The Complete Guide To Optimising Windows XP
Over the last 12 months I’ve made several posts that list ways in which you can optimise XP - 10 Simple Ways To Speed Up Windows XP, 10 Intermediate Ways To Speed Up Windows XP and More Ways To Speed Up Windows XP.
I thought that now that I’ve already moved one of my PCs over to Vista, and the second one will be moving over next week, it’d be nice to pull all of these tips into one single guide for all of you who know better and are sticking with XP! I’ve also updated these tips based on the feedback received through comments.
My Complete Guide To Optimising Windows XP is split into 3 sections - Beginners, Intermediate and Expert. You can either work through each tweak in order, or just jump straight to the section that matches your ability level.
Update: If you are using Windows Vista then check out 10 Simple Ways To SpeedUp Windows Vista.
BEGINNERS
Remove Annoying Delete Confirmation Messages
Although not strictly a performance tweak I love this fix as it makes my machine ‘feel’ faster. I hate the annoying ‘are you sure?’ messages that XP displays, especially if I have to use a laptop touchpad to close them. To remove these messages:
- Right-click on the ‘Recycle Bin’ on the desktop and then click ‘Properties’
- Clear the ‘Display Delete Confirmation Dialog’ check box and click ‘Ok’.
If you do accidentally delete a file don’t worry as all is not lost. Just go to your Recycle Bin and ‘Restore’ the file.
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:
- Go to Start
- Click Settings
- Click Control Panel
- Double-click Add/Remove Programs
- Click the Add/Remove Window Components
- Uncheck the Indexing services box
- Click ‘Next’
- Optimise Display Settings
Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:
- Go to Start
- Click Settings
- Click Control Panel
- Click System
- Click Advanced tab
- In the Performance tab click Settings
- Leave only the following ticked:
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Show translucent selection rectangle
- Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons
Speedup Folder Browsing
You may have noticed that every-time you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers every-time you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:
- Open My Computer
- Click on Tools menu
- Click on Folder Options
- Click on the View tab
- Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
- Click Apply
- Click Ok
- Reboot your computer
Disable Performance Counters
Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea. To disable:
- Download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List
- Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom.button below
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Related Posts
- More Ways To Speed Up Windows XP
- 10 Simple Ways To Speed Up Windows XP
- 10 Intermediate Ways To Speed Up Windows
- 10 Simple Ways To Speed Up Windows Vista
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Comment by Jackie R. on 6 February 2007:
THanks for these great tips! They are wonderful
Comment by kethdredd on 6 February 2007:
The link for pagedefrag is dead…
Pingback by The complete guide to optimizing Windows XP » gHacks tech news on 6 February 2007:
[...] good friend Everton posted a comprehensive guide to optimizing Windows XP which should be useful for everyone who is still running Windows XP. He posted a nice mix of known [...]
Comment by Everton on 6 February 2007:
Thanks kethdredd - I’ve updated the link in the article. here it is if you need it.
Comment by CodeDude on 6 February 2007:
Check your spelling, optimise should be spelled with a “Z”.. OPTIMIZE
Comment by Everton on 6 February 2007:
errr, not if you’re speaking English rather than some strange dialect called American English!
Comment by rob on 8 February 2007:
How do you run the Extensible Performance Counter GUI?
Comment by Everton on 8 February 2007:
once it’s installed you can find it in C:\Program Files\Resource Kit\
Comment by C. Flowers on 8 February 2007:
This is the most comprehensive list of XP tweaks I’ve ever seen. I’m definitely going to feature these on The Daily Hack!
C. Flowers
http://www.thedailyhack.net/
Pingback by makeuseof extra #24 » MakeUseOf.com on 8 February 2007:
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Comment by betty on 10 February 2007:
help!!!! i have a dell inspiron 1000 and i want to clear it all like back to the new state i dont have the cd’s to reinstall but was told there is a way to do so withpout the disc…can anyone help???? thank you
Pingback by Defymedia.com » Blog Archive » Friday, February 9, 2007 on 17 February 2007:
[...] Windows XP Optimization Tricks [...]
Comment by Prefetch1 on 18 February 2007:
Debunking yet another bogus Windows tip:
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000621.html
Comment by Ranter on 18 February 2007:
Only by stupid Americans who don’t realizzzze they have no language of their own!!
Comment by Natalie on 19 February 2007:
Wow, this is really terrific. I have done a lot of these things and they work like a charm. I really love the menu timer hack.
Comment by Amogh on 19 February 2007:
hi!this is amogh thanks for gr8 tipsss!
act i used lots of from but som tips r awesome!
Comment by Andrew on 19 February 2007:
This is filled with all sorts of bad and misinformed advice. Get the facts:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html
Prefetch 1 and conservativeswap file are two of the many bullshit tweaks listed here.
Comment by Jeff on 21 February 2007:
Turning off system restore is a great idea until you need it, then it’s too late.
That’s one feature I’d never turn off, unless you have absolutely nothing on your box that’s critical.
Comment by ashwin arun on 22 February 2007:
Superb ,absolutely brilliant heads are wrking on this ,Keep it up
Comment by Andrew on 22 February 2007:
Yeah so brilliant they include bogus and performance reducing tweaks.
Pingback by Ultimate List Of XP Tweaks | OneTipADay.com on 24 February 2007:
[...] published some good XP tips in the past. I wasn’t disappointed as they have now created The Complete Guide To Optimizing Windows XP, which lists every XP tweak and mod under the [...]
Comment by gaz on 27 February 2007:
CodeDude
Your and ignorant dick head. People in other parts of the world outside the USA spell optimise with an S.
I am always amazed how people show their ignorance when commenting in a
negative way.
Comment by Moi on 28 February 2007:
[quote=gaz]Your and ignorant dick head. People in other parts of the world outside the USA spell optimise with an S.
I am always amazed how people show their ignorance when commenting in a
negative way.[/quote]
I love the irony between these two sentences. Irony amazes me.
Some great tips though - Thanks Everton
Comment by Drat on 2 March 2007:
Thanks! I haven’t yet tried everything but I’ve managed to slice 10 seconds off startup time already! By the way, it seems that the descriptions for each task are below the steps, rather than above, where they should be.
Comment by Andrew on 2 March 2007:
Drat this guide is full of tweaks that don’t work and reduce performance.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html
Comment by Zath on 15 March 2007:
A great collection of tips there Everton, I’ve just gone through setting some up as i’ve been having a few performance issues recently, so shall see how it goes.
I particularly like the no delete confirmation and the reducing menu delay - never heard of those before at all.
Cheers!
Pingback by RSBANDBInformer! on 1 April 2007:
[...] ways to speed up boot times and the general performance of XP. There’s a nice guide I found here which details a few of them. You don’t have to do all of them, and some of them wont be a [...]
Comment by ganesh on 5 April 2007:
its great working,i request if u have any other idea to improve ur winxp & internet speed then pls provide me on my urmailganesh@gmail.com id.
Comment by Odzi51 on 17 April 2007:
I found your hints both helpfull and easy to follow. One day I’ll get the nerve to try them all. Thanks . Odzi51
Comment by Sergey on 28 April 2007:
hi Evarton,
after I disabled the services that you suggested to disable, I believe this took away a little from my computer’s overall performance. Could you tell me how I can easily bring it back to the previous state?
thanks,
Sergey
Comment by Everton on 28 April 2007:
Go back into services and enable the services you disabled one by one
Comment by Phil on 3 May 2007:
In windows Task Manager I seem to have a lot of processes running using up RAM. Any suggestions on how to optimise these?
Comment by Andrew on 3 May 2007:
Start by not using this guide since it is full of Mythical tweaks that will SLOW DOWN your computer.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html
Comment by Everton on 3 May 2007:
@Phil
the best thing to do is to google each process one by one to find advice. You’ll find there’s lots of advice out there
@Andrew
Why are there so many comments from people saying they’ve seen an improvement? Strange!!
Comment by Andrew on 4 May 2007:
Just because some of the tweaks work does not mean they all do. I can write a guide and include 2 legitimate tweaks with 50 useless ones. Performing the 2 legitimate ones with or without the useless ones will still improve performance! The only difference is people waste time also doing the useless 50 and even worse “think” they work!
The /prefetch:1 switch for example is utterly useless. Programs will load as fast with or without that switch. Anyone who includes mythical BS tweaks in their “guide” should not be listened to. People need to stop spreading this crap.
The gpedit temp file nonsense will REDUCE boot times ect..
You can find out more here:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html
Comment by Everton on 4 May 2007:
Now that wasn’t too hard was it Andrew? Much more helpful if you leave a more useful comment, rather than comments which the more cynical amongst us would say are really an act of self-promotion given you are constantly linking to your own pages….
I’ve actually just read your fabled guide that you’ve now linked to twice and it only mentions 2 of the tips in this guide. So how do you come up with the sweeping generalisation that:
Comment by Andrew on 4 May 2007:
Because it is full of over 6 inaccurate bogux tweaks. 2 which will definitely slow down your system and 4 of which are listed in the XP Myths guide (they are there but not directly worded) and others that are not proven to do anything. It is not my job to correct other inaccurate guides. Spreading Myths is bad for everyone. Even if a guide contained 1 that would be enough but this one is full of them. I have pointed out enough to prove my point. You can now either pretend I don’t know what I am talking about or proceed to waste your time and REDUCE your performance with bogus tweaks. It is ultimately your decision to follow an inaccurate guide.
People who post this BS are irresponsible as are those who blindly defend them.
Comment by Everton on 4 May 2007:
I’m not blindly defending them Andrew, I just take offence to people who appear to be highjacking my posts in order to promote their own sites.
If you are genuinely trying to point out errors and to help other readers then that’s fine, and I don’t have any issues with that. As you can see in the thread I have let all comments through that do exactly that and I have absolutely no issues with that.
However, there is a right way to go about this and to come onto my personal site and say that I’m posting BS is a bit rich. Would you say that to my face if you actually met me? If not, then why is that acceptable on my blog? If you want to take that tone then this site isn’t for you - you can take that BS with you to Digg.
This post was an attempt to try and combine tips that I’ve found useful. Yes, some of them may not actually work and I’m big enough to accept that. However, most of them most certainly do as you can see by the number of positive comments in this thread.
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Comment by Steve on 5 June 2007:
I was fairly impressed with Andrew’s site and this one too. But to be honest, Andrew’s childish approach to commenting on this site has put ALL of his advice in question.
I had thought that with his site I had found the true no BS source. Now I see that being right and promoting self are the priorities.
Kudos to Everton for being mature AND helpful. My trust goes to those who take an honest shot at being helpful and admit they are wrong over one who is repeatedly and exaggeratedly negative and tries to hijack traffic from other. Boo!
Comment by Everton on 5 June 2007:
Thanks Steve
Andrew - if you’re wondering why all your comments are being deleted, it’s because I’ve had enough of you, and I’m sure my readers have had enough as well. I also don’t have the energy or desire to get drawn into an argument with you, which again I’m sure my readers have no interest in.
Comment by Milo on 11 June 2007:
Terrific
I thought my PC was slow because It was oldfashioned (P4 2.8 512RAM) Great tips to improve speed and performance. Now I have a ferrari.
Thanks for your tips
Pingback by The complete Guide to Optimizing Windows XP - Again « geek-o-pedia on 12 June 2007:
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Comment by John Black on 1 August 2007:
Nice tips but moving to a *nix system is better optimization for your system : )
Comment by Ewokkaq on 6 August 2007:
OPTIMISE is an english spelling is it?
Comment by Everton on 6 August 2007:
yes Ewokkaq. I have no idea who decided that America needed another version of English!
Comment by jenny c on 13 August 2007:
if you burn data to dvds while doing other tasks and have less than 512 of ram this will definitely slow you down
Comment by Andrew on 13 August 2007:
Wrong Jenny! Their is no “Swap File” in Windows XP it is called a PAGING file! I already pointed this out to the author that ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 is a setting for Windows 98 that makes it run SLOWER!!! Yet he refuses to remove it. Apparently in a deliberate attempt to spread misinformation. Anyone who posts such an obvious useless tweak like this should never be listened too. Especially once it is proven that it does nothing in Windows XP.
Here is the Microsoft Knowledgebase article to prove it:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q223294/
If the author thinks the system.ini does anything but provide for legacy compatibility with 16-bit apps then I suggest the author go read up on Windows XP 101.
Comment by Philippine Jobs on 4 September 2007:
Set “WaitToKillServiceTimeout” to 800 in HkeyLocalMachine/System/Current ControlSet/Control.
Shutting down and starting up goes- wham! Faster than a speeding MS update!
Pingback by The All New Ewan’s Musings » Blog Archive » links for 2007-09-07 on 7 September 2007:
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Comment by Victor on 14 September 2007:
I followed these advices and they work out well.
Comment by asso on 20 September 2007:
Wooow this is an amazing info .
Thanks
Comment by angie on 25 September 2007:
As an additional:
Go to registry editor (regedit.exe) and find this: “enableprefetcher”
Change the value to “0″. Restart and see the difference!
Comment by xaer8 on 8 October 2007:
Those tips are really useful for novice. Maybe you can give tips and guides on how to upgrade computer hardwares. I think they also affect the performance of the system not just by tweaking only. Anyway, good stuff here. Will give good info for visitors.
Comment by vacuum cleaners on 15 October 2007:
Great tips. Thanks! Would be interesting to see why it is you’re moving over to Vista. In my opinion, there’s still a lot you can do with XP, and all the nice graphics stuff isn’t making Vista THAT brilliant. You get over it quickly, and often need to switch it off so your computer has sufficient memory to run a whole of things normally.
You must be happy with Vista though if you’re changing your other PC over to it as well. Hopefully, you can produce similar tips for Vista soon. Will definitely be looking out for that on my side!
Comment by Jim on 16 October 2007:
“ISE” vs “IZE”
Somebody wake Andrew, here’s another opinion that may have some validity:
“Nov-30-06 11:06AM
‘Ize’ is, believe it or not, an influence FROM the Middle English types,
and bestowed on the Americans!
The Oxford English Dictionary has adopted ‘ize’ as a standard suffix
for pretty much all of the words mentioned so far; realize, visualize, organize, optimize.
Nope, folks, the ‘ize’ ending was introduced along with the French loan words of the 13/14/15th centuries - you can thank your good pal .
The use of ‘ise’ has always been a recessive form of the word in the UK and elsewhere, whereas ‘ize’ is the dominant form globally, and is not American in origin after all.”
Ref: http://www.painintheenglish.com/post.php?id=920
By the way,
These tips are good for those who realise they make a difference to their computing.(notice the ‘ise’,,, I’m Canadian)
I’m amazed how an individual can even think that his computing environment may resemble everyone else’s.
Also, Andrew don’t bother to respond to my comments. I’m not interested in yours.
Comment by Abe on 17 October 2007:
Everton -
You mention “Yes, some of them may not actually work…” do you know which ones fall into that category? If you do please let us know.
Can’t seem to get the ‘/prefetch:1′ to work I get an error when attempting to add it.
Also what is your opinion on the comment above “Go to registry editor (regedit.exe) and find this: “enableprefetcher†Change the value to “0″” what does it do and does it help speed up the computer?
Thank you for all the wonderful tweaks keep them coming. I have had much success with some of them on various computers.
Comment by Mathew Browne on 21 October 2007:
This is exactly what I need right now. I’m on a £2grand laptop which grinds to a halt every now and then. The biggest culprit is Firefox and its memory hogging ways
Comment by clogman on 16 November 2007:
“CodeDude
Your and ignorant dick head. People in other parts of the world outside the USA spell optimise with an S.
I am always amazed how people show their ignorance when commenting in a
negative way.”
People in most parts of the world would write that opening sentence using “you’re” and “an” as the first two words. But only because we can spell correctly.
Apart from that, some really good stuff to get Windows XP running faster. I have a home PC based on an old P4 processor and an office PC based on a dual-core beast. My tweaked home PC feels and runs quicker.
Comment by Download on 8 December 2007:
thanks man , very useful tips
Comment by tom on 19 December 2007:
Some of this is great advice and some of it is’nt. The trouble is, that to know what is and what is’nt you need to know a little bit about a pc, and in which case, you’ve probably implemented the good advice anyway!
My personal advice would be :
1) NEVER DONWLOAD anything that is meant to speed up your pc. These things just do not work, or tamper around with your setting to the extent that they make your system unstable. And its strange logic that running another program can speed up your pc.
2)Dont disable system restore! No No No! If anything ever goes wrong with your pc, system restore should be your first port of call. If its disabled, you’ve really narrowed down your options.
3) If you’re unsure about changing something, or just generally not confident about it, then dont do it. If you’re not confident about it, it probably means you dont understand it, in which case you cant reverse it if anything goes wrong.
Comment by Amit on 21 December 2007:
Really helpful ….thanks a lot
Comment by LiveJasmin on 30 December 2007:
thx i saved this and i will take care about it soon!
Comment by Jack on 20 January 2008:
Just found another useful site.
It only contains 18 tweaks but are accurately described.
http://www.pccallouts.co.uk/freetutorials.html
Comment by Cesar on 14 February 2008:
Nice guide for optimising windows XP. I never used windows XP because I had an old laptop that won’t work with XP and my new laptop is preinstalled with Vista. Thanks anyway.
Comment by PCWizKid on 14 February 2008:
Great XP tips. If you r looking for Windows Vista Tips,Tweaks visit http://PCWizKid.blogspot.com
Cheers
Comment by killkenny on 17 February 2008:
Good work, helped me improve my PC speed. For all the haters- give author prop for spending time to come up with this- good/bad it depends on your level of understanding of tech subject. For a novice like me it was helpful; super techie nerds can point out loop holes in the post without being a NERD-thy know all attitude.
Peace
Comment by Mike on 17 February 2008:
Just Tested Jack’s link, seems to have changed.
Now contains 26 speed tweaks, each labelled with low, medium and high risk. Very useful for me so I don’t mess anything up. A slow pc is better than a broke pc.
Comment by Anime Sub on 12 June 2008:
Nice guide for optimising windows XP.