The efficacy of these guidelines may vary. These tricks could make your PC unstable so better be cautious in the process and also backup the registry before you start.
• Backup the registry:
Start → Run → Regedit → File → Export
Type “.reg” extension on your backup file and save it.
Turn-off all the effects
One thing Windows XP is recognized for is its user friendly graphical user interface. Unfortunately all the effects on the menus, the awesome wallpaper and so on drain your system’s memory.
The easiest way to turn these effects off is by pressing [Windows] + [Pause/Break] to launch the Systems Properties dialog box. Here, click on Advanced. You will see three ‘Settings’ buttons. Click the one related to ‘Performance’. The dialog box called Performance Options pops up. Under Visual Effects, select ‘Adjust for best performance’ and click Apply.
Disable sounds, wallpapers and screensavers
Startup sounds and wallpapers consume system memory a lot.
Go to Start → Settings → Control Panel → Sounds and Audio Devices, and click on Sounds. Disable all sounds you don’t want. To speed up booting of Windows disable the Windows Startup and Shutdown sounds.
Also, right-click on the desktop, select ‘Properties’, under theme select ‘Windows Classic’. Disable the wallpaper and set a color of your choice. Disable your screen saver too.
Remove unwanted programs from startup
Go to Start → Run, type ‘msconfig’ and press [Enter]. Click on the Startup tab and uncheck any programs you dont want Windows to load at startup. Please be careful what you remove from here.If you don’t know what a particular program is do a Google search (you can use the Google search at the bottom of this page) on the name of the process and then decide whether to keep it or not.
Disable compression and indexing
Right-click on an NTFS drive and select properties. At the bottom of the dialog that pops up you will see two check boxes called ‘Compress drive to save disk space’ and ‘Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching’. Uncheck both check boxes and click ‘Apply’.
Remove unwanted fonts and programs
Extra fonts slow down your system and increases boot up time. Remove unwanted fonts and also uninstall all programs you dont want through ‘Add or remove programs’ in Control Panel.
Update Windows
I recommend that you use Windows XP Service Pack 2, and update your computer using Windows Update to resolve known security and stability problems. This will give you a stable operating system that has been built to handle your system resources best. Also, make sure all your device drivers are up-to-date.
Defragment
Defragment your disk drives twice a month for faster data access. Click Start → All Programs → Accessories → System Tools → Disk Defragmenter to launch the utility.
Optimize Virtual memory
The virtual memory is the amount of space on your hard disk allotted to Windows XP, which it uses as though it were RAM.Press [Windows] + [Pause Break], to get to the system properties dialog box. Go to Advanced, under Performance click on Settings, go to Advanced tab.
Here make sure ‘programs’ is selected for both Processor scheduling and Memory usage. Now under Virtual memory, click on change.
Select the drive where the page file is currently present, select ‘No Paging File’ and click on ‘Set’.
Note: If you have two physically separate hard drives, set the virtual memory on the drive that doesn’t hold XP. If you have only one hard drive, set it to another partition that does not hold XP. This increases performance.Now select the drive where you wish to place your page file, and select ‘Custom size’. Enter a number that is twice the size of your installed RAM in the initial as well as maximum size dialog boxes and click on ‘Set’. Now click OK thrice and restart the computer for the settings to take effect.
There are more you can do to speed up the performance of Windows XP.
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