Speedup Your XP System

[ITG ADMIN]

Other then obvious hardware upgrades like more RAM or a new CPU there are ways to increase the speed of your Windows XP system. In this article I intend to provide a few tips I have learned to increase speeds without purchasing new hardware.

Important Note: Users should back-up there system before making any changes. This ensures that you can recover to the saved data if you encounter any problems.

Remove Unwanted and Unused Programs:
The first thing you can do to help increase system speed is to remove unwanted and unused programs. This will help to free up drive space and system resources. To accomplish this use Add or Remove Programs: go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > click once on the program you wish to remove and then click the Remove button. There are also built-in windows components that can be removed, go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > choose Add/Remove Windows Components at the left of the window > uncheck the things you want to uninstall. If the Details button is not grayed out, click on it to see more options.

Disable Undesired Startup Programs:
You can also disable undesired startup programs. After some programs are installed they are added to the start up list and are loaded when your system boots and remain in the memory and consume processing power. Here is what you can do to remove them from the start up list: GoTo Start>Run>type in "msconfig" minus the quotations>hit enter or click OK button>a window will appear and then you need to click the startup tab>In the startup tab there will be several boxes that are checked, to remove an item from the startup list simply uncheck it's box>after you have edited your choices press ok and then you will be prompted to restart your computer to apply the changes.

Adjust Your Computers Visual Effects:
You can also free up some system resources by adjusting your computers visual effects. These visual effects do consume system resources and when turned of are hardly noticeable. To edit these options Right-click My Computer>click the Advanced tab>under Performance click the Settings button>You can experiment with the options and find a setup your comfortable with, for my machine I uncheck all except "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop?, "Smooth edges of screen fonts?, and "Use visual styles on windows and buttons">After making your selections click Apply and OK.

Enable Direct Memory Access (DMA):
You should also consider enabling Direct Memory Access (DMA). To do this Right-Click My Computer and select properties>Select the Hardware tab>Click the Device Manager Button>Double-Click IDE/ATAPI controllers>Double Click each option and click the Advanced Tab>Set the transfer mode to "DMA if available"> click ok to apply the settings.

Routinely Clear Your IE Browsers Cookies, Files, & History:
Open Internet Explorer > Go to Tools > Internet Options > click the Delete Cookies button and click OK in the resulting window > click the Delete Files button. In the resulting window, check the box that says Delete all offline content and click OK > now click the Clear History button, click Yes in the resulting window > click OK and then close Internet Explorer.

Routinely Run the Disk Clean-up and Defragmentation Utilities:
To Defrag your drive click Start > All Programs> Accessories > System Tools> Disk Defragmenter. Highlight the drive you installed XP on, usually the C drive >click the Defragment button. This will take a while. When finished shut down and restart.

To use the Disk Cleanup click Start > All Programs> Accessories > System Tools> Disk Cleanup> choose the drive you wish to clean up and click OK>Check the boxes of the locations you wish to clean and then click OK>click Yes when prompted.

These are a few tweaks that can help improve speeds and system performance for your XP system. There are many more techniques available such as Overclocking the processor and Page File adjustment, but these options should only be considered by experienced users and researched thoroughly.

[fireboy]

Great tips. I came to this post expectg to have a few suggestions, but you covered almost all of them.. One thing I will addd though... If you are short on RAM, it is also important to defragment your page fil.

The default XP defragger can't do this, but there is a free utility from MS that will do it for you. Google for it and its a snap to find.

[montsa007]

old tip but can damage your pc in the long run

[subodh]

The one good tip which I learn from experience is Make most of the services as manual startup
To do so, Go to Computer Management through right clicking on "My Computer".
Then, go to services. Then check services which are autostart. Some, services like "printer" don't we use often. Just right click on respective service that you don't require. And make them as "Manual Start". Don't choose disable, otherwise it will not start when required.
This make services don't start automatically and free up memory. It's really increase performance.
Try this tip at your own risk.

[SKULL]

Very good tips HITMAN ill try a few of these later today.

[Conscept]

Phwoar, Some very useful tips indeed.. Thankyou very much.

[abinesh]

great tips.. thanks for all of them.. i kow few poated there but i really hope it ll help others who do not know it..!!

[jackyboy]

Thanks for you handy guide...very useful indeed. Apart for this one that tweak unwanted services running at the background to rig up you speed.

[Simonas]

Thanks really good guide..still most of information was known for me but i think it might be useful of others. Good work!

[The Emirates Gallastico]

Cheers, my XP's been really, really slow these past few days..