#2 Performance Tweaks
 

Clean your prefetch to improve performance.

This is an unique technique for WinXP. We know that it is necessary to wash registry and TEMP files for Win9X/ME/2000 periodly.
Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP.
However, after using XP some time, the prefetch folder can get full of rarely used or obsolete links which can slow down your computer noticeably.
My suggestion is:
open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete all files (or at least those more than 3 weeks old), reboot. I recommended that you do this every month.

Editor Note: Deleting prefetch files too often (Every reboot) can decrease system performance

Convert FAT32 To NTFS

To change from FAT 32 to NTFS file system for more stability, security and less fragmentation, open the command prompt and type:

Convert C: /FS:NTFS

"C" being the drive you wish to convert. Make sure there is a space between the C: and the foward slash (/). Once you press enter it will ask you for confirmation and press Y. Then press Y and enter once more to reboot.. This also works for windows XP Home.

#2 Performance Tweaks ... Suite
 

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.

This problem with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service should have been corrected in Windows update Q 314862, part of Service Pack.

Adjust LargeSystemCache

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and change the value to either O or 1 to the adjustment the
LargeSystemCache.

However, in Windows XP all you have to do is:

1. Right click My Computer
2. Select Properties
3. Click Advanced
4. Choose Performance
5. Click Advanced again
6. Select either Programs or System Cache under Memory Usage.

Programs = 0 for the registry tweak equilavent
System Cache = 1 for the registry tweak equilavent

From arstechnica.com:
On NT Server (in this case XP), the Large System Cache option is enabled, but disabled on Workstation. The two different settings effect how the cache manager allocates free memory. If the Large Cache option is on, the manager marks all the free memory, which isn't being used by the system and/or applications, as freely available for disk caching. On the flip-side (with a small cache), the manager instead only sets aside 4MB of memory for disk caching in an attempt to accelerate the launch of applications. Or in a more technical approach, if enabled the system will favor system-cache working sets over process working sets (with a working set basically being the memory used by components of a process).

Disable zip folders


Are the ZIP folders too slow for you? Disable it by unregistering the file zipfldr.dll.

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

Enable or disable boot defrag

1. Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ(DO BACKUP) on how to get started.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOpt imizeFunction
3. Select Enable from the list on the right.
4. Right on it and select Modify.
5. Change the value to Y to enable and N to disable.
6. Reboot your computer.

#2 Performance Tweaks ... Suite
 

Faster Boot-Up without tons of fonts

Many of the files that load during the boot-up process are fonts. You probably only use a handful of them. I suggest moving some you never use into another folder. You won't be able to access the fonts in Word or Notepad.

1. Create a New Folder by right clicking on desktop. New>Folder.
2. Open "Fonts" in Control Panel. Switch to Classic View to find them easier.
3. Highlight a group of fonts younever use and move them to the other folder. Repeat if you have tons of fonts.
4. Put the folder into My Documents for easy access.
5. Reboot and see if it starts any faster for you. If not, just copy the fonts back to the original font folder.

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.

Editor's note: You can also adjust this in Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup and Recovery > Settings > Time to display list of operating systems.

#2 Performance Tweaks ... Suite
 

Modify application timeout

1. Start Regedit.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
3. Select HungAppTimeout from the list on the right.
4. Right on it and select Modify.
5. Change the value to the new timeout value.
6. Reboot your computer.

No DOZE

If you don't plan to use the 'hibernate' function, and if you're running a desktop. You can reclaim a number of megabytes equal to your RAM on the hard drive:

Go to the following.........

*Control Panel
Power Options
Hibernate
*Deselect 'Enable hibernation' and click OK.


Open Outlook Express faster


For some users when they remove windows messenger or just disable it from starting up automatically they experience a great slow down when launching Outlook express. Users who experience such a slow down will find a error in the system error log saying The server {FB7199AB-79BF-11D2-8D94-0000F875C541} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

The solution to this problem is quite simple.
Just Open up regedit and search for the string {FB7199AB-79BF-11D2-8D94-0000F875C541} and modify the keys InProcServer32 and LocalServer32 default key to a empty string.

Optimise NTFS

NTFS is a great filesystem, but its feature-set comes at a slight cost in performance. You can negate this a little with the following tips:

* By default NTFS will automatically update timestamps whenver a directory is traversed. This isn't a necessary feature, and it slows down large volumes.

Disable it by pointing regedit to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\FileSystem and set 'NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate' to 1.

* NTFS uses disparate master file control tables to store filesystem information about your drives. Over time these core MFT files grow and become fragmented, slowing down all accesses to the drive. By setting aside a little space, MFT's can grow without becoming fragmented. In the same key where you disabled the last access feature creat a new DWORD value called 'NtfsMftZoneReservation' and set it to 2.

Note: This tweak will not work on FAT32 file systems!

Reduce 10 second scandisk wait time

Start MS Dos Prompt (Start run CMD)
CHKNTFS/T:4
where 4 is the amount of waity time

CHKNTFS/?
for more info

Speed up boot by disabling unused ports

You may have tried many tweaks like modifying windowsXP start-up applications, prefetches, unload DLLs method,etc. And yes those methods do work for me.

I have just accidentally found out another way to give you an extra boost in windowsXP's boot performance. This is done by disabling your unused devices in Device Manager.

for example, if you don't have input devices that are connected to one of your USBs or COM ports, disabling them will give you an extra perfromance boost in booting.

Yes i've tried this. I've disabled every devices that currently has no use for my pc and it worked great. My booting time is much faster than before.

Go to Control Panel -> System -> Hardware tab -> device manager

Disable devices that you don't use for your PC and then restart. Good luck!

Unload .dll's to Free Memory

Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory.

1. Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer].
2. Create a new sub-key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1' to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory.
3. Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

I tried this after running a intense program, then watched the task manager; memory recovered it self.




Done....


If you have more tweaks ... post them !!!

Thanks for a great series of posts :D