10 Ways to Speed Up Windows


The effectiveness of each of these tweaks will vary from machine to machine. I’ve tried to focus on tweaks that I’m confident can be made on any XP machine regardless of the individual setup. Please do not make any of these changes if you are not sure what you are doing, and remember to make backups first and good luck!

1. Disable Unnecessary Services

Because Windows XP has to be all things to all people it has many services running that take up system resources that you will never need. Below is a list of services that can be disabled on most machines:

• Alerter
• Clipbook
• Computer Browser
• Distributed Link Tracking Client
• Fast User Switching
• Help and Support - (If you use Windows Help and Support leave this enabled)
• Human Interface Access Devices
• Indexing Service
• IPSEC Services
• Messenger
• Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing (disabled for extra security)
• Portable Media Serial Number
• Remote Desktop Help Session Manager (disabled for extra security)
• Remote Procedure Call Locator
• Remote Registry (disabled for extra security)
• Remote Registry Service
• Secondary Logon
• Routing & Remote Access (disabled for extra security)
• Server
• SSDP Discovery Service - (Unplug n’ Pray will disable this)
• Telnet
• TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
• Upload Manager
• Universal Plug and Play Device Host
• Windows Time
• Wireless Zero Configuration (Do not disable if you use a wireless network)
• Workstation

To disable these services:

1. Go to Start and then Run and type "services.msc"
2. Doubleclick on the service you want to change
3. Change the startup type to ‘Disable"

2. Turn Off System Restore

System Restore can be a useful if your computer is having problems, however storing all the restore points can literally take up Gigabytes of space on your hard drive. To turn off System Restore:

1. Open Control Panel
2. Click on Performance and Maintenance
3. Click on System
4. Click on the System Restore tab
5. Tick ‘Turn off System Restore on All Drives’
6. Click ‘Ok’

3. 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:

1. Download and Run PageDefrag
2. Tick "Defrag at next Reboot",
3. Click "Ok"
4. Reboot

4. Speedup Folder Access - Disable Last Access Update

If you have a lot of folders and subdirectories on your computer, when you access a directory XP wastes a lot of time updating the time stamp showing the last access time for that directory and for ALL sub directories. To stop XP doing this you need to edit the registry. If you are uncomfortable doing this then please do not attempt.

1. Go to Start and then Run and type "regedit"
2. Click through the file system until you get to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem"
3. Right-click in a blank area of the window on the right and select ‘DWORD Value’
4. Create a new DWORD Value called ‘NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate’
5. Then Right click on the new value and select ‘Modify’
6. Change the Value Data to ‘1'
7. Click ‘OK’

5.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:
1. Open Control Panel
2. Click Sounds and Audio Devices
3. Check Place volume icon in taskbar
4. Click Sounds Tab
5. Choose "No Sounds" for the Sound Scheme
6. Click "No"
7. Click "Apply"
8. Click "OK"

6. Improve Boot Times

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.

1. Go to Start Menu and Click Run
2. Type in "Regedit" then click ok
3. Find "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOpt imizeFunction"
4. Select "Enable" from the list on the right
5. Right on it and select "Modify"
6. Change the value to "Y to enable"
7. Reboot

7. Improve Swapfile Performance

If you have more than 256MB of RAM this tweak will considerably improve your performance. It basically makes sure that your PC uses every last drop of memory (faster than swap file) before it starts using the swap file.

1. Go to Start then Run
2. Type "msconfig.exe" then ok
3. Click on the System.ini tab
4. Expand the 386enh tab by clicking on the plus sign
5. Click on new then in the blank box type"ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1?
6. Click OK
7. Restart PC

8. Make Your Menus Load Faster

This is one of my favourite tweaks as it makes a huge difference to how fast your machine will ‘feel’. What this tweak does is remove the slight delay between clicking on a menu and XP displaying the menu.

1. Go to Start then Run
2. Type ‘Regedit’ then click ‘Ok’
3. Find "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\"
4. Select "MenuShowDelay"
5. Right click and select "Modify’
6. Reduce the number to around "100?

This is the delay time before a menu is opened. You can set it to "0? but it can make windows really hard to use as menus will open if you just look at them - well move your mouse over them anyway. I tend to go for anywhere between 50-150 depending on my mood

9. Make Programs Load Faster

This little tweak tends to work for most programs. If your program doesn’t load properly just undo the change. For any program:

1. Right-click on the icon/shortcut you use to launch the program
2. Select properties
3. In the ‘target’ box, add ‘ /prefetch:1' at the end of the line.
4. Click "Ok"

Voila - your programs will now load faster.

10. 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.

1. Go to Start then select Run
2. Type ‘Regedit’ and click ok
3. Find ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\’Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
4. Right click and select ‘Modify’
5. Change the value to ‘1000'
6. Click ‘OK’
7. Now select ‘HungAppTimeout’
8. Right click and select ‘Modify’
9. Change the value to ‘1000'
10. Click ‘OK’
11. Now find ‘HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop’
12. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
13. Right click and select ‘Modify’
14. Change the value to ‘1000'
15. Click ‘OK’
16. Now find ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\’
17. Select ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’
18. Right click and select ‘Modify’
19. Change the value to ‘1000'
20. Click ‘OK’

That’s it. I hope you find these tips useful - you should now see a noticeable speed improvement if you make all of these changes correctly. Hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

What Slows Down Your Windows

Results and Conclusions

Most people won't find anything too shocking here. One of the most surprising things to be gleamed from here is the blatant time and effort Symantec have gone to improve their product from the 2006 version. This won't help you if you own that version, but it should give you a good idea what to expect from Symantec in the future if you're determined to stick with their product line.

Overall

Here's the table of results for all three sections ranked by their overall performance degradation. The control times where:

Boot Time: 70 seconds
Prime: 26 seconds
FileIO: 25seconds

Boot Delay

The boot delays were quite a lot smaller than last time, likely to be attributable to VMWare having a better grasp on its file system than Virtual PC, but the same names were at the top of this test.

Prime Delay

I wasn't expecting too much of a result from here. The prime delays would have come on systems where there were applications hogging resources.

FileIO Delay

The only applications this was going to affect were the system-monitors; those applications that require 100% attention on the file system, namely the security products.

Conclusions

Well it's clear to see what sort of application has most effect on Windows. Antivirus programs tether the performance of your computer alongside that of one three years its elder. If you really need an antivirus system, make sure you follow these benchmarks but also make sure you check how good the one you're looking at really is. Nod32 gets good security reviews and seems to leave the system fairly nippy

The new version of Norton has shocked me a little. Every year since their Norton AntiVirus 2002, they've added more and more "bloat". They call them features, and looking at the box, you'd agree. Features have traditionally come at a price though. If you're scanning more things, it's going to take it more time. NIS2007 seems to do all the work of 2006 but with significantly less load on the FileIO. I'm not shouting "go out and buy it" because of the massive boot delay and there are still better products.

If you're looking for the best of the best antivirus products you should look at their detection rates. There's no point in having something, no matter how expensive, if it cannot keep you protected.