's performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea.
To disable:
1. download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List
2.Then select each counter in turn in the 'Extensible performance counters' window and clear the 'performance counters enabled' checkbox at the bottom. Button below.
4. Speedup Folder Browsing
You may have noticed that every time you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers every time you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:
1. Open My Computer
2. Click on Tools menu
3. Click on Folder Options
4. Click on the View tab.
5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
6. Click Apply
7. Click Ok
8. Reboot your computer
5. Improve Memory Usage
Cacheman Improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings.
Once Installed:
1. Go to Show Wizard and select All
2. Run all the wizards by selecting Next or Finished until you are back to the main menu. Use the defaults unless you know exactly what you are doing.
3.Exit and Save Cacheman
4.Restart Windows
6. Optimise your internet connection
There are lots of ways to do this but by far the easiest is to run TCP/IP Optimizer .
1. Download and install
2. Click the General Settings tab and select your Connection Speed (Kbps)
3. Click Network Adapter and choose the interface you use to connect to the Internet
4. Check Optimal Settings then Apply
5. Reboot
7. Optimise Your Pagefile
If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.
1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties
2. Select the Advanced tab
3. Under Performance choose the Settings button
4. Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
5. Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.
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. 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.
8. Run BootVis - Improve Boot Times
BootVis will significantly improve boot times
1. Download and Run
2. Select Trace
3. Select Next Boot and Driver Trace
4. A Trace Repetitions screen will appear, select Ok and Reboot
5. Upon reboot, BootVis will automatically start, analyze and log your system's boot process. When it's done, in the menu go to Trace and select Optimize System
6. Reboot.
7. When your machine has rebooted wait until you see the Optimizing System box appear. Be patient and wait for the process to complete
9. Remove the Desktop Picture
Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.
1. Right click on Desktop and select Properties
2. Select the Desktop tab
3. In the Background window select None
4. Click Ok
10. Remove Fonts for Speed
Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.
1. Open Control Panel
2. Open Fonts folder
3. Move fonts you don't need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.
Hope you find these 10 tips useful. Let me know if you did below, or if you have any other simple tips you want to share with other readers.
11. Speed Up Boot Times I
This tweak works by creating a batch file to clear the temp and history folders everytime you shutdown so that your PC doesn't waste time checking these folders the next time it boots. It's quite simple to implement:
1. Open Notepad and create a new file with the following entries:
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 new as anything you like but it has to be a '.bat' file e.g. fastboot.bat or deltemp.bat
3. Click 'Start' then 'Run'
4. Type in 'gpedit.msc' and hit 'ok'
5. Click on 'Computer Configuration' then 'Windows Settings'
6. Double-click on 'Scripts' and then on 'Shutdown'
7. Click 'Add' and find the batch file that you created and then press 'Ok'
12. Speed Up Boot Times II
When your PC starts it usually looks for any bootable media in any floppy or cd-rom drives you have installed before it gets around to loading the Operating System from the HDD. This can waste valuable time. To fix this we need to make some changes to the Bios.
1. To enter the bios you usually press 'F2' or 'delete' when your PC starts
2. Navigate to the 'Boot' menu
3. Select 'Boot Sequence'
4. Then either move your Hard drive to the top position or set it as the 'First Device'
5. Press the 'Escape' key to leave the bios. Don't forget to save your settings before exiting
Note: Once this change has been made, you won't be able to boot from a floppy disc or a CD-rom. If for some strange reason you need to do this in the future, just go back into your bios, repeat the steps above and put your floppy or CD-rom back as the 'First Device'
13. Speed Up Boot Times III
When your computer boots up it usually has to check with the network to see what IP addresses are free and then it grabs one of these. By configuring a manually assigned IP address your boot time will improve. To do this do the following:
1. Click on 'Start' and then ''Connect To/Show All Connections'
2. Right-click your network adapter card and click 'Properties'.
3. On the 'General' tab, select 'TCP/IP' in the list of services and click 'Properties'
4.I n the TCP/IP properties, click 'Use the following address' and enter an IP address for your PC. If you are using a router this is usually 192.168.0.xx or 192.168.1.xx. If you are not sure what address you could check with your ISP or go to 'Start/run' and type 'cmd' and then 'ipconfig/all'. This will show your current IP settings which you will need to copy.
5. Enter the correct details for 'Subnet mask', 'Default gateway' and 'DNS Server'. Again if you are not sure what figures to enter use 'ipconfig/all' as in stage 4.
