23 Ways to Speed Up Windows XPThese are excellent ideas -- I have only excerpted the quotes so please do visit the site for the full remedies. As for Jen and Me -- still running several flavours of Windows 2000. My Music Computer is running XP but that is more for a sense of discovery. Win2K is fully stable (at least more than its advocates -- ed.), bomb-proof and the performance on smaller machines is just fine. UPDATE: October 16, 2005 They are excellent ideas but they were plagerised from this guy's list. The actual author is Carey Holzman who has this excellent site. Carey also co-hosts the Computer America talk show which is kicking off it's 14th season. Carey's list is dated February 2nd, 2004; The Plagerised list is dated October 12th. Carey was kind enough to drop me a comment with links to back up his claim. I removed the link to the plagerised list and will not refer to that source again. Sorry about that! Posted by DaveH at October 14, 2005 10:26 PM
4.) Disable file indexing. The indexing service extracts information from documents and other files on the hard drive and creates a "searchable keyword index." As you can imagine, this process can be quite taxing on any system.
6.) Empty the Windows Prefetch folder every three months or so. Windows XP can "prefetch" portions of data and applications that are used frequently.
13.) Turn off any and all unnecessary animations, and disable active desktop. In fact, for optimal performance, turn off all animations. Windows XP offers many different settings in this area. Here’s how to do it: First click on the System icon in the Control Panel. Next, click on the Advanced tab. Select the Settings button located under Performance. Feel free to play around with the options offered here, as nothing you can change will alter the reliability of the computer — only its responsiveness.
22.) If you’re sick of a single Windows Explorer window crashing and then taking the rest of your OS down with it, then follow this tip: open My Computer, click on Tools, then Folder Options....
Just so you know, the 23 Ways to Speed Up XP article posted at TechYogurt.com is a cut-and-paste plagiarized copy of my original work at http://www.techbuilder.org/recipes/59201471
Sincerely,
Mr. Carey Holzman
Co-host: www.computeramerica.com
Author: The Healthy PC (McGraw/Hill)
Author: Smart Computing magazine
Author: CMP Media's www.techbuilder.org
Carey@ComputerAmerica.com
www.careyholzman.com
The article entitled “23 Ways to Speed Up Windows XP” contains a great deal of wonderful sound advice, but not all of it correct.
1 & 2) YEP. Your advice to upgrade your computer’s hard drive and increase its memory should be followed. Adding more memory is probably THE best advice!
3) YEP – don’t use FAT, use NTFS it’s the fastest, and most secure (of course, if this is NOT a large drive than NTFS will actually be slower!)
4) YEP Disable file indexing. Agreed – this just makes your hard drive spin all the time. . .and rarely makes searching faster!
5) NOPE. Updating the software on the actual computer’s hardware (aka firmware, BIOS) can actually be pretty risky. If not done correctly, it can render your computer “useless”. Updates to your firmware is usually for stability, or adding functionality – it is seldom for a performance upgrade.
6) NOPE. Empting the Windows Prefetch folder MAY make things to appear to load faster, but only on bootup – that’s it. . .it does not make your overall performance faster.
7) YEP. Actually, let’s take your good advice – and add it to your automatic scheduler!
8) NOPE. If your hardware was NOT automatically detected with “Enabled DMA” – do NOT change it. Yes, this option makes Windows faster – but if your drive doesn’t do it, it doesn’t do it!
9) NOPE. Unless you’ve built your own computer – or upgrade from regular IDE to Utlra IDE – there is NO reason to changes cables. . .and there is NO increase in speed.
10) A BIG YEP! Spyware will cripple your computers speed!
11) NOPE. The MSCONFIG utility is for troubleshooting NOT speeding up your computer. And while it is true that removing unnecessary programs that run on StartUp will increase the speed of your computer – MSCONFIG is really for Windows 98, you are supposed to use “services.msc” in Windows XP
12) SORTA. Remove any unnecessary or unused programs from the Add/Remove Programs section of the Control Panel make the bootup faster, but only marginally once the computer is running.
13) YEP. Fancy graphics are a resource hog – turn them off.
14) SORTA. Most powertoys from Microsoft usually make it easier to ADD stuff rather than remove it! :-)
15) NOPE but SORTA. Updates rarely make your computer run faster. But I’m NEVER going to disagree with this point!
16) SORTA. Keeping your AntiVirus updated doesn’t make your computer faster – but NOT getting infected with a Virus sure does!
17) YEP BUT. It’s true that too many fonts can slow down a computer – but be warned, there is NO way to know which documents will be affected with you remove fonts. Be careful!
18) NOPE. But the issue of partitioning is too long for a paragraph – but it’s not a function of “speed”, but rather “stability”.
19) NOPE. Windows XP manages memory just fine, see your recommendation #1. Purchase more memory!
20) DOUBTFUL. I’ve seen it, but that is such a rare case, that my position is noted in #9
21) YES. This is sorta like #11 – and unfortunately the Black Viper is “off air” (again)
22) NOPE HUH? Nice tip – but changing Explorer’s view it doesn’t really make your computer run faster.
23.) NOPE. Again a nice tip – but blowing out dust, doesn’t really make your computer run faster
Total Score:
Yes = 9
No = 10
Sorta = 4