10 Intermediate Ways To Speed Up Windows


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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_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlFileSystem”
  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_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftDfrgBootOpt 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

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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • Anonymous
    For number 4, you forgot to tell us what to call the new key.
  • Anonymous
    The missing key name is: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
  • Anonymous
    The last one, number 10, where you set the time to kill processes and services to 1000 ms (or 1 second) seems like a horrible idea !!!!
    I would strongly advice not to do this under any circonstance, it is not worth it !
    For instance, if you were working in a Word document and try to shut down your computer, you would get a message telling you to save your document before closing. But now, you would only have 1 second to save the document before Word gets killed and you lose your work !
    It is not worth it. I think.
    And, like the previous reader said, in number 4, you didn't specify the key name.
    Otherwise, this article is pretty interresting. I especially like the ConservativeSwapfileUsage thing. If it works, that would be terrific. I hate when windows uses the pagefile when lots of ram are still available, and windows does that often.
  • Jon
    My shut down and start up is crazy slow so i'd like to change this if even by a fraction but with number 10 i cant find the waittokillprocesses thing that was mentioned above
  • Anonymous
    Or instead of doing this, you can download an easy front-end with tune-xp.exe and do it all with a simple GUI instead of hunting through the registry. Just my two cents though.
  • Anonymous
    How well did you research this stuff? For instance, #7 only works on Windows 95/98/ME, it doesn't do a thing on 2000/XP.
  • Everton Blair
    Sorry -fixed typo's in #4 and #8. I'm pretty certain that Conservativeswapfileusage works in XP
  • Anonymous
  • Smoker's Area
    10 Intermediate Ways To Speed Up Windows
    Un bella lista di Tips per rendere WinXP molto più veloce e performante.
    http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/blog/_archiv...
    HtmlUnit tests with Eclipse and Ant
    http://www.baccoubonneville...
  • fio-nick
    Thought I would post and say thanks - since every other comment is a complaint. I was having problems with my XP system 'over-thinking'. When idle it would suddenly slow to a crawl ... I would consider myself intermediate (have enough knowledge to diagnose this stuff) and could not find the cause. My only out was to restart every time that happened (about twice/day). I've perfomed most of your tweaks and everything is much better - thanks.
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