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Solve : Tweaking windows x-p (Full Guide)? |
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Answer» Adjust Graphics for Speed Windows XP has a lot of new cool looking visual elements, however, those new elements take up more RAM and cause your computer to be less responsive. By tweaking your graphics settings, you can increase the performance of your computer. To get started, Let's reduce the color quality. This setting determines how many colors are displayed on your screen. 1. Right click on your desktop and select properties. 2. Click on the settings tab and adjust the color quality drop down box to Medium (16 Bit). 3. Click OK. Next, let's use the windows performance settings to optimize your computer for performance. This will revert back to the old Windows 2000 look as well as take away a lot of the fancy graphics effects. However, if you are really into performance, this is the price you have to pay. 1. Right click on the My Computer icon on your desktop or in your start panel and select properties. 2. Next, Click on the Advanced tab and hit the setting button under performance. 3. On the visual effects tab, select Adjust for Best Performance and hit OK. 4. Hit OK once more to exit system properties. Now your computer will run slightly faster! Speed Boot I found that creating a script to run on shutdown that deletes the temp folder and history shaved 2.5 seconds on my boot time, down do 10.5 secs. Create a batch file by doing the following: 1) Open notepad and enter the following lines: RD /S /q "C:\Documents and Settings\"UserName without quotes"\Local Settings\History" RD /S /q "C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\History" RD /S /q "D:\Temp\" <--"Deletes temp folder, type in the location of your temp folder" 2) Save the fily and then rename is something like deltemp.bat 3) Now click Start, Run and type in gpedit.msc --->Computer Configuration --->Windows Settings --->Scripts and double click on Shutdown --->Click Add and find the batch file you created and press ok to set the script Disable unnecessary programs 1. Start Regedit. 2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Run 3. Once there, locate any entry's on the right. You can identify the program by the path to the executable. Find programs that you can live without starting up from the LIST. 4. Right click on them and select Delete 5. You may also want to navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Runonce and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \Run. 6. Delete unnecessary programs. 7. Also go to START - PROGRAMS - STARTUP and see if there is anything there you wish to remove. 8. Reboot your computer. Disable XP Boot Logo It is possible to disable XP splash screen, which will slightly speed up the overall boot process. Be aware that removing the splash screen will also cause you not to see any boot-up messages that might come up (chkdsk, convert ... ), but if your system runs without any problems then it should not matter. 1. Edit boot.ini 2. Add " /noguiboot" right after "/fastdetect". (or check the /noguiboot switch in msconfig on the boot.ini tab) Upon restarting, the splash screen will be gone. It can be re-enabled by removing the new switch. Correcting System Hang at Startup If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) RUNNING in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't work for me. Here's what you do: 1. Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'. 2. Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot. Disable unnecessary services to free system resources Services are programs that run when the computer starts up and continue to run as they aid the operating system in functionality. There are many services that load and are not needed which take up memory space and CPU time. Disabling these services will free up system resources which will speed up your overall computer experience. I recommend that you sort through the list and read the descriptions to decide if you need that service depending on what you want to do with your computer. Remember, you can always turn the service back on if you find that you need it in the future. Below is the procedure to turn off a service. 1. Click the start button. 2. Select run from the bottom of the right column. 3. Then type services.msc in the box and click ok. 4. Once the services window has loaded we are ready to turn off unneeded services. 5. For instructional purposes we are going to turn off the Portable Media Serial Number service. 6. Find this service in the list and select it with the mouse. 7. Right click and select Properties. 8. Once the properties windows has loaded locate the Start up type drop down box and select disable. 9. Then just click ok and the next time the computer starts the service will not be loaded. Faster Dual Boot Timeout If you dual boot your PC using Windows XP's dual boot process, you can reduce the timeout period your PC uses before booting to the default OS. This tweak is useful if you boot to the default OS most of the time and only boot to the other OS's on a limited basis. 1)Locate and Open the hidden file "boot.ini" in notepad or your favorite text editor. This file will likely be in the root directory on the boot partition of your "master" HD. For example, mine is located in "C:\boot.ini" even though I have Win98 loaded on this partition and the boot.ini file was generated when I loaded WinXP on "D:/" 2) Locate the line - timeout=30 (default is 30 seconds). Change this value to any time desired. I chose 10. Be careful not to choose too low of a setting or you may not have time to select your other OS's. Also, be careful not to change other lines as this may prevent your PC from booting at all. 3)Save the file. The next time you boot your PC, the changes will take effect. HDD slowdown when booting If, like I had , you have a 3min+ or slower boot time where Windows XP seems to sit for 2+ or so minutes with the XP logo doing nothing before everything comes to life, then do the following. Download Bootvis from www.microsoft.com and run it the next time you boot. Do a 'Trace' If it shows a very long 'HDD init' time of minutes rather than seconds then this is how to fix it. This example assumes you have 1 Hard drive on your primary IDE channel and a DVD-ROM(or CD) and CD-R on your two secondary IDE channels. Go to start > right click on my computer > click properties. Click Hardware > Device Manager. Go to IDE/ATAPI Controllers. Select primary channel. Right click properties. Click the Advance settings tab. Then on the device (0 or 1)that does not have 'device type' greyed out select 'disable' instead of 'autodetect'. This should stop windows trying to find a drive that isn't there. If you have your IDE channels set up differently simply repat the above for the secondary IDE channel settings. When I did this my boot time went from 3mins 20 to 35 seconds. Classic Start Menu Mode (Browsing Boost) WARNING: Keep in mind that this tweak is intended for people using the "Classic Start Menu" mode to browse trough the Start Menu. If your Start Menu loads right away when you click on it, but goes slow while you browse trough it, this will certainly solve your problem. It's quite simple actually, just follow these steps: 1. Right Click on your taskbar and choose "Properties" 2. Choose the "Start Menu" Tab and then click on "Customize"(Classic Start Menu Obviously) 3. Scroll Down the "Advanced Start Menu Options" list and uncheck the "Use Personalized Menus" OPTION, click "OK", then "Apply" and "OK" to finish. There's no need to reboot, you'll see the difference right away. Another good advice to keep you start menu working smooth is to RESTRICT the number of programs and icons listed as much as possible, keep in mind that it works just like any other regular folder, the less you index, the faster it gets. Shutdown XP using your keyboard Wouldn’t it be great to EASILY shut down or restart your computer with a simple keystroke? Well now you can! You know about “Ctrl, Alt, Delete”, but what about “Ctrl, Alt, END”? Here's how it's done. The instructions are quite simple, and as long as you follow along, this should be rather painless! Please follow step by step! 1. Right click on your desktop. Go to new, and then click on shortcut. 2. A window comes up. Type in “shutdown” (without quotes) add a space and enter one of the following commands. *I GIVE THE FOLLOWING CREDIT TO Eric Greveson, who posted how change shutdown settings below. ------------------------------------------ Usage: shutdown [-i | -l | -s | -r | -a] [-f] [-m \\computername] [-t xx] [-c "comment"] [-d up:xx:yy] -i Display GUI interface, must be the first option -l Log off (cannot be used with -m option) -s Shutdown the computer -r Shutdown and restart the computer -a Abort a system shutdown -m \\computername Remote computer to shutdown/restart/abort -t xx Set timeout for shutdown to xx seconds -c "comment" Shutdown comment (maximum of 127 characters) -f Forces running applications to close without warning -d [p]:xx:yy The reason code for the shutdown u is the user code p is a planned shutdown code xx is the major reason code (positive integer less than 256) yy is the minor reason code (positive integer less than 65536) 2. (Continuation) a good example of a shutdown line would read as follows: “shutdown -s -t 0” (of course, without the quotes) This tells the computer to run the shutdown program, and to shutdown the computer (marked by –s). The timer is set to zero, which will shut down the computer instantly (marked by –t 0) 3. After you have created your customized shutdown command, click next. Enter a name for it and hit finish 4. Right click on the shortcut you just created, and go to properties. 5. Note where it says “Shortcut Key”. Enter your combination here. I recommend “Ctrl, Alt, END” as stated before, but the choice is purely up to you. 6. Click OK. Your shutdown string is now effective! Just hit that key combination and your computer is off! Increase speed by tweaking prefetcher settings This is an unique technique for XP, which could improve the performance significantly by tweaking the prefetcher (which is a cache folder). 1. run "regedit"; 2. goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher]; 3. Set the value to either 0-Disable, 1-App launch prefetch, 2-Boot Prefetch, 3-Both ("3" is recommended). 4. reboot. It should decrease the boot time and the time it takes to load programs. I can post a load more ..... i didn't make this tweaks i found them off a few sites the sites would break the rules if i posted them so im just pasting the tweaks , if there's a particular tweak you would like just let me know and i will do some hunting . Tony |
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