Number 277 - June 2006
How to Speed Up Windows XP
by Randy Esdon February 2006
Big Blue and Cousins: The Greater Victoria Personal Computer Users' Association. www.bbc.org


   Do you find that after a while your Windows XP based computer is starting to take longer to do things? Do you turn on your Windows XP computer then go do something while waiting for your system to boot up? Here are a few things you can do to help speed up Windows XP.

   First of all you should do a complete scan of your computer to rid it of spy ware and any virus that might be using resources on your computer that is slowing down your computer. I would suggest that you use more than one anti-virus and anti-spy ware scanner to ensure it is clean. I suggest Hitman Pro 2 be used to completely clean out the spy ware, and a combination of one installed active anti-virus product (AVG or Avast! Anti-virus) and one or two free on-line scanners such as Trend Micro's Housecall, Symantec on-line scanner, Bit Defender's on-line scanner, etc. A list of on-line scanners can be found here:www.virusall.com/downscan.shtml.

   After all of this, it might be that your computer just needs to be tweaked to rid itself of its overhead. Well here are a few things you can do to speed up Windows XP.

   1. Disable Indexing Services (a little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. It 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. 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

    •    
  • Click Next


    •    2. Optimize Display Settings (displaying all the visual items can waste system resources.)
       
  • 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 shadow for icon labels on the desktop

    •       
  • Use visual styles on windows and buttons


    •    3. Speedup Folder Browsing (when opening My Computer to browse folders 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 Okay

    •    
  • Reboot your computer


    •    4. Optimize Your Page file (giving your page file a fixed size saves the operating system from needing to resize)
       
  • Right click on My Computer and select Properties

    •    
  • Select the Advanced tab

    •    
  • Under Performance choose the Settings button

    •    
  • Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change

    •    
  • Highlight the drive containing your page file

    •    
  • Make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file


    •    Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5 times the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 x 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

       5. Remove the Desktop Picture (background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.)
       
  • Right click on Desktop and select Properties
       
  • in the Background window select None

    •    
  • Select the Desktop tab

    •    
  • Click Okay


    •    Hopefully this helps with speeding up your Windows XP. There are many other tweaks that can be done, but I thought I would pass along a few here that I think most people could do without too much hassle or confusion.

       Copyright (C) 1990-2006 by Big Blue and Cousins: The Greater Victoria Personal Computer Users' Association.
      Number 277 - June 2006