10 Intermediate Ways To Speed Up Windows

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_USERControl PanelDesktop”
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_USERControl PanelDesktop’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.DEFAULTControl PanelDesktop’
12. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
13. Right click and select ‘Modify’
14. Change the value to ‘1000′
15. Click ‘OK’
16. Now find ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControl’
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!

Update: This guide has been updated and augmented in The Complete Guide To Optimising Windows XP

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