Make windows faster.

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

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.

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

DEFRAGMENT YOUR PAGEFILE

Keeping your pagefile defragmented can provide a major performance boost. One of the best ways of doing this is to creat a separate partition on your hard drive just for your page file, so that it doesn’t get impacted by normal disk usage. Another way of keeping your pagefile defragmented is to run PageDefrag. This cool little app can be used to defrag your pagefile, and can also be set to defrag the pagefile everytime your PC starts. To install:

Download and Run PageDefrag
Tick “Defrag at next Reboot”,
Click “Ok”
Reboot

DISABLE SYSTEM SOUNDS

Surprisingly, the beeps that your computer makes for various system sounds can slow it down, particularly at startup and shut-down. To fix this turn off the system sounds:

Open Control Panel
Click Sounds and Audio Devices
Check Place volume icon in taskbar
Click Sounds Tab
Choose “No Sounds” for the Sound Scheme
Click “No”
Click “Apply”
Click “OK”

IMPROVE XP SHUTDOWN SPEED

This tweak reduces the time XP waits before automatically closing any running programs when you give it the command to shutdown.

Go to Start then select Run
Type ‘Regedit’ and click ok
Find ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\’
Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
Right click and select ‘Modify’
Change the value to ‘1000′
Click ‘OK’
Now select ‘HungAppTimeout’
Right click and select ‘Modify’
Change the value to ‘1000′
Click ‘OK’
Now find ‘HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop’
Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
Right click and select ‘Modify’
Change the value to ‘1000′
Click ‘OK’
Now find ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\’
Select ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’
Right click and select ‘Modify’
Change the value to ‘1000′
Click ‘OK’
ENSURE XP IS USING DMA MODE

XP enables DMA for Hard-Drives and CD-Roms by default on most ATA or ATAPI (IDE) devices. However, sometimes computers switch to PIO mode which is slower for data transfer - a typical reason is because of a virus. To ensure that your machine is using DMA:

1. Open ‘Device Manager’

2. Double-click ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers’

3. Right-click ‘Primary Channel’ and select ‘Properties’ and then ‘Advanced Settings’

4. In the ‘Current Transfer Mode’ drop-down box, select ‘DMA if Available’ if the current setting is ‘PIO Only’

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